Eighty-seven days. That’s how long it took BP to end the spill at their Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010. Yesterday, a massive natural gas blowout at the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility run by SoCalGas in California surpassed that mark – and the fix remains weeks away.
The SoCalGas blowout at Aliso Canyon is a climate catastrophe. Every day it spews 110,000 pounds of methane – a greenhouse gas 87 times more potent over 20 years than carbon dioxide. Despite claims from SoCalGas that the leaking gas was safe, residents soon reported nausea, nosebleeds, headaches, rashes, shortness of breath, burning eyes, sore throats, sick pets and more, and over 10,000 residents have had to evacuate as the gas found to contain toxins like mercaptan, benzene and even hydrogen sulfide.
Yet the leak has gotten far less attention than BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill did, and not nearly the coverage such a climate disaster deserves. President Obama didn’t mention it in his State of the Union last week. Nor did it come up in the recent democratic debate. It took Governor Jerry Brown of California 75 days to declare a state of emergency for the situation in Porter Ranch. In contrast, it took only nine days for Governor Bobby Jindal to declare a state of emergency after the explosion at Deepwater Horizon.
How long will this leak last? BP, Halliburton, and federal workers finally managed to cap Deepwater Horizon after 87 days. Porter Ranch hit 87 days yesterday, and SoCalGas claims they’ll have it fixed by “late February” – five or six weeks away at best, and SoCalGas has given grossly inaccurate estimates before.
We need to put President Obama’s attention on Porter Ranch to end the leak and help the affected residents. Take action and ask President Obama to declare a federal state of emergency, and to order the EPA to shut down the facility.