BiggerPockets

I saw this article to. Those property owners in the effected areas could face some long term negative effects. If you are a home owner or an investor with property in these areas it might be harder to sell your property and may become harder to rent.

This is heart breaking. I love the Gulf Coast, from So Padre to the Fla Keys. I am worried about how this affects a whole culture around the La/Ala/Fla panhandle. These folks have suffered from Katrina and Ike. Now their way of life, fishing and tourism, is being destroyed.

Our family used to go to Crystal Beach/Bolivar Pennisula (just north of Galveston) every year until Ike destroyed this community. They are trying to rebuild and salvage what survived. However, my wife refuses to go back, she can't handle seeing the devistation. I'm afraid there are too many people who will react the same way to this oil spill.

"Our family used to go to Crystal Beach/Bolivar Pennisula (just north of Galveston) every year until Ike destroyed this community. They are trying to rebuild and salvage what survived. However, my wife refuses to go back, she can't handle seeing the devistation. I'm afraid there are too many people who will react the same way to this oil spill."

Tod, we too have vacationed in Crystal Beach, all the way down east of rollover pass. The home we stayed in was completely washed away by Ike. A small blessing for TX is that the spill is moving away from our beaches.

I've continuously had two questions since the start of this disaster -

-with all the plate shift and tectonic activity on the ocean floor, why don't oil leaks like this ever occur naturally (guess we are just poking holes pretty darn deep where they're not supposed to be, perhaps the sheer mass of the colliding and stretching plates contains these pockets)

-what would our attitude and reaction be if some other country had this going on - it will affect the rest of the world even if it's only ever visible on our coastlines

"-what would our attitude and reaction be if some other country had this going on - it will affect the rest of the world even if it's only ever visible on our coastlines"

Another country does have this going on, a British company had this accident.

Originally posted by Joshua Dorkin

Oil does naturally seep into the ocean. I've seen several reports about it. That said, I'm curious about the volume. It would seem that if it were seeping in as large a quantity as this well is, we'd all have heard about it, right?

I've also heard from multiple reports on all sides politically that this is the case but with the blowout, it's all focused on one spot - kind of like a fire hose in one spot as opposed to a thousand drips spread over acres. The best example I can think of is the La Brea tar pits. When I went there I was in the park area and saw a dime size glob of tar on the ground. I asked one of the park employees there about it and he said the entire area across that part of LA seeps tar, the pits are just the most focused concentration of it.

Remember when the Cuyahoga River caught fire?

Do ya think parts of the ocean could follow suit?

There are quite a number of natural leaks off the CA coast. Some years ago, some of the oil companies were putting caps over them as an offset to potential pollution.

In the Gulf of Mexico, one of the hazards for offshore drilling is "shallow gas". That's natural gas that's slow leaking up through the sediment. It can collect in pockets and create a problem is you set a platform over it or if you drill into it.

I've heard that there are large man made leaks off the Nigerian coast.

Some of the oil from this leak has been set on fire.

The Gulf of Mexico is well away from any tectonic plate edges. Its a VERY old basin, and has very deep sedimentary layers, something like 30,000 feet. Total depth on the BP well is about 17,000 feet below sea level, or about 12,000 feet below the ocean floor. That's a deep well in every sense of the term.

That oil may end up circulating around the gulf and may yet end up on the Texas coast. I lived in Texas for many years (and worked for Big Oil). Went to Crystal Beach many times and owned a small house near Blessing, not far from Palacios, down the coast from Galveston.

What we should learn is that to focus on solar and wind power and make it more affordable. I had a solar panel on my roof at my previous house. Worked great, had plenty of hot water even on cloudy days.