Oil and Water

摘要

We fly out of Venice, Louisiana, with its flood-plain levees, low-lying eow pastures, and oil-patch heliports. Our Bell 412 helicopter, a buffed-up version of a Huey, quickly passes over shredding islands of brown spartina, or salt hay, cross-hatched with canals and studded with oil tank transfer stations. We cross the southwest channel of the Mississippi and a surf line the color of chocolate mousse. As we fly beyond the first cluster of oil platforms, the water turns a strange jade green. Soon we're some 50 miles offshore in deep blue water. Everywhere on the horizon are oil platforms. There are 4,000 of these structures in the Gulf of Mexico today.