A Sea in Flames

by Carl Safina

  The director of Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals says, “It’s hard to understand if nausea or dizziness or headache is related to the oil or to working in 100-degree heat.” (I wonder why BP didn’t think of that.) Wearing respirators could help unpack that. No, never mind; we’re told that respirators could add to heat stress.

  There’s another reason the suffering workers aren’t using respirators. But get ready for some tortured logic: the head of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) says the toxins in the Gulf air aren’t concentrated enough to require workers to wear respirators. Based on that, BP says there are no health threats to workers. After public-health advocates criticize both of them, OSHA’s head tells C-SPAN that he wouldn’t advise using his agency’s “out-of-date” guidelines. Confused? It can take your breath away.

  Who else can’t breathe? A Dauphin Island Sea Lab study finds a dramatic decline in dissolved oxygen near the ocean bottom at sites twelve and twenty-five miles off Alabama. The study’s senior scientist, Dr. Monty Graham, announces, “Oxygen is dropping out offshore. We got minimum dissolved oxygen values of 1.7 micrograms per liter.” Dissolved oxygen levels below 2 micrograms per liter are considered too low for almost everything that depends on oxygen for normal living. The values found are less than a fifth of normal. Dauphin Island Sea Lab director Dr. George Crozier says, “This is the kind of unexpected consequence that I warned BP representatives of on May 3rd, after they announced the successful application of dispersant at 5,000 feet.”

  And yet—. Other scientists will find the oxygen depletion rather moderate. And a federal panel of about fifty experts recommends continued use of chemical dispersants, saying populations of the underwater animals likely to be killed have a better chance of rebounding quickly than birds and mammals on the shoreline.

  That’s probably true, if you decide to be unconcerned about turtles, whales, and dolphins, and if you write off the possibility of effectively capturing floating oil. And at the heart of the matter are two things: dispersants are easy; dispersants make things look better. Plus, no one really knows for certain what would happen here with or without dispersants. There’s a lot of guessing on the details.

  On the final day of May, engineers begin trying to fit a new “top hat.” The dome weighed 100 tons; this cap weighs two tons (further evidence that their shrinking thinking is all over the map). The idea now is that a diamond-bladed pipe cutter will create a smooth cut of the mangled pipe, right at the blowout preventer, to facilitate a tight fit.

  Drawback 1: kinks in the pipe have been slowing the rate of leak; cutting the pipe will facilitate a higher flow. Before the pipe is cut, the government has estimated that the oil is flowing at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day—meaning at least 20 million gallons since April 21. Now BP says that cutting the kinked pipe will increase the flow by as much as 20 percent. (It’ll be more like 300 percent.)

  Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen says, “If we don’t get as clean a cut as we want, then we’ll put something called a ‘top hat’ over it, which is a little wider fitting, but you have an increased chance that some oil will come out around the sides.” Definition of “increased chance”: 100 percent certainty. And note: “we,” thrice. Quite the sense of camaraderie, the admiral and BP. Boot on their neck or feather boa?

  And that brings us to Drawback 2: the diamond blade gets stuck, and a pair of remotely operated hydraulic shears finish a rougher-than-intended job.

  “It is an engineer’s nightmare,” says a Louisiana State University professor. “They’re trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away using little robots. That’s just horrendously hard to do.” Tulane Energy Institute’s associate director says it’s like trying to place a tiny cap on an open fire hydrant.

  BP is doing all it can. “No one wants this over more than I do,” says BP CEO Tony Hayward. “I’d like my life back.”

  So would the families of the people who died on the rig. So would everyone in the Gulf region. Hello.

