The International

After the worst oil spill since the Exxon Valdez, the first waves of a massive oil slick have hit the Gulf Coast. On April 20, an explosion and fire on the BP-operated Deepwater Horizion oil rig killed 11 workers and caused multiple leaks in an oil well 5000 feet beneath the water’s surface. The well is spewing an estimated 200,000 gallons or roughly 5000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day and could take months to stanch. As it hits shore, the slick could wreak havoc on wildlife for years to come. It has already disrupted economic activity. The Washington Post reported that as of May 2, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suspended commercial and recreational fishing from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Pensacola Bay, Florida for at least 10 days.

In order to contain the slick, clean-up crews have sprayed chemical dispersant, deployed thousands of booms and attempted in-situ burning, a process involving capturing the oil and burning it, enabling clean-up crews to skim the remaining residue off the surface. High winds and turbulent seas initially slowed relief impeding attempts to install a shutoff valve and damaging miles of floating booms designed to prevent the slick from reaching shore, according to The Boston Globe.

According The New York Times, a faulty blowout preventer, which caps the wellhead and is supposed to stop the flow of oil in the event of an emergency, did not fully engage. The company is using several methods to try to stem the flow of oil, including deploying robotic submarines to seal the well and lowering domes over the well to capture the oil and siphon it off into a barge. A third technique, drilling relief wells, has never been attempted at such great depths, and the wells themselves may take up to three months to complete, according to the Boston Globe. As of May 5, the BBC reports, BP had succeeded sealing one of leaks using a containment box installed by remote submarines. However, according to the LA Times, the dome became clogged and will take several days to repair. Despite BP’s public contrition, a recent Newsweek report outlines a concerted effort by BP to skirt regulations, and an overall corporate philosophy that may have contributed to the accident.

The oil spill will leave many questions in its wake. What exactly led to the well blowout? What is the overall environmental impact of the spill? Could the spill change the course of America’s energy future?

What went wrong

According to Newsweek, after an investigation into a 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas refinery, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board determined that the explosions were caused by inadequacy at “all levels of the BP Corporation,” including cost cutting measures that affected maintenance and safety.” Scott West, the EPA special agent in charge of investigating two 2006 BP oil leaks in Alaska told Newsweek, “There was a corporate philosophy that it was cheaper to operate to failure and then deal with the problem later rather than do preventive maintenance.”

When Tony Hayward took over as President and CEO of BP in 2007, he attempted to improve its reputation and changed the company’s name from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum in order to project a more environmentally friendly image. However, Dave Levinthal of the Center for Responsive Politics told Newsweek that Hayward’s efforts as the new CEO of BP included “exponentially” increasing the company’s lobbying efforts and working to dilute new regulations.

Lax regulations may also have contributed to the spill. The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2004, a study conducted by the Interior Department’s Mineral Management Services (MMS) determined that a central component of the blowout preventers may not be able to operate in deep waters. However, regulators did nothing to increase industry requirements. The piece of equipment, called shear rams, are supposed seal off oil and gas by “pinching the pipe closed and cutting it,” according to the Journal. The failure of the rams may have contributed to broader failure of the blowout preventer.

According to the Journal, while the blowout preventer failed to stop the flow of oil, the initial blowout was likely caused by the breakdown of a process known as cementing. The process fills gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole drilled in the ocean floor in order to prevent highly flammable oil and natural gas from escaping.

This is not the first time the cementing process has come under scrutiny. The Journal reports that “regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn’t set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control.” According to the LA Times, a 2007 study by the MMS identified cementing as the single most important factor in 18 out of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf Coast over a 14-year period. Halliburton, the company responsible for cementing the drill, completed the job 20 hours before the explosion, the Times reports.

In addition to regulators failing to respond to the 2004 MMS study, the Washington Post reports that “while the MMS assessed the environmental impact of drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico on three occasions in 2007 — including a specific evaluation of BP’s Lease 206 at Deepwater Horizon — in each case it played down the prospect of a major blowout.”

In one assessment, according to the Post, “the agency estimated that ‘a large oil spill’ from a platform would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a ‘deepwater spill,’ occurring ‘offshore of the inner Continental shelf,’ would not reach the coast.” In another assessment, “it defined the most likely large spill as totaling 4,600 barrels and forecast that it would largely dissipate within 10 days and would be unlikely to make landfall.”

BP was also exempted from requirements to file a blowout plan for the Deepwater Horizon Rig, the Associated Press reports. The requirement was lifted in 2008 for rigs that did not meet specified conditions. It was unclear whether the Deepwater Horizon fell under the regulation. Robert Wiygul, a Mississippi environmental lawyer, told the Associated Press, “If the MMS was allowing companies to drill in this ultra-deep situation without a blowout scenario, then it seems clear they weren’t doing the job they were tasked with. The MMS can’t change the law just by telling people that they don’t have to comply with it.” However, BP spokesperson William Salvin maintained, “We have a plan that has sufficient detail in it to deal with a blowout,” but he acknowledged that the spill remains “uncontrolled.”

