Environmental Disasters: What's Worse -- the Gulf Spill or the Indy 500? Ask The Shrimp
Actually there's no comparison between these two classics. The Indy 500 is pretty wasteful, but of course the Gulf oil spill is far worse in every way. But speaking of oil well blowups, did you know that there was an enormous rig accident in the Gulf in 1979, which went on leaking for nine months? And that U.S. taxpayers got stuck with the bill?
First, on the gas consumption of the 500, I made a few quick calculations, based on various unimpeachable internet sources, and came up with this total for the Brickyard Classic: 33 cars started, 21 cars finished, for a total of about 13,250 miles driven. At an average consumption of about two miles per gallon, that's six or seven thousand gallons of fuel. Not counting all the utility vehicles, and transporting all those cars and pit crews to the Brickyard, plus the spectators burned plenty to get there. And the tailgate parties!
Just a drop in the bucket compared to the Gulf, says the Financial Times:
The volume of oil released, estimated by US government advisers to be at least 450,000 barrels, is already greater than the 260,000 barrels in the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, hitherto the worst disaster of its kind in the US. A further 12,000 to 19,000 barrels were estimated to be escaping daily.But these days the Indy cars don't run on gasoline. It used to be methanol, which is made from natural gas, or "clean burning natural gas," as it's billed in the industry's image ads on tv.
Now it's ethanol, made from corn. In a slightly different application, it would be called "moonshine." The Indy 500 switched over to ethanol in 2007, celebrated at the time by Senator Evan Bayh.
"This shows average Americans what they can do to help meet the energy challenge our country faces, and it makes the point in a way a politician never could," Bayh said in a telephone interview yesterday. "If a racecar going 220 miles an hour can be powered by 100 percent ethanol, the family car can be, too."Makes sense to me: grow it in Indiana, burn it in Indiana. (Thanks to fellow reader Ed who points out that Indy's ethanol is made in Brazil.
But don't some people think that making a gallon of ethanol requires many times the energy that comes out of it?
NASCAR still uses gasoline, though, and just stopped using unleaded long after you and I had to:
The country's most popular form of auto racing... has no plans to explore renewable fuels at the moment [as of 2007]. Its attempt to switch from leaded gasoline to unleaded, which began in 1999, proved far more difficult than anticipated. After numerous engine failures and false starts, a suitable unleaded racing fuel was developed, and NASCAR Nextel Cup series switched to unleaded fuel last month at Fontana, Calif.I'll try to estimate that too. My quick estimate of the current NASCAR season is about 144,000 gallons of oil, or about 3500 barrels. That's just for the 36 races, at about 400 miles per race, with 40 cars typically entered.
But on the topic of Gulf of Mexico oil rig disasters, there was a big one in 1979, involving the Mexican state oil company. "The parallels are striking," notes the Financial Times:
In June 1979, Petróleos Mexicanos' exploration well Ixtoc 1 suffered a massive blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, about 600 miles south of Houston. The uncontrolled well gushed oil and gas for nine months and 22 days, spilling about 3.3m barrels of crude until it was finally capped in March 1980.I owned and drove a car then, but have to confess I don't remember it.
That accident gave up about 12,000 barrels a day, in the neighborhood of the current mess. The U.S. government sent the Mexicans a bill for the damage, but they refused.
The Mexican Institute of Petroleum concluded in a report after the accident that Ixtoc's crude oil broke down due to the effect of sunlight, hot water and weather conditions. "The tar oil landing on the beaches is largely innocuous," it said.
...
Washington asked for financial compensation from Pemex, but the Mexican government rejected the claim. The precedent could prove important if the Macondo spill continues for months and the oil reaches Mexico or Cuba.Pemex is being more helpful this time:
Carlos Morales, Pemex head of exploration, is sharing technical information with BP about the spill, the Mexican oil company said. Mr Morales has warned that it could take "four to five months" for a relief well to cap the spill.
As with BP in the current crisis, Pemex tried everything two decades ago, from the conventional to the radical, in its effort to contain the spill. Its efforts ranged from a cap or funnel above the well, or sombrero which largely failed, to pumping mud and debris in a "top kill" and "junk shoot" manoeuvre - a partial success - to relief wells.There's also a precedent in the extent of damage to the Gulf, adds the FT:
Surprisingly, marine life recovered swiftly from the spill.
Arne Jernelov, an expert on environmental catastrophes who studied Ixtoc, says that in the case of Macondo, it is a safe bet that shrimp and squid populations will suffer, as they did in the Ixtoc case, "but so is a close-to-complete recovery within a limited number of years".I'm sure the turtles, shrimp, squid and fisherman are breathing easier when they hear that.