Plan to burn excess oil from BP well raises health questions

Ya think? :crazy:


Plan to burn excess oil from BP well raises health questions


This photo from a BP PowerPoint presentation shows the Q4000 drilling rig that will be used to burn as much as 10,000 barrels per day of crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon well. The flame is natural gas being burned by the Discoverer Enterprise, which is recovering about 15,000 barrels daily of crude oil from the out of control well. | BP

By Renee Schoof and Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — Plans to burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from BP's blown-out well are raising new questions about the health and safety of the thousands of workers on rigs and vessels near the spill site.

BP and the federal government are in new territory once again in dealing with the nation's worst environmental disaster: There's never been such a huge flaring of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or possibly anywhere.

The incineration of such huge amounts of oil combined with the black clouds of smoke already wafting over the Gulf waters from controlled burns of surface oil create pollution hazards for the estimated 2,000 people working in the area.

Dozens of rigs and ships are clustered in the area around the spill site.

The Discoverer Enterprise, the main recovery ship, is recovering as much as 15,000 barrels of oil a day through a pipe from the wellhead. A second vessel, the Q4000, is being prepared to pull up more oil and burn it. Experts say it could be burning 10,000 barrels, or 420,000 gallons, a day.

Dr. Phil Harber, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the burning oil could expose workers to toxins that might cause severe respiratory irritation, asthma attacks and inflamed airways depending on how the burns are handled. Burning oil is a fairly common method of relieving pressure in refinery operations, he said.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/11/95781/plan-to-burn-excess-oil-from-bp.html

contributing to the global warming problems. At least burn it where we get some economic benefit from it. I hate waste.

Change of plan? Is there a reason to burn it rather than transport it out?

and with a $4,300/barrel fine pending, they don't want to confirm that there was and is 50,000 to 100,000 barrels a day gushing from the leak.

dat.

If they save the oil I do not believe they would get charged the $4300/bl