A Sea in Flames

by Carl Safina

  Stable.

  Even if this isn’t “Obama’s Katrina,” she sounds like Obama’s Michael Brown. Heckuva job, Brownie. And now the real Michael Brown comes out of his hole. President George W. Bush’s infamous FEMA chief claims that Obama is purposely dragging his feet, wanting the oil leak to worsen so he can shut down offshore drilling. “This is exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, ‘I’m gonna shut it down because it’s too dangerous,’ ” Brown says, adding, “This president has never supported Big Oil, he’s never supported offshore drilling, and now he has an excuse to shut it back down.”

  How very odd of Brownie to say that, considering that less than a month ago Obama alienated environmentalists with a blindsiding announcement that he was opening millions of acres for new offshore oil development.

  Rewind: March 30, 2010. President Obama lays out an offshore drilling plan. He decides to open 167 million acres of ocean to oil and gas exploration. Candidate Obama had attacked John McCain’s proposal to expand offshore drilling, saying, “It would have long-term consequences for our coastlines but no short-term benefits since it would take at least ten years to get any oil.… When I’m president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium.” With this March announcement, President Obama erases that promise. He ends a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida. For environmentalists, this leaves a very bad impression. Something like betrayal. Buried in the announcement—because the administration wants it to look like he’s into offshore oil—is that President Obama canceled the plans, scheduled by President G. W. Bush, for four lease sales off Alaska in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. But he left 130 million acres of those seas open to exploration. Obama’s decision keeps the entire West Coast closed to oil and gas leasing. He also takes Alaska’s Bristol Bay off the table from any future speculation, thereby keeping its teeming salmon flowing. Obama: “There will be those who strongly disagree with this decision.”

  Right again. Greenpeace: “Is this President Obama’s clean energy plan or Sarah Palin’s?” The envirogroup Center for Biological Diversity says, “All too typical of what we have seen so far from President Obama—promises of change and ultimately, adoption of flawed and outdated Bush policies.” Republican congressman John Boehner slams the president anyway for not going far enough; he wants to give Big Oil more access. Piling on from the opposite side, Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg rails, “Giving Big Oil more access to our nation’s waters is really a ‘kill, baby, kill’ policy: it threatens to kill jobs, kill marine life, and kill coastal economies that generate billions of dollars. Offshore drilling isn’t the solution to our energy problems. I will fight this policy and continue to push for twenty-first-century clean energy solutions.”

  Obama says his policy is “part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on homegrown fuels and clean energy.” And that’s exactly what’s needed. But other pieces of the strategy are not in place; Congress isn’t into clean energy. So Obama’s nuance is lost on everyone. The public impression will cost Obama’s administration the moral high ground, and will seem to translate—another impression, admittedly—into weeks of lost momentum and lagging leadership after the rig explosion.

  Who likes Obama’s announcement? Why, it’s Obama’s former opponent for the presidency, Senator John McCain, who Twitters, “Drill baby drill! Good move.”

  And it doesn’t exactly sound like pandering to enviros when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says that sometimes accidents happen; loss of the Deepwater Horizon is no reason to back off the president’s recent decision to expand offshore drilling.

  Yet that face-saving will turn butt-biting.

  And this from rig owner Transocean itself: “The U.S. Coast Guard has plans in place to mitigate any environmental impact from this situation.” The world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, with a fleet of 140 mobile offshore drilling units, seemingly sees scant need to further trouble itself. And well owner BP says, “We are working closely with BP Exploration & Production, Inc. and the U.S. Coast Guard to determine the impact from the sinking of the rig and the plans going forward.”

  Between that line and this one, you can read the following: they have no response plan; they’re unprepared and have no real idea of what to do.

  The Coast Guard searches for the lost men. They’ll keep searching “as long as there is a reasonable probability of finding them alive.” There was never a reasonable probability of additional survivors, and the horror of eleven killed begins to sink in.

