oil spill disaster

Photo by Chris Twomey / Australian Greens, courtesy of WA Today

This is a bad leak.

"The Greens have been highly critical of the government's handling of the oil spill, which has been leaking for more than two months into the Timor Sea.

Equipment failure has caused further delays in the attempt to plug an oil well that has been leaking for more than two months into the Timor Sea."

This is the australian greens but our greens have highlighted it as well.

"The government just yesterday announces it's giving this same company a massive new area for oil exploration in Australian waters," Senator Brown told the Nine Network on Sunday.

"They're rewarding this failure... with further exploration leases."

Hard to believe that they are giving this company more ability to explore.

"The Greens believe anywhere from 10 to 20 million litres of oil has spilled into the ocean since the leak began on August 21.

Oil and gas began flowing from a well at the Montara oilfield, more than 200km off Western Australia's northwest coast, on August 21.

Photo courtesy of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority

PTTEP, a Thai-based company which operates the oilfield, has failed three times to plug the leaking well with mud."

This is an ecological disaster bigger than the exxon valdez. How bad is it?

"The spill is reportedly Australia's worst since offshore drilling began more than 40 years ago.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said the area around the West Atlas drilling rig was "teeming" with marine life, and 16 seabirds had died after coming into contact with the toxic slick.

Biologist Gilly Llewellyn led a WWF survey of the area and said there were times when they watched as dolphins surfaced "literally in a sea of oil".

"Clearly, wildlife is dying and hundreds if not thousands of dolphins, seabirds and sea-snakes are being exposed to toxic oil," she said.

"It's a massive contamination event, it's posing a massive risk to wildlife that is largely confined to sea, that we won't actually see on our shorelines.""

NASA / MODIS image taken from the Terra satellite

and

"Conservationists estimate that the oil is covering an area of at least 5,800 square miles (15,000sq km). "

The risks of putting these types of oil platforms up around our coast is too high. Even the attempt down south is not worth it for the potential disaster that could be caused by inevitable failure - either mechancial or human. i know we already have them - so be it - but putting up more is not the way to go.