SNEPCo confirms the oil leaked from the Bonga facility continues to thin as a result of the effective use of dispersants by seaborne vessels and aircraft.
Surveillance and aerial photos show the spill is breaking up into patches surrounded by clear water. The spill remains offshore. We continue to monitor its movement using satellite imagery and vessels in the zone.
Shell’s country chair in Nigeria, Mutiu Sunmonu, said “two aircraft and multiple seaborne vessels have been mobilized to survey and spray dispersants in the affected areas. These activities are having visible effect.”
Actually these activities are having an invisible effect. Do you have any idea what dispersants do or how they work? Oh, I forgot, of course you do, you're the world's living expert on almost everything aren't you
Chemical dispersants are themselves toxic - they're not just lots of bulk Fairy Liquid. They work just like dishwashing liquid because they break down the surface oil into millions of tiny droplets which become suspended in the top 30 - 50 foot layer under the surface. Shell then, of course says that the leak has dispersed, but it didn't just vanish to nowhere. Over the course of months the small droplets in this underwater layer are broken down by bacteria, sunlight and wave action into their basic chemicals which are then diluted to the point of being almost undetectable. However, as Ted Van Vleet, a professor of chemical oceanography in the college of Marine Science at the University of South Florida pointed out during the GoM oil spill, points out once the oil has been dispersed to the point where the ignoramus of companies like Shell can trumpet that everything is now fine and dandy because they've swept it under the carpet and it's no longer visible, all that's really happened is that the pollution has been moved further down the water column. This lower layer is the spawning ground for many other marine species such as the Bonga fish after which this area is named. Some of the chemical components distributed throughout the water will remain toxic for decades and experts say that monitoring the impact of oil and dispersant chemicals on open-sea fish and other creatures is difficult shorebirds and coastal shellfish, they are hard to count.
But, hey, Mr safety 'expert' let's not burst your self-satisfied, complacent little bubble eh.
Merry Christmas