  Rear Admiral Mary Landry’s statement that there’s “no apparent leak” notwithstanding, leaking it is. First estimate: 1,000 barrels per day (a barrel is 42 gallons, so 42,000 gallons). The Macondo well’s oil is not leaking from the wellhead, or from the blowout preventer. It’s leaking from the former umbilicus between rig and well, a kinked pipe broken off when the rig sank, now lying mangled on the seafloor one mile down. The only shard of luck—if that term applies here—is that the hulking mass of the drilling rig itself did not land atop the wellhead, blocking all access to it.

  A remotely operated vehicle is sent to shut the leak at the blowout preventer.

  Fails.

  A few days ago, the gushing oil was termed “manageable.” Now BP executives say at least two to four weeks to get it under control. We don’t hear them say “at least.” We still can’t believe the phrase “four weeks.” (That estimate, too, will get several resets. Four months from now, we’ll wish it had been “four weeks.”) Ideas, anyone?

  I did not want to come to the Gulf. It seemed like a good situation to avoid. But I also don’t feel that the information I’m getting from officials and the news media is fully reliable. So I want to see things for myself. I’ve resisted initial predictions of ecological disaster, believing that the natural systems will more or less continue functioning. Yet as you’d guess from a statement like that, I was also in a bit of denial; I could not fathom that stopping the leak might require more than a few days. That just couldn’t happen. But the new reality is settling in: this won’t be quick. Now a lot will depend on what will, indeed, become a months-long question: How much oil will come out of that hemorrhaging stab wound in the seafloor?

  Dawn on the coast. Shell Beach, in southeast Louisiana, is the end of the road, the edge of the marsh, the beginning of the Gulf. A man is sitting in his car next to a stone memorial engraved with the names of dozens of local Katrina victims. I feel like I’m interrupting a private moment just glancing at him, but he says hello and seems to want to talk. He says he’s not in the seafood business, but he lives here among the fishing families. “The small-timers in the seafood business,” he says, “people make fun of them because they don’t know the answers to intelligent questions. Maybe they don’t know the name of the First Lady of the United States, but that’s not what they care about. What they care about is that their motor starts in the morning and that they go out, and go to work. And out there, they’re professionals that nobody can compete with; they’re scientists at their jobs.”

  The oil now raises the question of whether an enduring way of life is truly endangered, or whether an endangered way of life will endure.

  The sheriff has already erected a guard post to close the road into Shell Beach because the National Guard is building a dock for ferrying materials. The guy in the booth tells me no cars, but he lets me walk through.

  He’s tall, thin, black, talkative, fortyish, worried. “This’ll make Katrina look like a bad day,” he says. “Because Katrina did what it did. Then you picked up and got back to your way of life. But this, I mean—it’s disheartening to say it, but I think the parish has pretty much had it. Once that oil comes in, it won’t leave. There’ll be no people workin’ for a long time. Years. And every time it rains, we’ll get a sheen. And every time we get a sheen, they’ll shut f
ishin’. These fishermen makin’ money, spendin’ money. That’s gone. There’s nothing that’s gonna replace that income. I mean, you probably had ten, twenty thousand sacks of oysters goin’ outta this place a day. There’s one crab buyer I know, he probably averages thirty, forty thousand pounds a day when the crabs are running good. That’s just one buyer. See what I’m sayin’? The average working fisherman that fishes hard, I’d say they gross at least a hundred thousand dollars a year. Minus expenses, but BP can’t replace their income forever. Not the rest of their lives.”

  He tells me to look around at the places that sell bait, fishing gear. “These boats. See what I’m sayin’? That’s all gone. You look around at these weekend fishing houses. This is serious money. The average place back here, they got five hundred thousand dollars invested. There’s people had camps on order; they already canceled. What are you gonna build a fish camp for, if you can’t catch fish? But some’s got hundreds of thousands already invested in a new place they won’t be able to give away.”