BP maintains that Transocean, from whom it was leasing the rig, is responsible for the faulty equipment. CBC reports that Tony Hayward, President and Chief Executive of BP, said, “It wasn’t our accident, but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up, and that’s what we intend to do.” However, while BP has publicly claimed responsibility for the cleanup, it has used careful legal language to outline what it believes is the company’s financial obligation to impacted regions, telling Newsweek only that it will “honor all legitimate claims.” BP is legally required to cover the cost of the cleanup.

Deep impact: political, economic, environmental

The spill occurred just weeks after President Obama, in an effort to garner bipartisan support for a climate change bill, lifted a 20-year moratorium on offshore drilling. It is unclear how the spill will ultimately impact the future of the offshore drilling and the climate bill. In an interview on Good Morning America, Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod said that “no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here.”

The House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources have announced that they will launch investigations, according to Marketwatch. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior are launching a joint inquiry into the causes of the spill.

Political debate continues, however. Senator Ben Nelson of Florida, an opponent of offshore drilling, said that any legislative measures to expand offshore drilling would “be dead on arrival,” according to Reuters. Despite such opposition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi argued for the passage of the bill saying that “the risk that is presented by offshore drilling has to be taken into consideration, but we must pass this bill,” reports Fox News. Offshore drilling maintains broad support from Republicans.

As the spill worsened, President Obama made an effort to emphasize his administration’s responsiveness. On May 29, the Department of Homeland Security declared that the spill was of “national significance.” During a visit to Southern Louisiana on May 4 to assess the impact of the spill, President Obama called it a “massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.” Maintaining pressure on BP, he said “BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill.” A recent Senate proposal would increase BP’s responsibility for environmental and economic loss to the region from $75 million to $10 billion, in addition to covering the cost of the cleanup.

The environmental impact of the spill will only increase as more of slick reaches shore. Oyster beds and Blue Crab and shrimp populations, all integral parts of the Gulf Coast economy, could be devastated. "Our biggest concern is that the oil comes in in any kind of volume and settles in the cane. Once it settles it destroys the cane and kills the shrimp,” charter boat Captain Dan Dix said in an interview with Reuters. “If you kill the shrimp, you kill the fish that feed off the shrimp, and if you kill the fish then there is nothing left in the Gulf of Mexico. That would absolutely be a disaster for years and years,” he explained. In an interview with Tom Ashbrook of On Point, Aaron Viles, campaign director at the Gulf Restoration Network, said “We are terrified about the impact of this spill.” He added that there are “billions of dollars a year that is tied directly to that coastal ecosystem.”

The New York Times reports that biologists are also concerned about wildlife offshore where the impact can be “invisible, but still deadly.” Christopher Mann, senior officer at the Pew Environmental Group told the Times, “The iconic images of oiled seabirds are just the tip of the iceberg, because oil spills affect life up and down the food chain. According to the Times, the gulf’s deeper waters are home to 10 species of threatened sharks, six species of endangered turtles, manatees, whales and multitudes of fish.

The future of oil

Multi-level technological failure belies repeated assurances of safety by oil companies over the years. On April 2, defending his decision to lift the moratorium, President Obama himself stated, “It turns out by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” according to NPR. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, BP president Tony Heyward said, “This is the failsafe mechanism that clearly has failed,” referring to the failed blowout preventer.

Drilling at such great depths is at the boundaries of human technological capability. Amy Meyers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University in Houston, compared it to space travel, telling The New York Times “In all drilling you have the challenge of dealing with pressurization, and in the case of deepwater Gulf of Mexico that process is assisted by tens of thousands of super computers. It’s as technically challenging as space travel, but safer.” Cleanup technology, however, lags behind the space-age technology that enables drilling. “The technology is the same we’ve been relying on for a long time,” Greg Pollock, commissioner of the oil spill prevention and response program at Texas’ General Land Office told Greenwire. “We’re still dealing with spills the same way we were in the 1960s … although we’re better at it now.”

Federal documents reveal that as oil and gas companies have used increasingly sophisticated drilling procedures, existing regulations have not been updated to address modern drilling practices, according to the LA Times. Short of a ban on offshore drilling, modernizing and enforcing regulations could help prevent future spills.

Additionally, to prevent future spills, the industry should “embrace” new regulations and accept the need to upgrade an "ailing infrastructure,” Neal Ryan, managing partner at Ryan Oil & Gas Partners LLC told Marketwatch. Charles Perry, president of energy consulting firm Perry Management, expressed a similar sentiment in an interview with Marketwatch, saying that, "The potential costs for failures are too great. It is cost-effective to spend far more to prevent failures from occurring.”

Whether or not this spill serves as a catalyst for energy reform remains to be seen. White House energy and climate change senior adviser Carol Browner told the Associated Press “We need a new energy plan for this country … that begins a transition to renewable and battery technology.” However, given our dependence on oil, former Shell president John Hofmeister does not see the United States turning its back away from oil anytime soon. In his recent book, reports ABC News, he writes that we must continue to drill for oil, otherwise we’ll be in an “energy abyss.” As long as we rely on the internal combustion engine, our demand for oil will continue to increase. During his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said that United States is “addicted to oil.” For now, at least, the addiction rages on.