Blaze in Gulf of Mexico

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Blaze in Gulf of Mexico

Warm-up Questions- Discuss the following questions with a partner:

1. What do you know about the Gulf of Mexico?

2. Do you know what a man-made disaster is?

3. Can you give any examples of a man-made disaster?

We Didn’t Start the Fire- Read about an oil fire that has started in the Gulf of Mexico.

A few weeks ago, a fire erupted in the Gulf of Mexico, rising and swirling up out of the ocean. It looked like a flaming red eye, similar to the eye of Sauron in the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies. The fire erupted a short distance from the Pemex Oil Platform.

This is not the first time there has been a disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, nor is it the first time Pemex itself has had a disaster. The Ixtoc Oil Spill of 1979, which was also in the Gulf of Mexico, was the record holder for a time. In that spill, a semi-submersible drilling rig caught fire and was lost. In the process, approximately 3.3 million barrels of oil were released into the ocean.  In 1991, an oil pipeline owned by Pemex on the Mexican mainland exploded and killed 91 people. However, the environmentally worst disaster was the Deepwater Horizon spill. In that disaster, an oil platform experienced a surge of natural gas that came up to the platform from the ocean floor and then exploded. The explosion killed 11 people, and for the next 3 months officials struggled to stop it. Finally, after 3 months, and after 4.9 million barrels of oil were released into the ocean, the leak was stopped.

However, unlike those previous disasters, Mexican government officials are claiming the 2021 Pemex spill was much less of a problem. An immediate safety response closed the valve to the pipe that was leaking oil. The fire burned only for 5 hours, far less than the other disasters. And possibly more importantly, there were no injuries. The head of Mexico’s oil safety regulator, Angel Carrizales, wrote on twitter that the incident, “did not generate any spill.” However, he didn’t explain what was burning on the water’s surface. 

Needless to say, oil and other fossil fuels are controversial. This fire occurred as the world is becoming more and more concerned about global warming. Since fossil fuels are a large contributor to CO2 gasses, there has been a lot of debate about the future of energy. Many people are pushing for more investment in renewable energy and even nuclear power. However, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is going in the opposite direction, wanting more investment in drilling for oil and building more refineries. He has stated oil is, “the best business in the world.”

We can be happy that this accident was short and did not hurt anyone. However, this wasn’t the first spill in the Gulf, and it probably won’t be the last. We can be sure that the debate over the safety of oil and the future of energy will continue into the future.

This article and questions come from Michael Ronenzo working at Changwon university. 

Sources

https://www.britannica.com/event/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fire-offshore-pemex-platform-gulf-mexico-under-control-2021-07-02/
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/18/americas/mexico-gasoline-explosion-tlahuelilpan/index.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/03/americas/gulf-of-mexico-fire-intl/index.html