  Meanwhile, an oil spill in Alaska has caused a shutdown of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. And in a piece headlined “That Was Then, This Is Then,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show points out that in June 1979, an Alaska spill shut the pipeline at the same time oil gushed for months from a blown-out Mexican well in the Gulf of Mexico. “If you close your eyes and listen to the news reports from back then,” she says, “you’d be forgiven for thinking you were listening to today’s news.” Back then, the well was being drilled by the same company that later changed its name to Transocean. Its blowout preventer had failed. The responses included spreading chemical dispersants, putting out booms along shorelines, and burning floating oil. People worried about “underwater plumes” and the possibility that currents would carry oil to Florida. Being Mexican, they did not have a “top hat”; they tried a “sombrero.” When that failed, they tried forcing stuff down the top and pumping metal balls into the well to jam it up. And when that failed, a pair of relief wells finally stopped the blowout. Maddow’s summation: “The stuff that did not work then is the same stuff that does not work now: same busted blowout preventer, same ineffective booms, same toxic dispersant, same failed containment domes, same junk shot, same top kill; it’s all the same.” Point being: nothing’s changed in preparedness or response. What’s changed is the depth. Ixtoc was in about 160 feet of water; the present blowing well starts a mile down. “All they’ve gotten better at,” Maddow notes, “is making the risks worse.”

  Congress has certainly played a role—and been played—in encouraging risky drilling. One trend has been to undo the tapestry of prior protections. In 1995, Congress “decided” to reduce the government’s royalties on oil and gas extracted from deep water (you can bet the idea came from Big Oil in an envelope marked “Campaign Contribution”). The goal and result: more drilling encouraged. Okay, fine; bringing more of our oil under domestic production is good for national security. But other nations charge more. Oil taxes and royalties in the United States are considered much lower than elsewhere in the world. Our country should benefit financially, as the oil companies do. And what else isn’t fine is that this encouraged more and riskier drilling but not more safety. Industry assurances that deepwater drilling was “safe” rocked a willing Congress to sleep on the issue. The fact that accidents are rare and unpredictable has substituted for the obvious truth and certainty that accidents do happen.

  In 2001 the president’s National Energy Policy report (it was actually the vice president’s; the first page is Dick Cheney’s submittal letter to George W. Bush) ordered agencies to increase oil production and remove “excessive regulations.” The report has a lot of good ideas. For instance, it says, “A primary goal of the National Energy Policy is to add supply from diverse sources. This means domestic oil, gas, and coal. It also means hydropower and nuclear power. And it means making greater use of non-hydro renewable sources now available.” But in practice, federal agencies didn’t get past the first sentence on that list. Maybe they never really intended to; I don’t know.

  In 2005, despite high oil prices and even President George W. Bush saying oil companies needed no further drilling incentives, the Republican-dominated Congress again lowered the royalties oil companies are required to pay our national Treasury. That’s nonsensical, especially in an era of massive federal deficits, but part of the ideology appears to be a desire to starve the government so there is scant money for wasteful social programs like education, health, and environmental protection. And while, yes, there are excessive regulations, there is also excessive greed. Regulations don’t threaten business; they threaten greed, the greed that threatens both us and our nation’s economy. In 2006, Louisiana’s congressional delegation supported giving a share of oil royalties to states that allowed drilling. This means using national oil revenue directly to achieve state policies that benefit Big Oil. Nice giveback. Clever.

  And while calling for more incentives to drill, baby, Congress slash
ed those annoying safety regs. From 2002 to 2008, Congress approved budgets reducing regulatory staff by over 15 percent. So we got more complex, deeper drilling, higher-volume oil pools, no further safety. In 2000, the Interior Department had voiced concerns that industry’s extensive use of contractors and inexperienced offshore workers in deep water created new risks. And a 2004 Coast Guard study—repeatedly cited by Congress’s own Congressional Research Service—warned, “Oil spill response personnel did not appear to have even a basic knowledge of the equipment required to support salvage or spill clean-up operations.” Lawmakers slept peacefully. Environmental groups focused on maintaining the existing moratorium on new drilling, not operational safety or response. Consequently, regulatory proposals often drew fewer than ten “public” comments, but most came from the oil industry.

  With democracy working on half of its cylinders, the Interior Department politely filled the public-interest vacuum with a new tendency to better serve, rather than better monitor, the oil companies. The person in charge of offshore drilling for Interior boasted that he “oversaw a 50 percent rise in oil production.” But he was supposed to be a regulator, not a fixer. Ergo: deep blowout preparedness = zero.