  He says the parish still runs a tax deficit of $1 million a year. Aftereffects of Katrina. “A lot of people had to leave the parish. Some people say, ‘Oh, try to get a Walmart—.’ You can have all the stores you want. People got the same amount of money to spend no matter how many stores you have. We can’t draw from anywhere anymore. The whole surrounding area was devastated. Before, a lot of the people came from the Ninth Ward to shop. We just don’t have that anymore; it’s depressed all through there. This oil’s gonna cripple us here in St. Bernard Parish. But it goes much farther than St. Bernard. It ain’t gonna be good.”

  One week in, the slick already covers 1,800 square miles. Larger than Rhode Island.

  One week in, BP plans to lower a large dome. A dome to capture the oil. To capture the oil, then pump it through pipes. To pump it through pipes to a vessel on the surface. First engineers have to design it. Then workers have to make it. Could have used Better Planning. Bereft of Preparedness.

  We will now play a game called BP Says. BP says it’ll do this; BP says it’ll try that; BP says it has ideas; BP says it needs a month—. Perhaps its leaders don’t want to raise any expectations. BP spokesman, he says: “That kind of dome-pump-pipe-ship system has been used in shallow water.” BP spokesman, he says: “It has never been deployed at five thousand feet of water, so we have to be careful.”

  Careful.

  Here’s how careful: “From the air, the oil spill reached as far as the eye could see. There was little evidence of a major cleanup, with only a handful of vessels near the site of the leak,” writes the Associated Press on April 27.

  Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal asks the Coast Guard to use containment booms, “which,” he notes, “float like a string of fat sausage links to hold back oil until it can be skimmed off the surface.” Oh, the innocent optimism of those early days.

  The letting go of optimism. One week in, we learn the phrase “relief well.” The pressure driving oil and gas out of the well may overcome any attempt to stop the blowout by pumping material in from the top. That’s like trying to stuff pudding into a fire hose. So BP might decide to drill a whole other well. More likely, two. A parallel well could let workers pump material into the original well near the bottom, increasing the chances that they can clog and seal the well. No guarantees. BP says it will be a $100 million effort. We are so grateful for their generosity. And we’re told that the relief wells could take an inconceivable two months. Actually, it will require twice that time. Meanwhile, they’re going to try some other things. They don’t know what.

  The newly arriving pessimism. “You will have off-flavors that would be a concern,” the oyster farmer says.

  Misreported: “If the well cannot be closed, almost 100,000 barrels of oil, or 4.2 million gallons, could spill into the Gulf before crews can drill a relief well to alleviate the pressure.” It’s noted that the Exxon Valdez, the United States’ worst oil spill to date, leaked 11 million gallons into the waters and onto the shores of Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. Compared to that, the forecast 4.2 million is meager. But the Associated Press is guessing one hundred days based on us being told three to four months, at 1,000 barrels a day.

  Soon the estimate of the flow below gets quintupled. On April 28, Coast Guard rear admiral Mary Landry reports that federal experts have concluded that 5,000 barrels a day are leaking. BP had estimated—or at least said—only 1,000. Landry says BP officials are “doing their best.”

  If that’s BP’s best, well, maybe it is.

  As if New Orleans doesn’t have enough problems. As if shrimpers and fishermen, already staggered, need an oil spill that will finish them. Five thousand barrels a day. That’s 200 barrels an hour. When will it end? Now I’m hearing, “It could eclipse the Exxon Valdez.” And if the oil reaches shore—.

  I read, “A BP executive on Thursday agreed with a U.S. government estimate that up to 5,000 barrels a day of crude could be spilling into the ocean.”

  They agreed? Or got busted?

  Mary Landry had said there was “ample time to protect sensitive areas and prepare for cleanup should the oil impact this area.”

  She makes the mobilization feel like a Kabuki dance.

