Gulf oil spill nears Louisiana coast. (Photo: ABC News)
By Tom Kessler
Green Right Now
By some estimates, it now appears the Gulf oil spill could be months away from being capped and may surpass the scale of the infamous Exxon Valdez of the 1980s. And that has the White House today telling ABC News that there will be no new domestic offshore drilling until the investigation into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is complete.
But a review of government testimony and the oil industry’s safety record in deep water drilling suggests that the federal government may never get the reliable assurances that it is seeking. Indeed, the most troubling aspect of the Gulf disaster is that efforts of top oil industry experts and the U.S. Coast Guard have had no impact on containing the spill thus far.
The Deepwater Horizon exploration well was operated by BP Oil, the largest oil and gas producer in the U.S., and owned by Transocean Ltd., the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that 210,000 gallons a day are leaking from the wellhead deep in the gulf. The rig operating the well exploded and started burning April 20. Southern winds are pushing the oil onto the Louisiana shoreline, endangering beaches and wildlife in the region.
John Amos, founder and president of SkyTruth, a non-profit organization that investigates environmental disasters using satellite technology, said this “could be a catastrophic spill for the U.S.”
“What’s of greater concern to me is not just the numbers (of gallons spilled), but however big it is, it has clearly overwhelmed one of the world’s largest oil companies and the United States Coast Guard,” Amos told CNBC.
According to Bloomberg reports, the disaster that killed 11 workers on the oil rig and resulted in this massive oil slick, was triggered when a safety device on the ocean floor failed to cut a pipe. Ron Bohuslavicky, senior well-control instructor at Well Control School in Houston, told Bloomberg that all sub-sea oil wells are equipped with steel blades known as shear rams that are supposed to slash through the pipe at the top of the well during dangerous pressure surges when all other safety devices fail.
U.S. study found high failure rate of devices designed to stop spills
But Bloomberg reports that a 2002 study commissioned by the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the agency that oversees the offshore oil industry, found that 50 percent of the shear rams tested failed to cut through pipe and halt the flow of oil.
SkyTruth’s Amos was among those who testified about deep water drilling before the senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee last November. He warned then that there have been several instances of oil spills that were notable for their “magnitude and the potential risk they expose.”
Among other examples, Amos cited a deep-water oil accident off the coast of Australia last August in which oil and gas flowed uncontrollably for 73 days. He said the spill gushed at up to 2,000 barrels per day, according to estimates by the Australian government’s Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism.
Testifying at that same senate hearing on Environmental Stewardship and Offshore Energy Production, BP America’s Vice President of Gulf of Mexico Exploration David Rainey said “releases from oil and gas operations are rare.”
“To be clear, any release of hydrocarbons from our operations into the environment is unacceptable, and we continue to invest in research and technology to drive us to our ultimate goal of zero discharge,” Rainey testified.
Rainey touted several examples of the technologies that reduce accidental releases, including “down hole flow control valves that shut down the well automatically if damage to the surface equipment is detected,” “blowout preventer technology which includes redundant systems and controls,” and “new and improved well control techniques which maintain constant control of the fluids in the wellbore.”
BP in 2009: “Voluntary programs” to prevent spills have been “very successful”
Despite the industry’s safety efforts, the U.S. Minerals and Management Service has logged more than 1,400 offshore oil drilling accidents between 2001 and 2007. The MMS has identified human error as a factor in many of the incidents.
As a result of the findings, the Associated Press reports, the MMS is developing new rules that will require rig operators to develop programs focused on preventing human error. The agency also called for audits once every three years on programs to prevent human error. But BP has opposed such “extensive prescriptive regulations.”
“We believe industry’s current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs implemented … have been and continue to be very successful,” BP vice president Richard Morrison wrote in a September letter opposing the proposed rules.
Meanwhile, Deepwater Horizon operator Transocean continues to proclaim on its web site that “our operations will be conducted in an incident-free workplace, all the time, everywhere.”
