Deep Water Horizon Oil spill, clean-up workers getting sick

BERNARD LAGAN, May 31, 2010

In the US, which assumes no engineering challenge is beyond conquer – nor does it lack the private capital to achieve it – the brackish rouge beneath the waves that is slowly strangling the Louisiana shore not only stains the sea and the sands, that creeping black is also gutting confidence, upturning myths and ruining reputations.

When Americans learned at the weekend that British Petroleum (BP) – which drilled the hole in the seabed nearly two kilometres under the sea – had attempted to seal it 16 times since Thursday by forcing shredded rope, plastics, old tyres and even golf balls into the failed, four-story high blow-out preventer, the crudity of the assault seemed strangely out of step with our times.

First came robot submarines. Then engineers lowered a steel dome to try and cap the flow. Next they tried a pipe system to siphon off the escaped oil. And then they fired junk into the sea in an operation called ”top kill”, which BP conceded at the weekend has also failed.

Who else suspects that the technologies to deal with the risks of deep-sea oil drilling have been far out-paced by Big Oil’s fury to extract oil wherever it can find it?

No starker was the despair that a solution is nowhere near, than when US Coast Guard chieftain Admiral Thad Allen appeared at the White House a few days ago. As President Barack Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, stood suitably grim behind, Admiral Allen was asked what he thought of the threat by Obama’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, to push the increasingly desperate BP out of the way.

The Admiral had no answer.

Just another question. “With what? ” he asked, holding out his palms in silence, willing his questioner from the White House press corps to suggest who – or what – else might be able to deal with what has become the largest oil pollution disaster in the US and probably the world.

The planet, it seems, is stuck with BP.

Now even BP is admitting that the leak is an environmental catastrophe two weeks after the company’s British-based chief executive, Tony Hayward, said it was minor in comparison to the size of the US Gulf Coast.

“No two ways about it,” Mr Hayward added after the admission of a catastrophe.

In fact BP has had many ways about it.

First came its airy dismissals that the size of the leak was little to be concerned about. Early last week BP was still refusing to pass onto outside scientists data it had collected about the size of the oil flows. A company spokesman said BP could not afford to be diverted from its efforts to shut off the gusher.

We now know as of this weekend – after the US Geological Survey stepped in – that instead of the 5000 barrels (800,000 litres) a day that BP claimed was its estimate of the daily flows, the actual flows into the Gulf are thought by the US Government to be 19,000 barrels a day (3 million litres). It dwarfs the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster when the ruptured tanker lost 11 million gallons (41.5 million litres) of oil into Prince William Sound, blackening 1500 miles of Alaska’s coastline.

Then there were BP’s public assurances throughout Friday that operation ”top kill” was going to plan – when they knew it absolutely wasn’t.

It had been shut down for 16 hours over Thursday and Friday because the mud that engineers were pumping into the wellhead to stem the oil flow was instead leaching away because of the huge pressure of the escaping oil.

The company’s most recent flight from reality came shortly before Saturday’s admission that ”top kill” had failed. A BP spokesman in Houston, John Pack, said: “We have never said there is a deadline or a schedule. We need to take this pretty slowly, but everything is going according to plan.”

Big Oil’s reputation – and BP’s in particular – is suffocating just as surely beneath this slick as the fish and the marshes of the Gulf.

Yet, the black coat – which is now estimated to cover about 29,000 square miles of sea, roughly half the size of Bangladesh – may carry the seeds of the impetus that Americans need to wean themselves off their chronic energy dependence.

And if Big Oil believes itself unfairly under siege from opponents of off-shore drilling – particularly those against drilling in vast environmentally sensitive areas of Alaska and the Arctic – then it must surely be preparing for an uprising upon the back of the tragedy in the Gulf.

40 years ago, in January 1969

For it was another undersea oil well that 40 years ago spawned the modern day, highly effective environmental movement on the US West Coast and the core of US government environment protection policy.

