A Sea in Flames

by Carl Safina

BP has indeed been the subject of national rage all summer. One of the greatest fears was that the oil would destroy a great swath of marsh. Yet the things that are really destroying the marsh are all intentional. They could be fixed.

  BP may end up saving more wetland than the oil ever harmed. The new national focus on the Gulf has helped bring attention to the delta’s disintegrating marshes. Some of the billions BP is expected to pay in fines could bankroll restoring critical wetlands and reengineering projects that Congress hasn’t bothered to fund. The Obama administration seems to grasp this. Navy secretary and former Mississippi governor Ray Mabus, having been tasked by the president to draft a long-term restoration plan for the Gulf, says he envisions spending some of the money from BP’s anticipated fines on repairing wetlands. In one sense, it’s a way for BP to give back for using all those wetland-killing canals and ship channels dug throughout the marshes to serve the oil rigs.

  On August 16, Louisiana shrimpers go back to work—their real work, not dragging useless booms. Seventy-eight percent of federal waters—up from 63 percent—are open. On August 18, wildlife rehabbers release the first turtles back into the Gulf. And on August 20, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission reopens recreational fishing in all state waters that had been closed.

  If that doesn’t help people’s mental health a little bit, BP announces that it’s going to give $52 million to five behavioral health-support and outreach programs. “We appreciate that there is a great deal of stress and anxiety across the region, and as part of our determination to make things right for the people of the region, we are providing this assistance now to help make sure individuals who need help know where to turn,” says a BP spokesman.

  BP’s $52 million for mental-health care doesn’t by itself solve the material basis of problems like sleeplessness, anxiety, depresssion, anger, substance abuse, and domestic violence. To put it plainly, money will be the only anxiety cure for people like Margaret Carruth, who lost her hairstyling business and then her house when tourists stopped coming and locals cut back on luxuries like haircuts. Now she sleeps on friends’ couches or on the front seat of her blue pickup. For people like her, the blowout continues to wreak its damage full-force.

  In fact, people’s mental health may get worse as the financial strains persist. A Louisiana husband and wife who both work in the seafood business and have seven children say they’ve received only $5,000 in claims payments since May. One single mother of four who worked as a sorter on a shrimp boat used to earn about $4,000 a month. Her BP payments: less than $1,700 monthly. “I worry about my kids seeing me this way,” she says, “and them getting sad or it affecting their schoolwork.”

  At a day-care center in Grand Bay, Alabama, preschoolers whose parents were left jobless by the blowout are lashing out, their caregiver reports, by “throwing desks, kicking chairs. It’s sad. With this,” she continues, “people do not have hope. They cannot see a better time.”

  Top kill. Bottom kill. Junk shot. Dome. Riser. Skimmer. Annular. Cap. Relief well. Negative test. Blind shear ram. Centralizer. Drilling mud. Spacer. Blowout preventer.

  None of those words refer to a woman sleeping in her truck or a child throwing a desk. And yet, of course they do.

  For the rest of us, here’s a new reason to seek mental help: the Thadmiral says he’s no longer giving timetables for the final plugging of the now-quiescent well. He says he’ll give the order to complete the relief well operation when he is ready. He doesn’t want to give timelines anymore because, he says, if he has to change them—it could cause a credibility problem.

  On August 27 NOAA reopens to commercial and recreational fishing over 4,000 square miles off of western Louisiana. Ten times more than that remains closed, about 20 percent of the federal waters in the Gulf. At the disaster’s height, 37 percent of Gulf federal waters—88,000 square miles—were closed.

  Meanwhile, with much fanfare, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper announces a new protected area for beluga whales at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, in the Beaufort Sea. The Beaufort Sea region is home to one of the world’s largest summer populations of belugas, which go there to feed, socialize, and raise their calves. In the remote town of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Harper proclaims, “Today we are ensuring these Arctic treasures are preserved for generations to come.” But the government has already granted licenses to two companies that have proven the existence of about $6.6 billion in oil and gas reserves next to the beluga protection area. And the government will allow the companies to “continue to exercise their rights.” Member of Parliament Nathan Cullen says with apparent disgust, “This is a protected area that protects nothing except oil and gas interests. It’s some insane notion that we can draw a line in the water and drill right beside it.”

