A chaque catastrophe du genre,on voit fleurir les mêmes prophéties de fin du monde.

Un peu de calme et de recul sur le sujet.

Depuis les débuts de l’usage du pétrole, les catastrophes sont innombrables,et curieusement, la nature a toujours fait la ménage.Il semblerait que nous soyons les locataires d’un monde fait de carbone,pétrole et charbon faisant partie de notre destin, tout comme la radioactivité d’ailleurs

Great question. The Ixtoc 1 oil spill was the second worst oil spill in history and the worst accidental one. In June, 1979, Pemex, the state-owned Mexican petroleum company, was drilling an offshore oil well when a blowout occurred (sound familiar ?). Oil began gushing out of the well into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 10,000 to 30,000 barrels a day. The leak continued for almost an entire year before workers were finally able to cap the well and stop the leak.

As with the Deepwater Horizon, dispersant chemicals were sprayed on the resulting oil slick by airplanes, with mixed results. Prevailing currents carried the oil towards the Texas coastline. The US government had two months to prepare booms to protect major inlets. Eventually, in the US, 162 miles (261 km) of beaches and 1421 birds were affected by 3,000,000 barrels (480,000 m3) of oil. Thousands of endangered baby sea turtles had to be airlifted from Rancho Nuevo, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, to a clean portion of the Gulf of Mexico.

More than 30 years later, the final impact of the Ixtoc oil spill is not fully known. It is clear that the spill, as large as it was, did not produce lasting wide-scale environmental disaster or species extinction. The oil was dispersed or consumed by natural microorganisms within a couple years. In all, Pemex spent $100 million to clean up the spill, but avoided paying compensation by asserting sovereign immunity.

The American press is fixated on comparing the Deepwater Horizon leak to the Exxon Valdez tanker spill because the later had been the worst in US waters, until now. But the Exxon Valdez spill doesn’t even make the list of top ten oil disasters :

1. Arabian Gulf/Kuwait - January 19, 1991
Location : Persian Gulf, Kuwait
Amount of Oil Spilled : 380-520 million gallons
Cause : content of several tankers duped trying to prevent troop landing

2. Ixtoc 1 Oil Spill - June 3, 1979 - March 23, 1980
Location : Bay of Campeche off Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico
Amount of Oil Spilled : 140 million gallons
Cause : offshore oil well blowout, oil caught fire causing rig to collapse

3. Atlantic Empress Oil Spill - July 19, 1979
Location : Off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago
Amount of Oil Spilled : 90 million gallons
Cause : tanker was caught in a tropical storm and collided with another ship

4. Kolva River Oil Spill - September 8, 1994
Location : Kolva River, Russia
Amount of Oil Spilled : 84 million gallons
Cause : ruptured pipeline

5. Nowruz Oil Field Spill - February 10 to September 18, 1983
Location : Persian Gulf, Iran
Amount of Oil Spilled : 80 million gallons
Cause : tanker collision with an oil platform

6. Castillo de Bellver Oil Spill - August 6, 1983
Location : Saldanha Bay, South Africa
Amount of Oil Spilled : 79 million gallons
Cause : tanker caught fire, broke in half and sank

7. Amoco Cadiz Oil Spill - March 16, 1978
Location : Portsall, France
Amount of Oil Spilled : 69 million gallons
Cause : supertanker ran aground during a winter storm

8. ABT Summer Oil Spill - May 28, 1991
Location : approximately 700 nautical miles off the coast of Angola
Amount of Oil Spilled : 51-81 million gallons
Cause : ship exploded

9. M/T Haven Tanker Oil Spill - April 11, 1991
Location : Genoa, Italy
Amount of Oil Spilled : 45 million gallons
Cause : tanker exploded and sank off the coast of Italy killing six people

10. Odyssey Oil Spill - November 10, 1988
Location : off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada
Amount of Oil Spilled : 40.7 million gallons
Cause : tanker broke in two, caught fire and sank in heavy seas. All 27 crew members missing and presumed dead.

Note that the Lakeview Gusher Number One, the largest recorded US oil well gusher, was larger than the Ixtoc spill, but it happened on land. The Lakeview gusher occurred in 1909, when pressure blew at least part of the well casing out, along with an estimated 9 million barrels (378 million gallons/1.4 billion liters) of oil. It took until September, 1911, before the gusher was brought under control—around 18 months.

For comparison, when the Exxon Valdez ran aground off the coast of Alaska on March 24, 1989, it spilled 257,000 barrels (10.8 million gallons) of oil, polluting 1100 miles of Alaskan coast. In terms of sheer volume, the Exxon Valdez spill ranks as the 35th worst oil spill in history. Given recent news accounts it would seem that the Exxon Valdez is now 36th and the Deepwater Horizon is now in 35th place.

Nul ne sait ce qui se trame là-bas.J’ai souvenir d’un ancien dirigeant pétrolier qui me racontait comment le fondateur de Fina avait fait fortune en utilisant habilement les informations lors des grands incendies des puits de Bakou(déjà ça polluait dur dur)