Compared with the volume of oil spewing everyday into the Gulf, what happened five miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, in January 1969, was minuscule. But its aftermath was vast.

An explosion of natural gas at Platform Alpha, operated by the Union Oil company, caused a blowout – releasing an undersea oil gusher. It would be 11 days before the blowout was brought under control. Some 3 million gallons of oil escaped, much of into the pristine and ecologically diverse Santa Barbara channel waters, coating the nearby shoreline.

The damage was enormous. About 4000 dead sea birds and large numbers of seals and dolphins fatally poisoned. The oil also killed innumerable fish and ruined kelp beds.

But then something unexpected happened; tens of thousands of people arrived to help with the cleanup. They laid out mountains of straw to soak up the oil, carted away tonnes of contaminated sand and gathered up the dead and injured wildlife. They were of all ages and affiliations, causing then president Richard Nixon to remark: “The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”

The Santa Barbara spill fully awakened the West Coast environmental movement and led directly to the declaration of the first Earth Day in November, 1969, the founding of the US Environmental Defense Center and the first university Environmental Studies Program. Offshore drilling was banned for the next 16 years – until the Reagan administration came to office.

The Environmental Protection Agency was established and a high flying CIA-operated U2 spy plane was sent over the oil zone in what was its first photo-reconnaissance mission (other than mapping denied territory) for peaceful purposes.

And, like BP today, the oil company culprit quickly shamed itself in the accident’s immediate aftermath. Union Oil’s president, Fred Hartley, said: “I don’t like to call it a disaster because there has been no loss of human life. I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.”

It would be nice to think that from the wreckage of the Deep Water Horizon rig off the Gulf Coast there will eventually arise a new awareness and protections for the planet, like those that the Alpha rig spill spawned 40 years ago.

Bernard Lagan, a contributor to the National Times, lives in New York.

---

Clean-up efforts already resulting in human illness

Stories of illness are already emerging from oil spill workers. Seven workers were hospitalized Wednesday, May 26th, 2010, complaining of nausea, dizziness, and headaches. Some of the first responders who have been tasked to help clean up the oil are reporting symptoms of disorientation, shortness of breath, coughing, a feeling of being drugged, and fatigue. For example, one reported feeling as though he was going to die and has been “coughing up stuff because your lungs fill up.” Id. Marine toxicologist Riki Ott has said the chemicals used by BP can “wreck havoc” on a person’s body and even lead to death. Id. Senior policy analyst of the EPA, Hugh Kaufman likens the situation to previous toxic waste disasters, such as the World Trade Center and the Exxon Valdez clean-up: “There’s no way you can be working in that toxic soup with getting exposures.” Id. Riki Ott also finds the situation reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez disaster, where the clean-up response resulted in thousands of sick workers. OSHA requires BP to provide fitted respirators, but these regulations go unenforced and workers in the Gulf are cleaning up the oil without even the protection of basic gloves. The vice-president of the Louisiana Shrimper’s Association is demanding respirators for all fishermen, stating the dispersant is poisoning the clean-up workers.

Riki Ott is calling the current situation a disaster; fishermen are falling ill but not asking for necessary protection in fear of jeopardizing their jobs. Gary Burris, a fisherman who is part of the clean-up force, stated many fishermen are working sick, afraid to speak out because it could cost them their job with BP, the only income they have now because of the oil spill.

Other BP spills and disasters

BP has a history of incidents, having over 8,000 other spills (of oil, dangerous chemicals, gases, etc.) since 1990, both minor and major. Between 2,205 and 2,629 incidents occurred in Texas and Louisiana each and there are over two dozen other states that all have suffered a number of oil or chemical spills. There were 550 previous incidents in the Mississippi Canyon near the area where the current Deepwater Horizon disaster is unfolding.