  EARLY JUNE

  A dead dolphin rots in the shore weeds; an oil-stained gull stands atop its corpse. “When we found this dolphin, it was the saddest darn thing to look at,” says the cleanup worker who is taking a news team on a surreptitious tour. “There is a lot of cover-up for BP. They specifically informed us that they don’t want these pictures of the dead animals.” The shore is littered with oiled marine creatures, some dead, others struggling. “They keep trying to clean themselves,” the guide says. “They try and they try, but they can’t do it. Some of the things I’ve seen would make you sick.” He mentions that he recently found five turtles in oil. Three were dead. Two were dying. He says, “Nature is cruel, but what’s happening here is crueler. No living creature should endure that kind of suffering.”

  News crews are now being barred from and escorted away from public beaches and public roads. The cops acknowledge that they’re taking orders from BP. No one can figure out how or why this is being allowed, but as far as anyone can tell, it seems the Coast Guard is abetting BP.

  On the first day of June 2010, BP is trying to cover the leak with the new top hat. Akin to applying condoms after they’re pregnant. To defeat ice formation this time, technicians will inject heated water and methanol into the cap. To capture more oil, they begin closing the vents.

  The Coast Guard Thadmiral tells us the goal is to gradually capture more of the oil. For anybody who didn’t grasp that, he compares the process to stopping the flow of water from a garden hose with your finger: “You don’t want to put your finger down too quickly, or let it off too quickly.” A rather odd analogy. What does he mean?

  After robots place the cap, video shows plenty of escaping oil still billowing around the cap’s lip. “A positive step but not a solution,” says the Thadmiral. “Even if successful, this is only a temporary and partial fix and we must continue our aggressive response operations at the—”

  Okay, never mind. The plan is to capture most of the spewing oil and bring it up to a surface ship.

  The Thadmiral says the “ultimate solution”—relief wells—is not likely till August.

  Relief wells, alternate take: “The probability of them hitting it on the very first shot is virtually nil,” says the president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, David Rensink, who spent thirty-nine years in the oil industry, mostly in offshore exploration. “If they get it on the first three or four shots they’d be very lucky.”

  BP shares lose 15 percent of their value on news that its attempted stop-from-the-top hasn’t worked, indicating that the leak—and BP’s liabilities for economic and environmental damages—will likely continue mounting for months.

  The Justice Department announces criminal and civil investigations into the Gulf oil disaster. “All possible violations of the law,” including the Clean Water Act, Oil Pollution Act, Endangered Species Act.

  About 15,000 barrels of oil a day begin finding their way out the high end of the pipe and into the ship Discoverer Enterprise.

  BP’s Tony Hayward, sounding like he’s trying to convince even himself, says the cap will likely capture “the majority, probably the vast majority” of the gushing oil. Ever the cheerleader for the sheer magnificence of the enterprise, he himself gushes, “It has been difficult to predict because all of this is a first. Every piece of this implementation is the first time it’s been done in 5,000 feet of water, a mile beneath the sea surface.”

  Yes, Tony, that’s what people mean when they say “total lack of preparedness.”

  As for BP’s statement that the present cap might be capturing “the vast majority” of the spew, Purdue’s Professor Wereley—who’d initially busted BP and the Coast Guard with his estimate that the blowout was spewing at least 56,000 barrels daily—says, “I don’t see that as being a credible claim. I would say to BP, show the American public the before and after shots of the evidence on which they’re basing that claim.”

  Similarly, a University of California researcher says, “I do not know how BP can make that assertion when they don’t know how much oil is escaping.” He believes that cutting the kinked riser pipe in order to install the cap increased the flow by far more than the 20 percent BP and government officials had predicted. He speculates it may be spewing what BP had called the “worst case”: a 100,000-barrels-a-day blowout. He says the video feed now appears to show “a freely flowing pipe,” adding, “From what it looks like right now, it suggests to me they’re capturing a negligible fraction.”

  BP says “the vast majority,” the academic says “a negligible fraction.” Let’s see if the Thadmiral can mediate. Ready? Go: “They continue to optimize production,” Allen tells reporters. Then, digging himself an alternate escape route, he adds, “I have never said this is going well. We’re throwing everything at it that we’ve got.”

