As we are myopic, we mostly focused on the economic effects of spills. For
example, some months ago we were laboring on the economic effects of tsunamis
in straits. The Navier-Stokes equations in 3D involved in trying to understand how
a great deal of water moving at very high speeds surges down a limited cross
section like the Dardanelles, Bosphorus, Malacaa Strait or even the Juan de Fuca
Strait is fairly stressful even for multi-core computers. We were ultimately
interested in what the consequences of sinking lots of ships were, so looking
backwards at what the cost of one or two ships colliding was useful. Suffice to say,
tsunamis ripping past Istanbul or Singapore on a busy day would have planetary
implications. Obviously, the only real hope is to get enough warning to get really
vulnerable ships like loaded oil tankers to deep water.
That led us to an somewhat unexpected conclusion when we were looking at the
Persian Gulf. Unlike ships, marine oil wells (or even dry land wells within tsunami
distance of the shore) cannot be moved to deep water. What one can do about
storage tanks short of shutting down their pipelines is unclear, but it was easy to
see there has to be a way to shut down wells fairly quickly if one is made
aware of an earthquake or tsunami. Fans of seismology will recall the Turkish
Tupras refinery during the Izmit earthquake in August of 1999 burned for days
after the earthquake.Tupras refined the bulk of petroleum used in Turkey. Besides
the lost oil and equipment, there were immediate health problems due to the
smoke, and longer term problems due to lack of clean water and lack of heat for
warmth and cooking. We were relatively pleased that neither Chile nor Haiti had a
similar problem.
We have found that higher order cochleoids, especially when one layers fractals
over them, are useful in modeling not only methane bubbling up a drill shaft, but
also surface slicks, submarine plumes and volcanic ash clouds. Sadly, we also find
applicability in assessing the impact of school closures and teacher firings on
education scores, but that is a different topic. In any case, we were very concerned
because of the combination of type of hydrocarbon, location and volume. We hope
Deepwater Horizon does not surpass Ixtoc (140,000,000 gallons) as far as volume
goes, but the good news about Ixtoc was the blow-out area was comparatively far
from high density concentrations of life. That's obviously not the case for
Deepwater Horizon.