  Taking a leaf—as the saying goes—from Obama’s book, Indonesia demands $2.4 billion in compensation from a Thai oil company for a blowout in the Timor Sea that lasted three months, spread a 35,000-square-mile slick, and was eventually plugged with a relief well. Indonesia says the oil damaged seaweed and pearl farms and hurt the livelihoods of 18,000 poor fishermen.

  Taking a leaf from Exxon’s book, the Thai-owned oil company rejects Indonesia’s demand.

  There’s been a lot about BP to quite rightly criticize. All the good money it’s now throwing around is certainly self-serving. We are right not to let the corporation simply buy our goodwill; in important ways, it doesn’t deserve it. But when, in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill, the Congress of the United States of Corporate America passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, it sent squeals of delight through the petroleum industry by capping an oil company’s liability at a measly $75 million. Despite its ability to do unlimited damage, Big Oil has, ever since, operated with that congressional promise of impunity.

  And so we must acknowledge that BP has voluntarily waived that protection. Compared to the way Exxon turned on the people of Prince William Sound, there’s no comparison. In the wake of this blowout—and I say this with no disrespect to the families of those who died on the Deepwater Horizon—BP has done some honorable things for the people of the Gulf and America. More honorable, one might observe, than the U.S. Supreme Court, when the Court basically let Exxon off the hook. How sad is that?

  EARLY SEPTEMBER

  Morgan City, Louisiana. “Yes!” the sign says. “We Are Having Our 75th Annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival.”

  “We still need both,” says Lee Darce, assistant director of the festival. “That’s what makes our community. That’s our lifeblood.” Mayor Tim Matte is aware that the festival can seem pretty weird to outsiders. “But we’ve always thought it’s unusual that they think it’s unusual.”

  Fire engulfs an oil production platform one hundred miles off the Louisiana coast. Though the fire started in living quarters and there is no loss of life, to a region whose nerves are so frayed the news comes like fingernails on a chalkboard. The same day, from Panaji, India: “Thick and dark layers of oil being deposited with each lapping wave along the sun-kissed beaches of Goa could be another ill omen for the Goa tourism industry.”

  On September 2: NOAA reopens fishing and shrimping in over 5,000 square miles of water stretching from Louisiana to Florida. NOAA throws open another 3,000 square miles of fishing area on September 3.

  Festivals notwithstanding, there is a big difference between what fishers need and what oil companies need. Oil companies need oil. If it was on land, they’d get it there. And they did. That’s why they’re going into deeper and deeper water. They don’t need marshes, clean water, or vibrant wildlife populations. If the whole ocean was suddenly empty of fish or the marshes vanished or the Gulf’s water all evaporated, they’d still be there for the oil.

  Fishermen really need the place, and they need it to be working and pretty intact.

  Of about 8,500 water samples so far taken by NOAA from Mississippi to Florida, only two—both from Florida’s Pensacola Pass—came back positive for oil. NOAA sc
ientist Gary Petrae reports, “We are not finding anything, and even when we’re suspicious of oil being present, we’re finding that we’re wrong. We’re doing the best we can—and we can’t find it.” NOAA scientist Janet Baran says, “We haven’t seen any oiled sediments.” Her crews have looked at more than 100 sediment samples from federal waters more than three miles offshore, including near the well. “All the sediments we have taken,” she adds, “have no visible oil on them.”

  That’s the good news.

  But while she says, “We haven’t seen any oiled sediments,” the University of Georgia’s Samantha Joye says, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Joye describes layers of oily sediment two inches thick. Below the oily layer, she says, she finds recently dead shrimp, worms, and other invertebrates. And University of South Florida researchers see what they believe are droplets of oil on the seafloor. “It wasn’t like a drape, like a blanket of oil, don’t get me wrong,” says David Hollander. “It looked like a constellation of stars that were at the scale of microdroplets.”

