Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill’s 30-Year Legacy (Ixtoc I)

[jpak]

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52714

WASHINGTON, Sep 3, 2010 (IPS) - A surprisingly small number of scientists have studied the impacts of the oil spill resulting from the 1979 blowout at the Ixtoc I oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Wes Tunnell, who first studied the spill’s effects in July and August of 1980 and has returned many times since, is one of the few exceptions.

Days after speaking to IPS in June, he flew back to Veracruz to see what remnants, if any, are still present from the disaster - the largest accidental oil spill in history before the spill resulting from the Apr. 20 blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig eclipsed that record this summer.

"We’re going to do a really good search to see if there’s any left or if they’re all gone, just to fill in the story," Tunnel, a biologist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, said in June.

Later that week, he was snorkelling in Enmedio reef, north of Veracruz, where he has watched the tar mats that settled there in 1979 slowly degrade over the decades.

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[maryf]

1. Very interesting...

30 years later, of course the profit mongers will probably want to harvest the tar mats and squeeze out as much old oil as they can... I am more than cynical about the article's implication that all is well now, but K&R for exposure for others to read...