Oil

Oil Spill: Environmental Reviews for Deepwater Drilling

By Bryan Walsh | @bryanrwalsh | August 16, 2010 | +

The White House announced today that all new deepwater drilling will require environmental reviews. What’s that you say? You assume an activity as transparently fraught with danger and risk as deepwater oil and natural gas drilling, one where human or mechanical errors can lead to major environmental damage, that an activity like that would already require environmental reviews?

As BP’s Deepwater Horizon accident showed, however, that was never really the case. BP’s well—and many other deepwater sites in the Gulf of Mexico—received what’s known as a “categorical exclusion” from reviews called for under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). As a result, those drilling sites received far too little oversight for potential risks. A report released today by the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) found that the exclusions granted by the former Minerals Management Service (MMS) often relied on decades-old data. This was regulatory oversight in name alone, and according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, it’s going to stop:

In light of the increasing levels of complexity and risk – and the consequent potential environmental impacts – associated with deepwater drilling, we are taking a fresh look at the NEPA process and the types of environmental reviews that should be required for offshore activity. We are committed to full compliance with both the letter and the spirit of NEPA.  Our decision-making must be fully informed by an understanding of the potential environmental consequences of federal actions permitting offshore oil and gas development.

Of course, with the White House’s moratorium on new deepwater drilling still in place, this regulatory shift will have to wait. But the report is a sobering reminder of just how little oversight had been in place as the oil and gas industry pushed into deeper and deeper waters. As Salazar said, technology seemed to outpace safety—it will be the job of MMS’s successor, the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), which seems based around the idea that the longer the name, the better the oversight. (Though I prefer the name I’ve heard Greenpeace call it: BUMMER.)

Still, a question remains to be answered on deepwater drilling: how safe is safe? The oil industry and the Gulf states—including some of the towns hardest hit by the spill—are pushing hard on the White House to lift the deepwater drilling moratorium, which may run until the end of November. The economic damage—especially locally—is real, and even within the President’s own oil spill commission, there are voices pushing for an early end to the moratorium, as the AP reported yesterday:

William K. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator who co-chairs the president’s commission investigating the oil spill, said in an interview with The Associated Press that he doesn’t understand why rigs that have passed inspections can’t resume drilling even while the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management conducts a broader review of safety offshore.

Fair enough—but as the drawn out endgame of the Deepwater Horizon spill shows, actually fixing an underwater blown well remains incredibly difficult. So if the White House means it when they say they want the oil industry to prove they can handle a blowout before new drilling resumes, well, I don’t know how Salazar will be able to raise the moratorium by the end of November, let alone immediately. It’s the question we need to answer: how safe is safe?

Related Topics: BP, deepwater drilling, Interior, MMS, oil, oil spill, Salazar, white house, Oil

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  • jgsr

    Risk is about the future, and thus a variable.

    Before considering variables, the constants should be considered first.
    1) Energy is required for every sector of America to function
    2) There is no such thing as the production of any product without some type and amount of waste, danger, expense, potential for human, mechanical failure.
    3) The production of energy from any resource, by any method cannot be risk free, error free.

    Instead of focusing on just the considerable risk of all offshore drilling for oil/gas, whether shallow or deep water, shouldn’t it be prudent to compare risk vs. benefit with all present forms of energy production?

    Nuclear energy production certainly has considerable risk that shouldn’t require explanation.

    Burning coal is a known pollutant and the waste from that resource mining, transportation, conversion is enormous and is known.

    Of all types of carbon based energy production in the US, nothing has as little environmental risk as natural gas that can be used for both transportation and the production of electricity.

    Transportation in our economy, as it now exists, is engineered around the use of oil. We can move away from that in the future, but it can’t be and won’t be overnight.

    Solar energy and wind energy can be expanded and should, but complete conversion to an all electric transportation model would be many decades in the future. The more solar and wind generated electricity there is, the less burning of all carbon based products will be required.

    Thinking that new and increased regulation can remove all risks involved in the oil and gas drilling business is wrong. It can’t.

    Of course there must be regulation, but there existed regulations before the Horizon well blowout.
    Just as the SEC existed and were responsible for audit and supervision and oversight for the entire duration of Bernie Madoff’s massive investor theft.

    There already exists oversight and regulatory agencies to police both oil exploration and the stock markets.

    Both agencies simply need to do their jobs.

    BP was attempting to cut some corners and save a very few million in expense and look at the enormous price they have paid, will be paying, as well they should.

    No one should have a second’s doubt that every company that has ever, or will ever drill offshore hasn’t watched every mounting dollar of expense that BP has paid and will pay.

    While every person has differing amounts of social consciousness and moral considerations of others, money is a subject that everyone has understanding of.

    Without a single new restriction placed on offshore drilling, it is a complete certainty that every company that drills in the GOM will not just meet, but will most assuredly exceed all present restrictions, requirements and safety precautions based on the enormous price BP paid in taking shortcuts.

    Drilling in the GOM is such an enormously expensive process, there are only a handful of companies large enough to compete in that arena.

    As such, there is no reason that those companies that have enough capital to drill in the Gulf shouldn’t have a shared inventory of equipment specifically engineered to handle shallow and deep water drilling blowouts in the GOM, should they happen in the future, and have all of that equipment located in rapidly accessible locations in those States that border the GOM.

    Just as the practice of law is based on and grows with and expands based on prior legal precedent, so does many other occupations.

    BP has paid for billions of dollars of free tuition for all future drilling operations that drill offshore. Those companies have watched, and forever lessons have most assuredly been learned.

    It is a sad, but true fact that much of life’s most valuable lessons are learned from enormous loss.

    To stop drilling in the Gulf until all risks can be removed and totally prevented is a foolish expectation that will cause a larger number of people harm that are involved in the multi-tiered, multifaceted oil drilling, related services and resources suppliers than were hurt by the Horizon blowout, where no one knew what exactly to do in the shortest possible time.

    There are tens of thousands of people whose occupations are at risk due to the carelessness of a tiny number of decision makers in the Horizon disaster.

    Adding those damaged lives and occupations to those Gulf residents’ lives and occupations that were damaged by the escaped oil makes it a double tragedy.

    I wish this writer had taken the time to compare the amount of oil captured, and energy needs met, for the entire duration of all GOM drilling up until this present date, and he would have found a mistake % compared to benefits derived far lower than passenger injuries in the commercial airline business that regularly benefits millions.

    No business is risk free for all involved.

    It is just not possible.

    There is no risk free energy production of any type.

  • ohcalcutagirl

    Gee, a hundred days later and now they come up with this crap. Seems like the stalling tactic list is just getting started. Why should we use fossil fuel when we have 15 times the total energy resources as Saudi Arabia if we can make our energy cost 15 times as much by using phony green energy. Al Gore can get fatter, environuts will enjoy the destruction of our country. etc. etc.

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