  What are we to make of such different findings? Different samples, different times, in different parts of the Gulf where heavy oil did or didn’t go. Pieces of a puzzle.

  Greenpeace says it’s still easy to find oil just a few inches down in the sand on beaches that had been obviously oiled a few weeks back. That’s believeable, and the videos look convincing.

  Less convincing is that Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal is still trying to get his one hundred miles of sand berms built. BP has agreed to pay a hefty $360 million for them. But the Environmental Protection Agency is urging the Army Corps of Engineers to turn down the state’s sand berm project, saying berms don’t do anything and can harm wildlife. Ostensibly they’re to stop oil from contaminating shores and marshlands. Using a May permit, the state spent tens of millions of dollars to build four miles of berms.

  Here’s a good line of BS: one of the governor’s aides says the berms they built received “some of the heaviest oiling on Louisiana’s coast.” So what are they, oil magnets? He reportedly says the Louisiana National Guard has picked up at least a thousand pounds of oily debris from the berms. You know how much oil and sand it takes to make a thousand-pound pile? Very, very little. Let’s put it this way: one cubic yard of sand weighs 2,700 pounds. He says, “Now is not the time to stop protective measures that have proven their effectiveness.” Actually, now might be a good time.

  I suspect that this desire for berms stems from a fear of hurricanes, not oil. Is my suspicion misplaced? Says Grand Isle’s mayor, “What is wrong with us dredging and building these islands back up?”

  On September 8, BP’s just-released internal investigation spreads the blame widely, declares the disaster—lawyers and jurors, please take note—a “shared responsibility,” blames “no single factor,” and adds, “Rather, a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation, and team interfaces came together to allow the initiation and escalation of the accident. Multiple companies, work teams, and circumstances were involved.”

  Oh, and also, even after all the stuff leading to the blowout went wrong, the blowout preventer should have activated automatically, sealing the well. BP says the device “failed to operate, probably because critical components were not working.”

  Self-serving as all that is, it’s also probably all correct. But there’s “shared responsibility” and then there’s “shared responsibility.” It certainly does seem that multiple workers from multiple companies made multiple errors. But whether BP shares or owns “responsibility” will largely come down to legal definitions of said term. I once got a ticket for an undersized fish that was caught on my boat but that I did not catch and did not measure and did not put in the cooler myself (it was a quarter-inch short and the mismeasurement was a friend’s honest mistake). But as captain, I was responsible. I got the ticket. Sometimes that’s the way it is; the crew messes up, but the captain pays.

  The sign at Pensacola Beach proclaims “World’s Whitest Beach.” And still, it pretty much is.

  People here say they dodged a bullet. Workers are keeping the main beaches almost clean. Fort Pickens National Park maintains a plentiful complement of pelicans, gulls, nesting terns, herons, plovers, dolphins. So lovely. A few well-weathered tar balls here and there are easily coped with. One heron has a smudge of oil on its throat. Other than that, it looks nice and seems certain to survive.

  And that worries me. On my first trip to the Gulf after the explosion, I feared the worst case would be that the blowout would ruin the Gulf’s marshes and beaches and fisheries and wildlife for years to come. Now a new worst-case scenario arises: What if it doesn’t? What if, having looked catastrophe in the pupils, we decide the worst blowout ever is simply not so bad? What if we think that wherever, whenever the next one comes, we can just deal with it? What if we do, in fact, hit the snooze button? And nothing changes. Then this was all for nothing; it was just an unredeemed sacrifice, an unmitigated disaster.

  The thing about having dodged a bullet is: if you just keep staring, you get shot.

  Engineers are preparing to start the delicate remote-control work of detaching the temporary cap that first stopped the gushing oil, so they can raise the failed blowout preventer the mile from seafloor to surface. There’s concern that in the process, the crane may accidentally drop the 50-foot, 300-ton device onto the wellhead. So my question: What’s the rush? Why not wait for the relief well to securely seal the well bottom? Why the hurry to do this now? Didn’t we learn that hurrying wasn’t the right thing to do with this well?

