The Science of an Oil Spill

The Science of an Oil Spill — page 1 — Published in the United States of America by Cherry Lake Publishing Ann Arbor Michigan www cherrylakepublishing com Consultants Dr Thomas Azwell College of Natural Resources University of California Berkeley Marla Conn ReadAbility Inc Editorial direction Red Line Editorial Book design and illustration Design Lab Photo Credits Shutterstock Images cover 1 Design Lab 6 Paul Malyugin Shutterstock Images 6 oil rig US Coast Guard AP Images 7 NASA 9 Dorling Kindersley Thinkstock 11 iStock Thinkstock 13 Hulton-Deutsch Collection Corbis 15 Patrick Semansky AP Images 16 23 US Fish Wildlife Service 21 Jae C Hong AP Images 24 Dave Martin AP Images 27 Copyright 2015 by Cherry Lake Publishing All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wang Andrea author The science of an oil spill by Andrea Wang pages cm Disaster science Audience Age 11 Audience Grades 4 to 6 Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 978-1-63137-630-6 hardcover ISBN 978-1-63137-675-7 pbk ISBN 978-1-63137-720-4 pdf ebook ISBN 978-1-63137-765-5 hosted ebook 1 Oil spills Juvenile literature 2 Oil spills Environmental aspects Juvenile literature 3 BP Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Oil Spill 2010 Juvenile literature I Title TD196 P4W36 2015 363 738’2 dc23 2014004036 Cherry Lake Publishing would like to acknowledge the work of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills Please visit www p21 org for more information Printed in the United States of America Corporate Graphics Inc July 2014 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrea Wang was an environmental consultant before becoming a writer She helped clean up sites contaminated with oil and other hazardous materials She also assessed the risk of harm to human health and the environment from contaminated soil water and air

The Science of an Oil Spill — page 2 — TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 Blowout in the Gulf 4 CHAPTER 2 What Is Oil 10 CHAPTER 3 What Causes an Oil Spill 14 CHAPTER 4 Oil Spill Impacts 20 CHAPTER 5 Oil Spill Response and Prevention 26 TOP FIVE WORST OIL SPILLS 30 LEARN MORE 31 GLOSSARY 32 INDEX 32

The Science of an Oil Spill — page 3 — 21st century skills library 4 Blowout in the Gulf chapter 1 On the evening of April 20 2010 the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were calm The Deepwater Horizon oil rig ﬂoated 40 miles 64 km off the coast of Louisiana The water there was almost 5,000 feet 1,524 m deep The rig’s crew had drilled a well 18,360 feet 5,596 m below the seaﬂoor Their goal was to drill into an oil reservoir and pump the valuable oil to the surface The project was behind schedule and over budget But now it was almost ﬁnished

The Science of an Oil Spill — page 4 — disaster science 5 Underground Pressure An oil reservoir is a layer of rock in which liquid oil ﬁlls tiny spaces The oil is trapped in the reservoir by the weight of the rock which creates pressure in the reservoir This is called the pore pressure Without cement and mud in the well to balance the pore pressure oil and gas would shoot out of a well like soda out of a shaken bottle That night about half of the people on the rig were relaxing or sleeping Far below at the bottom of the well a battle was being fought Mud is pumped down to the bottom of oil wells to push against the oil and gas in the reservoir This prevents all the oil and gas from gushing out of the well too quickly Slowing the ﬂow of the oil and gas makes it possible for workers to safely collect them But on this night the weight of the mud was no match for the pressure from the oil reservoir Oil and natural gas forced their way into the well pipe and shot up the well

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