Chemicals used to fight Gulf oil slick a trade-off

ROBERT, La. – A massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico has become the testing ground for a new technique where a potent mix of chemicals is shot deep undersea in an effort to stop oil from reaching the surface, and scientists are hurriedly weighing the ecological risks and benefits.

Crews battling the spill already have dropped more than 156,000 gallons of the concoction — a mix of chemicals collectively known as "dispersant" — to try to break up the oozing oil, allowing it to decompose more quickly or evaporate before washing ashore.

The technique has been undergone two tests in recent days that the U.S. Coast Guard is calling promising, and there are plans to apply even more of the chemicals. But the effect of this largely untested treatment is still being studied by numerous federal agencies, and needs approval from a number of them before it can be rolled out in a larger way.

Yahoo News

Uhh.....I wonder how this will go. Seems like a move of desperation in my opinion.

But I no nothing about anything.

Thoughts on this?

[edit on 5-5-2010 by Oozii]

Ya, ...so far we've tried to set the oil slick on fire, and pour chemicals on it. Great.

Well I guess whatever works is fine.

Hopefully this would be it. But I doubt it.

This is funny to me.

Why?

Gas prices go up, BP is going to "foot" the bill but all the oil companies are making MORE profits off of this. Instead of the previous going up by about 10 cents every other week they went up about 2 cents per week over the last few months, trying to make record profits again. I am disgusted by the Oil companies...

but what is worse??

They are acting like primative humans trying to burn things, try to come up with chemicals to reverse something... and in the meantime pollute the waters.


I bet that if they created a forum on AboveTopSecret for a method and scientific minds they could come up with a solution within 24 hours