  Allen is holding his cards tight, but the relief well must be close, right?

  After four months and another recent delay for bad weather, the relief well drill bit is now churning nearly 18,000 feet beneath the rig. The task is a bit like hitting a dartboard three miles away. Except the dartboard is under a mile of water and two and a half miles of rock, and it’s not a straight shot.

  Drilling the final stretch is a slow, exacting process. The drillers dig about twenty-five feet at a time, then run electric current through the relief well. The current creates a magnetic field in the pipe of the blown-out well, allowing engineers to calculate distances and make fine adjustments.

  To guide the relief well to its target, BP has picked John Wright, who, after four decades of work drilling forty relief wells around the world, can say, “We’ve never missed yet. I’ve got high confidence.”

  Well, okay; that’s the kind of guy we want.

  THE NEW LIGHT OF AUTUMN

  On September 17, 2010, the long, long-awaited relief well—one of them, anyway—reaches and breaches the quiescent blown-out well.

  “Five agonizing months,” as the Associated Press puts it. The next step: drive the long-awaited cement stake deep into its black heart, plugging it up for good.

  BP’s website has this announcement:

  Release date: 17 September 2010 HOUSTON—Relief well drilling from the Development Driller III (DD3) re-started at 7:15 A.M. on Wednesday, and operations completed drilling the final 45 feet of hole. This drilling activity culminated with the intercept of the MC252 annulus and subsequent confirmation at 4:30 P.M. CDT Thursday. Total measured depth on the DD3 for the annulus intercept point was 17,977 feet. Operations conducted bottoms up circulation, which returned the contents of the well’s annulus to the rig for evaluation. Testing of the drilling mud recovered from the well indicated that no hydrocarbons or cement were present at the intersect point. Therefore, no annulus kill is necessary, and the annulus cementing will proceed as planned. It is expected that the MC252 well will be completely sealed on Saturday. Once cementing operations are complete, the DD3 will begin standard plugging and abandonment procedures for the relief well.

  Saturday, September 18. While the final cementing is under way out in the Gulf, Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen, the man the Washington Post called “perhaps the least-excitable person in
American public life,” walks into a Washington, DC, coffee shop looking so casual and relaxed that—though I’ve seen him on television enough times and I’m expecting him—at first I don’t recognize him. He’s just been mandatorily retired from the Coast Guard at age sixty, so he’s out of uniform—wearing a casual short-sleeved shirt—and so he’s free to accept my offer to buy him a cup of coffee and his almond croissant. Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator, is here too. But when I make the same offer she pats my shoulder and says, “That’s nice of you, Carl, but I’ll pay for my own, thanks.”

  Lubchenco leads us out the back of the shop, into a nice garden area with tables under the shade of a grape arbor. It’s a perfect September morning. “We got lucky with the weather,” she says. “Grape arbors wouldn’t work so well in rain.”

  “First off,” I say, “how much time do we have?”

  “About an hour,” Lubchenco answers. “I’m leaving this afternoon for meetings in Europe.”

  “An hour’s good,” Allen says.

  Because the long-heralded final cement is getting pumped down the relief well as we take our seats, I’m sure Allen’s got plenty of other things on his mind today. So I appreciate that on such a momentous morning, he’s decided to peel off some valuable time for breakfast.

  Recently, I happened to catch a long interview with Allen on Charlie Rose. Allen, who’s beefy, with a military-style crew cut, took time to describe how much his participation in releasing several rehabilitated sea turtles had meant to him. I resonated. He seemed centered and insightful, and kind. And I started feeling an uncomfortable twinge—more than a twinge—that my summer-long simmering mental caricature of him was off base. Yes, I didn’t like some things he’d said and done. But he’d worked to lead the region through two major disasters, Katrina and this. I could not think of anyone else who’d quite done that. And I was surprised to find myself thinking that if a hero is someone who steers events during a national crisis, Allen’s as much a national hero as anyone I could think of. Well, that was certainly a startling thought. I’ve been critical all summer. But for everything there is a season. A time to cast stones, and a time to gather stones together.