  BP intends to hook up a new, tighter cap, with more pipes that will attach to more vessels. Its Bigger Plans include four collection vessels passing oil to two tanker ships. The collection vessels can process a combined total of between 60,000 and 80,000 barrels per day.

  The discerning reader may note this subtlety: there’s a slight difference among that planned capacity, the 1,000 barrels per day BP had first announced, its grudging acknowledgment and later insistence that 5,000 barrels were leaking, and its refusal to engage on the question of “how much” after Purdue professor Steve Wereley estimated 56,000 to 84,000 barrels. Yet BP plans to collect essentially the very same amount the professor estimated. What does that tell you?

  Meanwhile, the Thadmiral says that within the next week all these activities “could take leakage almost down to zero.” Says he’s ordered a special task group to work up new estimates on how much oil is still gushing out. (It’s about time.) Says, “I’m not going to declare victory on anything until I have the numbers.” He adds for emphasis, “Show me the numbers.”

  Here’s the only number we need: zero. Show us zero.

  On June 9, BP shares hemorrhage an incredible 16 percent, to $29.20. BP shares have lost half their value, wiping off $90 billion in market capitalization, since the blowout began.

  On June 10 the official government-accepted rate of leakage gets doubled. The U.S. government’s flow rate assessment team announces, “The lowest estimate that we’re seeing that the scientists think is credible is probably about 20,000 barrels, and the highest is probably a little over 40,000.” Twenty-five thousand, near the low-end estimate, is over 1 million gallons a day. The Exxon Valdez tanker leaked an estimated 11 million gallons.

  “I think we’re still dealing with the flow estimate. We’re still trying to refine those numbers,” says—guess who—Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen. Almost certainly the rate is changing; it may be increasing, because once oil starts flowing out of a geologic
formation, the rock erodes with the flow and the channels enlarge.

  The Gulf isn’t the only thing hemorrhaging; BP stock closes down 6.7 percent, hitting its lowest level since 1997. The company’s market value has spilled billions. Its share price has collapsed more than 40 percent since the blowout began, leading some to raise the possibility of bankruptcy.

  It occurs to me that this would be a time to buy, if I hadn’t sworn off fossil fuel stocks. Bankruptcy is just wishful thinking. BP is the third-largest oil company in the world, after ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, with 80,000 employees, sales of $239 billion in 2009, and a market value—even after the recent losses—of more than $100 billion. BP is multinational, traded on both the New York and the London stock exchanges, with Brits and Americans on its board of directors, and extensive U.S. holdings. In 1998 it merged with the American oil company Amoco. About 40 percent of its shares are held by American investors. Its Texas City refinery is one of the world’s largest, and BP owns 50 percent of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

  Sarah Palin calls BP a “foreign company” because, well, she’s a little behind in her current events. The White House knows better, but it, too, is whipping up anti-foreign sentiment by consistently calling BP by its former name, British Petroleum. And so in Britain—where BP is, in fact, an evocation of the glory of the empire, a huge tax contributor, and thus beloved—Conservative peer Lord Tebbit calls the American response “a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance.” He may think America’s response is much too crude, but from our vantage, BP has provided America with too much crude.

  The fisheries closures continue expanding. Now totaling 88,522 square miles. About 37 percent of the Gulf’s federal waters. Federal waters begin three miles from shore, but most state waters are also closed. More than half the Gulf remains open to fishing, but buyers are canceling orders. “I’ve had guys saying, ‘If it’s from the Gulf, we don’t want it,’ ” says a New York City seafood distributor. The celebrity chef says, “People are really wondering if we’re getting safe fish.” In Chicago and elsewhere, restaurants display signs declaring, “Our Seafood Is Not from the Gulf of Mexico.” “They believe it’s toxic,” a New York chef says. “So let me be clear,” says the president of the United States. “Seafood from the Gulf today is safe to eat.” The New Orleans sales rep who ships fish nationwide says, “They’re not ordering anything. Not a one. They know we’re not selling tainted fish. But their customers? No way. They don’t want seafood from Louisiana at all.”