Myth or Fact: Oil Drilling is Pollution Free
MYTH: If you thought Deepwater Horizon was bad, between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a Taylor Energy site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004.
To give you a point of comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was 17 olympic size pools worth of crude oil. Deepwater Horizon was 300 olympic sized pools. Taylor is far beyond that, between 2-3 olympic size pools every day over a 15 year period.
Fisheries after the Deepwater Horizon spill were closed for much of the year after the Deepwater Horizon spill. It left fishing communities devastated. The long-term effects are not known, but what are the short term effects?
Love blue fin tuna? Lab tests have shown it causes heart defects in fish. For years following the spill, there were reports of lesioned or deformed fish and shrimp.
Now we have another oil spill and it is the longest oil spill in history.
Want to know more? There is a video explainer down below. Here are also few articles to get you started:
2. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=decb9be1d9874b99a123059e1c063338
3. https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/pollution/gulf-oil-spill
4. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-oil-spill-taylor-energy-20190302-story.html
Myth or Fact: Is coal the most powerful energy source we have?
Oil drilling generates air and water pollution. Read the Washington Post article on the Taylor offshore oil spill.