  And now that government scientists are saying “multiply by five,” the reassuring lullabies evaporate. There is snarling. Fingers pointed. Blame to go round. Now Landry warns that if not stopped, the spill could end up being among the worst in U.S. history. Now it’s mature to say it’s catastrophic. Now President Barack Obama says he’ll deploy “every single available resource.” He orders his disaster people, his environmental people, to the Gulf in person.

  Why’d it take so long?

  Five thousand barrels a day, roughly 200,000 gallons. A few of those gallons—more than anyone would like—begin lightly touching shore here and there in Louisiana. We begin hearing the name Billy Nungesser. The president of a place called Plaquemines Parish, Nungesser says a sheen of oil has reached the fragile wetlands of South Pass. (South Pass is one of the artificial mouths of the Mississippi River that was created by destroying fragile wetlands.) We begin hearing of a place called the Chandeleur Islands. On those isles of fabled fishing and abundant birds, a light sheen of oil plays touch-and-go.

  Officials immediately halt fishing in a large area. A group of shrimpers sues for damages. For all the people affected by fisheries closures—everyone from people who grow oysters to people who build weekend homes—the fishing closures answer the question “How bad will this get?” by pushing the needle all the way. At least for the foreseeable future, it has just gotten as bad as it could get. They are suddenly completely out of business. People whose lives are about getting up and going to work are no longer going to work. A certain shock settles in.

  Trying to regain footing on the moral high ground, a White House spokesman acknowledges that the administration might revisit the president’s announcement on expanding offshore drilling.

  Rear Admiral Mary Landry has repeatedly asserted that BP is the responsible party and will shoulder the costs and organizational duties associated with the cleanup effort while the Coast Guard monitors and approves things. But BP’s interests are not fully in line with the public’s interests. The public wants to know; wants to see.

  We don’t normally put the criminal in charge of the crime scene. The perpetrator’s interests are different from the victim’s. Certainly, as far as damages and people out of work, they’d Better Pay. But many people (including me) think the government should push BP out of the way on everything else. The company had a permit to drill. Not a permit to spill. They’re on our property now. BP should be made to focus exclusively on stopping the eruption. All the big oil companies should now be convened in a war room for their best expertise. Our government should direct the efforts on everything else.

  But the government keeps deferring to BP. Obama does not federalize the situation. Maybe he’s afraid this will become—as people have been wondering out loud—“
Obama’s Katrina.” Maybe he, too, wants to reserve all the blame for BP.

  Today’s vocabulary word: “dispersants.” Use it in a sentence: “Most oil floats, but it dissolves into the sea if you apply dispersants.” By April 30, BP has begun sending dispersants down a mile-long tube from a ship. Releasing such chemicals on the deep seafloor—rather than spraying them on surface oil—has never been done before. It’s a secondary toxic leak, this one intentional, sent from above to meet the oil coming from below.

  If you’re BP, if part of your liability will depend on how much oil, it’s in your financial interest to do everything you can to: (1) say you think it’s leaking at a much smaller rate than it is and (2) hide as much of it as possible and (3) in as many ways as possible, try to prevent people from seeing the parts you can’t hide. If you’re BP, will you let people see and measure a sea of Billowing Petroleum? Not if you can avoid it.

  Dispersed oil stays in the ocean. Because it dissolves into the sea, it’s impossible to see or measure. Like a cake “hides” a rotten egg mixed into the batter, dispersants hide the oil. It’s still a rotten egg, but now you can’t retrieve it.

  Dispersants are basically like dishwashing detergents, which dissolve oil and grease. And by dissolving oil concentrated at the surface, they ensure pollution of water that is home to fish larvae, fish eggs, and plankton. At certain concentrations, dispersants are toxic to those fish larvae, fish eggs, and plankton.

  And what do the dolphins think? Does it burn their eyes? What is its smell to them now? What taste is conferred to their big, aware brain? Capacity for reason, ability to express; they alone in the sea can use syntax, the building blocks of language. Do they have words for this? I don’t.