Few people on the planet haven’t read — with alarm — about the BP well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20.

But how many of us watching with rapt attention while also being schooled on the technology of drilling know there are another 4,515 shallow-water wells and 591 deepwater wells in the gulf? Designs vary, but all are similar in purpose to the Transocean platform that exploded due to an as-yet-unexplained cause.

The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association reports there are 33 floating rigs similar to the Deepwater Horizon, built in South Korea. Their operations have been suspended, perhaps as a political stunt and perhaps for legitimate reasons. New permits are not being issued.

The situation is not unlike commercial air travel.

Every day 25,000 planes loaded with passengers take off from hundreds of American airports. Each day each of the 25,000 can make it safely to a destination, frequently for years in a row, but when only one doesn’t, the results are tragic. We’re all given pause to think about the safety of air travel.

Since the first call was made to the U.S. Coast Guard station in New Orleans from a nearby rig reporting a fireball roaring from Deepwater Horizon, a circle of blame has been formed. The president is in it, as are assorted federal oversight personnel and executives of every company associated with the rig since it was commissioned into service nine years ago. Each has been pointing the finger at the next guy while the truth is that no one knows what happened. Same for the non-functioning “blow-out preventer” on the sea floor nearly a mile below the rig. Experts — experts — designed it as a fail-safe device that should have detected a problem and sealed the pipe leading down to the fossil fuel our generation so desperately craves. It failed, so we’re not safe.

Photos of the sheen on the ocean, the oil caked on birds and sea creatures and the globules drifting into the nutrient-rich estuaries where life begins for shrimp and many species of fish have been heartbreaking.

Less photogenic but facing the same ruin is a major, major slice of Mississippi’s already sputtering economy.

For the 33 idled rigs alone, the effect is lost wages for as many as 9,000 workers. Other spending in the stream of operational commerce brings the total shutdown cost to $1 million per rig per day.

There were 126 people on the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded. Eleven perished.

To follow the logic of some — that all offshore wells should be capped now that we know the extent of the peril — would eliminate an estimated 500,000 jobs. In Mississippi, since the early days of drilling in the Gulf, those jobs have been considered good jobs. Lots of people my age paid for their college educations by working offshore during summers. Three months’ wages could support them for a year.

Plugging the wells would also cut domestic oil production by a third. That means America would have to do without or import more. Higher prices either way. Plugging the wells would cut domestic natural gas production by 10 percent. That would mean much more expensive home heating and electric bills, given that so many power plants use natural gas as a fuel.

The impact on the seafood industry could be even broader. We live on a resilient planet. Witness the forests around Mount St. Helens that mask a tremendous volcanic eruption just over 30 years ago. Witness Prince William Sound, fouled by a tanker of spilled crude 11 years ago. Exxon paid $1 billion in damages and today there’s little sign a disaster occurred. Earth can heal.

The Gulf spill is different, perhaps due to the duration. It was 41 days from the explosion to the first oil washing onto Petit Bois Island, meaning even as the flow is reduced and the well is capped, the sea will remain fouled. Shrimp and many species of fish hatch annually in the brackish marshes that remain all along the coast, and if that process isn’t halted it will at least be seriously curtailed. It could take many years for populations to approach “normal” again and “normal” for Mississippi’s seafood industry is uncounted jobs and about $1.5 billion in the state economy.

In sum, it’s a mess.

For the time being, politicians will issue statements, Congress and courts will have hearings, executives will write checks and may even apologize. But before this thing is over, it’s going to make Hurricane Katrina look like an afternoon breeze. And we’ll all know — or should — that it can happen again.

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Charlie Mitchell is executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail cmitchell@vicksburgpost.com.