By Alex Pearlman and Jen Schmidt
This is Part I of III in a series.
Gen Y talks a lot about how previous generations have left us with a world full of chaos, confusion and a lack of accountability. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, they say. If that’s true, then we have to stop assuming that people will take responsibility on their own and demand action from them. It is our responsibility to do so if we don’t want our own children growing up surrounded by the same lack of integrity we did.
A Minerals Management Service (MMS) waiver for BP’s lease over the Deepwater Horizon site was granted on April 6, 2009 and allowed BP a “categorical exclusion” from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA, 1969), the Washington Post reported earlier this month. That waiver allowed BP to forgo an environmental impact study on what might occur in the event of a spill or accident and company executives even lobbied to expand the government’s exemptions on their drilling just days before the oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010 and subsequently caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
Why did the Department of the Interior allow this in the first place? The oil industry is the most profitable the world has ever seen, even with regulations in place. There is no conceivable reason that oil companies should go unchecked, and federal regulators should be held responsible when a spill of this (or any) magnitude occurs.
With technology advancing close to the speed of light in nearly every other sector, it is odd that with so much money, and the best scientists and engineers at their disposal, the oil industry hasn’t taken it upon themselves to prevent these kinds of leaks, ensuring the environmental stability in the affected regions, as well as maintaining the trust of the public – neither of which companies like BP seem to care at all about.
A recent report by Millennial favorite Rachel Maddow said it best. “The oil companies keep talking about how technologically advanced they are,” she said on her May 26 show. “The only thing they’re technologically advanced at is drilling deeper. They haven’t gotten any more advanced with how to deal with the risks attached to that. They haven’t made any technological advances in the last 30 years when it comes to stopping a leak like this when it happens.”
She was referring to the 1979 Ixtoc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in which a blowout preventer on a Sedco rig failed. (Sedco later became a subsidiary of Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon.) Maddow pointed out that even the seven-or-so different attempts to stop the flow of oil in 2010 (including the aptly named Cone/Top Hat/Operation Sombrero) are the same ones used during the Ixtoc spill. The only way to stop the gushing in that scenario was to drill two relief wells.
On May 4, BP finally announced the beginning stages of drilling two relief wells that will be finished and plugging the leak that gushes 19,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of August – four months after the initial explosion.
Why doesn’t the MMS simply require the construction of relief drills with every approval given to oil companies who file for permission to drill? If the relief drills are the fail-safe, why aren’t they ready to operate at a moment’s notice?
Even Congress is pondering this simple question, as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the congressional environment panel, said BP claimed to have the capability to prevent a serious oil spill in case of a well blowout, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but that “in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill … it does not in any way appear there was ‘proven equipment and technology’ to respond to the spill.”
Boxer and seven other Senators have now asked the Justice Department to “determine whether any criminal or civil laws may have been violated [by BP] as far as misleading the government.”
Part II of III will be published tomorrow. Check back!
photo by mikebaird
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I really appreciate that the time was taken to go in-depth and really explore everything that has gone wrong in this entire situation. I can't wait to read the rest of this series.
Thanks McKenzie!! We had fun writing it!
I think step one for anybody commenting on the BP spill is to try to understand better what happened and why. Blaming rapacious oil company lobbyists and poor, overwhelmed regulators is not a good start.
Think about what you've written: the last time something like this happened was 1979. I'm not going to be shameless cheerleader for oil companies, but if this stat is true, it would seem to indicate some, teensy concern among oil companies for reliability.
I could go on, but why bother? People want a witch hunt and from everything I can gather coming out of the White House, they’re going to get one. Pathetic.
Hi Jeff, thanks for your comment! I want to say that regulators being overwhelmed is something that needs to be looked at. Of course they're overwhelmed. But they also know that by giving BP carte blanche, they screwed up – hence the resignation of the head of MMS just before the congressional hearings.
Of course oil companies aren't the only parties responsible here – but, um, it is their oil polluting the gulf. And just because it hasn't happened since 1979 doesn't make it ok that the technology is exactly the same now as it was then – it shouldn't be, is our point. The oil companies should be working to innovate, not mislead the public about how much oil seepage is occurring and why.
Erm…really? There are some things that it's not acceptable for them to happen even once. This scenario is about as clearly on that list as you get.
This should NEVER have happened again after the Ixtoc incident (and even that shouldn't have happened, this should've been done before there ever was a problem). The oil industry should be developing procedures to deal with a worst-case scenario before it happens, and make sure that they are ready to deploy if it does. Why aren't relief wells being put in place before the oil is drilled into, so that the well can be sealed immediately if required, rather than after disaster has already occurred and a leak is allowed to continue for months? This is required in other areas of the world, and we sure better start requiring it here.
To call the concern “teensy” has got to be one of, to be honest, the stupidest statements I've ever read. Even one spill like this is one too many, because of its massive impact. BP should've been ready for this possibility before it even thought about beginning to drill. If they had been, they wouldn't be losing billions of dollars, the Gulf wouldn't be getting poisoned at a breathtaking rate, the people who depend on the Gulf for their livelihood wouldn't be getting screwed fifteen ways, and this would've been a footnote on the news rather than a major disaster.
Far as I'm concerned, we should fine BP the maximum allowed by law (and put the money straight towards cleaning up the Gulf and helping those affected). We should deny them drilling permits for at least 25 years anywhere in the US or its waters. There's even talk of taking their US assets into receivership, and a case could be made for that.
We need to send a very clear message, and that message needs to be that skimping on safety is not a money saving proposition-it's a money losing proposition, and if you screw up badly enough, maybe a company destroying proposition. BP apparently didn't get that message after Texas City. Let's send it to them a lot more clearly this time.
I'm dumbfouned that NEPA was waived for something like an oil well. I must be out of date.
But let's not forget that we are the ones demanding cheap gasoline and heating oil Some even go so far as “Drill Baby Drill”! There is a lot of ignorance about the risks of energy development including nuclear power: small probability, high impact disasters! We have a nation that believes that the President can stop a mess like this. The answer is in prevention, not reaction. To really prevent these disasters, we must figure out how to use less energy. I know — very impolitic ….
this says it all
“Why doesn’t the MMS simply require the construction of relief drills with every approval given to oil companies who file for permission to drill? If the relief drills are the fail-safe, why aren’t they ready to operate at a moment’s notice?”