If you ever wondered how the oil and gas facilities located in the Gulf of Mexico get away with dumping pollution into the gulf waters , here is a little description of their tatics.
Onboard each offshore oil and gas facility there is a small Infared testing device used to test the overboard water for how many parts of oil are in the water. The production operators take a sample of the overboard water and test it before they send it in to the official testing agency. If the water sample they catch test bad or to high they can do one of several things.
The first and most common is to filter the sample down with coffee filters until the excess oil is removed from the water sample, and the sample is capable of passing the federal test. This was the case in a most recent federal case where employees of W & T Offshore and WoodGroup PSN were identified by the federal government as having done.
The second practice is that the production operators simply throw away the bad sample and then make some adjustments to their process equipment or chemical injection until the water quality passes the test onboard the facility , then the facility operators catch a good sample which is guaranteeded to pass and send it in to be tested , and disregarding the days and weeks where the overboard water was in excess of the legal limit for pollution.
And then the third option , the facility production operators simply take a sample of tap water and send it in as a false sample of the overboard water.
The federal testing agencies do not verify that the water sample is actually from a oil and gas formation , their test is simple , they test for only one item , that is the amount of oil in the water sample. So the sample could be pure poison as long as there is less than the legal limit of oil in the sample the testing facility will pass the test.
The testing agency is under no requirement to report to the federal government that any test has failed.
Oil pollution from offshore oil and gas facilities is in much greater volumes than anyone in the industry or the government is aware of. Huge amounts of unreported oil and toxic chemicals are being dumped daily into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And those chemicals are getting into the seafood food chain and into those of us who consume those fish and shell fish from the Gulf of Mexico.
The toxic effects will accumulate in the food chain over time and in each of us in time and our health will be hurt because of it and eventually the Gulf of Mexico will become a dead zone which will spread to the other oceans, to the other beaches , to the other people who consume foods from the oceans.
There is a very simple device which can be put into the oil and gas overboard facilities which would prevent this , its a simple recorder which is sealed and takes the overboard water sample on a daily basis and logs it into a data base for the government to check. Then the government could down load the results and issue fines for the days where the overboard water was in excess of the legal limit, and force oil and gas facilities and companies to be more vigilant and stop the pollution.
Oil and gas companies have spent huge amounts of money paying off politicians to keep this from happening so they can keep their profits high , rather than keeping pollutants out of the environment.
The greed of the few has out weighed the well being of the many. We can do better , but we will not because in the real light of the truth , we do not care , and we will not care until it hurts us with such pain we cry , and in this case that will be when the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are so toxic from pollution from oil and gas facilities it forever changes the eco systems in the oceans of the world.
I really wish each of you had the opportunity to fill your bath tub with the overboard water dumped into the Gulf of Mexico and soak in it every day and see the results on your body and in your life, so you could see what is happening first hand.
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