Two major incidents in the recent past are the Texas City Refinery explosion and the Prudhoe Bay spill. In 2005, in a refinery located in Texas City, Texas, a unit that manufactures jet fuel exploded, leading to 15 deaths and 170 injuries. Investigation showed that the accident was due in part by placing temporary trailers near very volatile units, which the BP management did to cut maintenance and capital spending costs. Other factors that contributed to the accident were corroded pipes about to burst, antiquated equipment, and broken safety alarms; the poor status of the facility was both easily fixable and known by the management.

In 2006, a BP pipeline in Alaska burst and 267,000 gallons of crude oil was spilled into the North Slope of Alaska’s tundra. Again the cause of the accident was easily preventable: BP virtually abandoned the process of cleaning and inspecting pipes for corrosion to save on costs.

BP was also accused of manipulating gas and propane prices earlier this decade. Regulators alleged that BP artificially increased prices of crude oil and gasoline by buying up stocks and controlling the market; they drove up the prices by 50% by keeping supplies off the market. BP eventuallly settled in 2007 and agreed to pay $303 million dollars to end the charges against them.

Major Litigation

May 2008: Oil Firms to Pay $423 million to settle water lawsuit.
BP, along with other oil companies, is going to pay to settle lawsuit brought by hundreds of public water suppliers.

2006: Alaska Prudhoe Bay Oil Spill cases The U.S. Department of Justice sued BP on behalf of the EPA on March 31, 2009, seeking millions of dollars in fines for alleged water and air pollution violations and failure to meet deadlines in a corrective action order from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. BP also currently faces a civil suit brought on by the state of Alaska. Id. The criminal charges against BP for the Prudhoe oil spill was settled by a plea deal in late 2007; BP was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay $20 million in penalties. Id.

2005: Texas Refinery Explosion Lawsuits The explosion at the Texas Refinery plant in Texas City led to hundreds of lawsuits and over a thousand settlements. BP set aside at least $2 billion in compensation payouts, repairs, and lost profits. Id. One of the must public cases was the lawsuit brought by the daughter of two plant workers who both died in the Texas Refinery explosion; Eva Rowe’s suit was settled for an undisclosed amount and $32 million dollars in donations for health care, training, and safety regulation.

1993-1995: Hazardous Substance Crime BP Exploration (Alaska), one of BP’s U.S. subsidiaries, pleaded guilty to dumping hazardous waste on Alaska’s North Slope on September 23, 1999. BP agreed to pay $22 million dollars to resolve the criminal case as well as related civil claims. Id.

BP’s Greenwashing and Recent Rebranding

Edmund John Philip Browne became group chief executive in 1995. The following year, to the surprise of many environmentalists and oil industry analysts, BP resigned from the Global Climate Coalition, which ridiculed the science pointing to human induced climate change and sought to undermine the Kyoto treaty negotiations. BP hired Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide to handle a massive $200 million public relations and advertising campaign. This campaign introduced a new logo and slogan as well as a new attitude. The re-branding – undertaken in the wake of major controversies in Europe over Shell’s role in Nigeria and its ill-fated attempt to dump the disused Brent Spar oil platform in the ocean – was aimed at differentiating BP from its rivals. BP also sought to cultivate ‘moderate’ environmental groups in a series of ‘partnerships’ with groups like the National Wildlife Federation. (See the BP and the National Wildlife Federation case study). Despite their corporate rebranding, BP failed to change many of their underlying activities. An clear example of this was when a Californian air quality regulatory agency sued BP for $319 million over what it alleged were thousands of violations of emissions standards at its Carson oil refinery in the port of Los Angeles in March 2003. For more, see BP’s Greenwashing and Recent Rebranding.

BP’s Campaign to Exploit Protected Areas

Despite BP’s new campaign projecting their new environmentally conscious attitude, they backed the Bush administration’s move to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. BP, also continues to explore for oil in environmentally sensitive areas such as the Atlantic Frontier, the foothills of the Andes and Alaska. For more, see BP’s Campaign to Exploit Protected Areas.