Globe And Mail: BP Oil Leak
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Oil Slick in the Gulf of Mexico
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The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing eleven men. The oil rig then sank on April 22, 2010. Oil geysered into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days before being capped.
On July 24, 2010, the administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Jane Lubchenco, provided a briefing about the anticipated impact of Tropical Storm Bonnie on the Deepwater Horizon oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. Bonnie was expected to help dissipate and weather the oil on the sea surface, spreading out the slick, lowering surface concentrations, and making the oil more amenable to biodegradation. On July 28, 2010, after Bonnie had passed through the region, NOAA reported less oil observed on Gulf of Mexico overflights.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on July 28, 2010.
BP’s Newest Disaster: Photoshop
1:35 pm
As if the Oil Spill wasn’t bad enough, now BP has gone and shown us another level of ineptitude: Their complete lack of Photoshop skills. A series of images has been released by various BP organizations purportedly showing just how hard they’re working on solving the Gulf Oil Crisis. Sadly, the images are fabrications, and not very good ones.
The first one found was this image of the BP Command Center.
Several people have dissected this image (Gizmodo, Ameriblog) and have very detailed zooms showing how BP, for some unknown reason, decided to replace blank monitors with video footage. In particular, the guy on the right seems to be staring at some kind of Sun chart? In reality, he was staring at a screen with nothing but a white line on it, some of which you can still see on either side of his head.
Now, they’ve gone and done it again with this image of their aerial monitoring from helicopters over the gulf.
Click for the fullsize. Once again, even moreso actually, you can easily see the blurred edges of the water and the oddly placed air traffic control tower in the upper left. If you look very closely, you can even read the dash instruments which say they are hovering a mere 1 foot off the ground. Gizmodo breaks it down quite well:
And last, while the helicopter clearly appears to be situated at some height above the boats ahead, the readouts on the dash appear to indicate that the helicopter’s height is 1 foot, and that door and ramp are open and the parking brake engaged, not to mention that the pilot appears to be holding a pre-flight checklist:
Obviously there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to BP. But every time they fabricate an image like this, it undermines whatever little credibility they have left, along with all of the actual documentation of the massive undertaking this has been and will continue to be. It speaks to a company still more concerned with image than reality, in charge of repairing something so terribly broken that we can’t afford to treat it with anything but total candor.
If you find any more, let us know in the comments!
Oil Slick in the Gulf of Mexico
12:00 pm
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing eleven men. The oil rig then sank on April 22, 2010. Oil geysered into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days before being capped.
The Gulf of Mexico was speckled and streaked with small clouds on July 20, 2010, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image. Between the clouds, however, a silvery-gray streak of oil remained visible offshore of the Mississippi River Delta. The tan-colored waters around the river delta are full of sediment.
CNN on Drilling the relief wells
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+50 Ways of Visualizing BP’s Dark Mess
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Our own Tiago Veloso has a great article up at InspiredMag where he catalogs some of the infographics and charts floating around the internet of BP’s disastrous Gulf Oil Spill.
It’s been almost three months since the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred, in the Mexican Gulf. Arguably, the most horrifying man-made environmental catastrophe of all times, it has been illustrated all over the world in magazines, newspapers and websites.
Contrarily to my last post here on Inspired Magazine, this one is not filled with joy and good expectations, typical of a big sports fan like I am. Today, we’ll see how information design can also show the less enjoyable side of our life, and how powerful it can be unveiling the cruel facts behind such tragedies as this one.
Some of them we’ve covered before, but several of them are new.
via +50 Ways of Visualizing BP’s Dark Mess | Inspired Magazine.
Oil Slick in the Gulf of Mexico
10:00 am
It has been more than 60 days since the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster started, and still BP has not managed to stop the flow of oil. Several of my vacation spots are now fouled with oil.
On Saturday, June 19, 2010, oil spread northeast from the leaking Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil appears as a maze of silvery-gray ribbons in this photo-like image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
The location of the leaking well is marked with a white dot. North of the well, a spot of black may be smoke; reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that oil and gas continue to be captured and burned as part of the emergency response efforts.
Meanwhile, BP is continuing to drill two relief wells. The first well is at 15,936 feet and the second well is at 10,000 feet. The plan is to intersect the primary, blown-out, well at 18,000 feet. Once they do that, BP will fill the primary well with mud and cement to stop the flow. The project is ahead of schedule, but is still expected to be completed in mid-August. That latest development is that BP is now using ranging equipment to home in on the damaged well. This ranging equipment sends out an “electric current from the relief well that will make contact with the well casing in the damaged well, creating an electromagnetic field between the wells that signals information about direction and distance.”, reports Jaquetta White for The Times-Picayune.
The Gulf Oil Spill in Stereoscopic 3D
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Josh Klatt headed off to Grand Isle, Louisiana and captured some stunning images of the BP Gulf Oil Disaster in stereoscopic 3D. Slip on some anaglyphic red/cyan glasses and see the horror.
3-D BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill 3D – week 7 from Pesky 3D on Vimeo.
VizWorld.com 
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