GULF OF MEXICO
While the Gulf Of Mexico is undoubtably a disaster in terms of human, ecological, business reputation and financial, it is also an event that is causing the utterly wasteful destruction of valuable oil reserves. The oil that is leaking into the sea is being collected by skimmers and then processed to separate it from the water. Where oil ends up on land, it is collected together with contaminated material for ultimate burial. The oil and gas that is being collected by the LMRP Cap are processed on board the Q4000 where the gas is flared and the oil either stored for transfer or it too is flared.
This flaring process is the cringeingly wasteful act of just burning the oil and gas with as little pollution as possible. For oil, this is achieved
using a Sclumberger EverGreen burner. It might be green in terms of pollution but its purpose is far from green, viz., to burn large
quantities of oil products
as efficiently as possible to provide "
an efficient and cost-effective alternative to oil storage". It can burn up to 15,000 barrels of
oil per day and is currently used to flare about 8,000 barrels per day. Each barrel has an equivalent energy content of 1,700kWh[1], so
that's about 13,600MWh flared per day. A person living in Europe consumes about 125kWh of energy per day. This covers all activity: growing
food, transport, heating, clothes, etc. The oil flared each day would provide enough energy to sustain over 100,000 people.
[1] Barrel of oil equivalent - Wikipedia.