Ambitious, ill-prepared petroleum industry eyes the Gulf, the Arctic, the heartland
One year ago, the BP oil spill had just started turning the Gulf of Mexico's blue waters to the color of rust. Triggered on April 20, 2010 by a well-rig explosion that killed 11 people, the spill would gush more than 200 million gallons of crude oil—the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
Before the well was finally capped three months later, untold numbers of birds, dolphins, sea turtles and other wildlife had perished in the muck, or possibly from the chemicals used to disperse it. Along the Gulf coast, communities suffered as tourism dropped and fishing seasons closed. Anxiety soared amid debates over the spill's price tag—including who would pay for it. While it is undeniable that the spill has caused and will continue to cause massive damage to Gulf ecosystems and communities, we won't understand the full impact for years.
One thing, however, is clear: the BP spill brought more to the surface than just crude oil. It exposed a culture of corruption in the federal agency tasked with issuing and overseeing permits to drill for oil in our nation's coastal waters. The Minerals Management Service systematically disregarded bedrock environmental protections by granting the oil industry exemptions to these laws and allowing BP and other companies to drill without concrete plans to clean up oil in the event of a large spill. This helps explain why it took BP a full three months—and numerous failed attempts—to cap the well. It simply wasn't prepared.
Although the MMS was dismantled shortly after these revelations of corruption, there still remains the threat of drilling without a plan in challenging environments. Next Tuesday, Earthjustice will be in court challenging the government's approval of deepwater exploration plans in the Gulf of Mexico—granted with inadequate environmental review.
Further north, Shell Oil continues to knock at the Arctic Ocean's door, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement—the successor agency to the MMS that is proving far too similar to its lax forebear—seems more than willing to let it in. Earthjustice is challenging BOEMRE's hasty approval of Shell's plans to drill for oil in the Arctic, which the company hopes to do in the summer of 2012, despite any realistic plan to contain a spill in those formidable waters. The scale of damage in the Gulf, even with major resources and temperate weather, demonstrates that spill cleanup in the icy Arctic—where access to resources and good weather are in short supply—is a practical impossibility.
Back in the Gulf, tar balls still wash up on the beach and stretches of prime coastal wildlife habitat remain under a blanket of thick, sticky crude. Nonetheless, much of the spilled oil has disappeared—scattered to the ocean's depths by tons of untested chemical dispersants.
We know very little about the safety of the chemicals used to facilitate such great vanishing acts. In May 2010, Earthjustice filed a Freedom of Information Act request to discover the secret ingredients of approved chemical dispersants, including two that were being used in the Gulf. We are now pursuing information on dispersant toxicity, as well as better oversight of how these potentially dangerous chemicals are tested, approved and used.
But secrecy and poor oversight of energy extraction aren't unique to offshore oil drilling. We find these very same elements in the industrial gas drilling boom now sweeping across the country, which is driven by a controversial technique called hydraulic fracturing—popularly known as fracking. In the technique, drillers shoot a mixture of water and secret chemicals deep underground to force natural gas from microscopic cracks in shale rock thousands of feet below the earth's surface. The problem is that these chemicals, along with radioactive material and other toxics unearthed during fracking, too often find their way into drinking water supplies, which threatens our health.
Across the country, some 650 different chemicals are used in various combinations to get gas out of the shale rock, but similar to the secrecy surrounding chemical dispersants, companies refuse to fully disclose the identities of the toxic chemicals they are using. And thanks to a loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act, they aren't currently required to. The secrecy is extreme: industry even refused to disclose names to an E.R. doctor who was trying to save a nurse's life—a nurse who faced multiple organ failure after she was exposed to fracking fluid while trying to help a contaminated gas field worker.
The pace of new fracking has overwhelmed some states' capacity to adequately review permits. Environmental regulators in Pennsylvania, for example, have admitted they spend as little as 35 minutes reviewing permits to frack, about as much time as it takes to get a haircut. Permits are granted with practically no scrutiny and few, if any, are rejected. As more and more fracking rigs roll into Pennsylvania and other states in the gas boom's path, more gallons of fracking fluid will be pumped into the ground, more wastewater will be generated, and drinking water supplies will face increasing risks of contamination. Fracking is a disaster waiting to happen, and it's time we all paid more attention to its inherent risks.
Hydraulic fracturing, deepwater oil production in the Gulf and drilling in the Arctic Ocean are all symptoms of the same problem: the era of easily recoverable fossil fuels is over. Oil and gas companies increasingly must turn to extreme environments and techniques—at great cost and risk—to extract coal, oil and gas.
We won't stop these practices overnight, which is why we have to demand that they are done with the utmost attention to safety and environmental protection—the BP spill reminds us of the result if proper care isn't taken. But we can affirm that these extremes of fossil fuel production aren't the frontier we should be exploring. The future is in clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, and we must expand in this direction without any further delay.
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My only problem with this is that our/your president has cut off oil drilling, putting children at risk of starving and homelessness all in the name of the environment but yet he is using our money to pay other countries to drill for us. Seems to be a double standard there. Why is it ok to drill in other parts of the world? Do other countries' drilling not mess up the environment?
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I have known all along that the government,the media and BP et al were covering up the truth about the extent of the damage done to the Gulf ecosystem. Marine scientists who dove in the toxic plumes knew from the beginning what a catastrophe the spill was but their voices were drowned out so BP could continue to pour their toxic Correxit into the water and hide the oil. Our oceans are dying...victims of blind greed and stupidity, and if they die, we die.
I hope the people on the gulf coast who make their living on the water will continue to scream so loud they are heard all the way to Washington and all over the world.
I listen to National Public Radio news, for the most part, and in recent news on this first anniversary of the spill, the amount of the spill is always reported as 5 million gallons.
That number sounds bogus, a little drumbeat compared to the boom boom of (what I gather is) the real number, the 200 million gallons that EJ reports.
I'm reminded of the line about being a little pregnant.
Can EJ get that real number out to NPR and all the other mainstream media in the next 15 minutes or so, while the story still has legs, oily as they might be?
Hi, Chuck, I wonder if NPR et al were referring to barrels of oil. A barrel contains 42 gallons. Hence, 5 million would equal 210 million gallons.
Hear hear to Peter Ford. Their ears are in their pocketbooks. Give them less money and they have less power! Walk to work or start a car pool. Buy used products that are still good (clothing, furniture, some electronics). Try not to buy from conglomerates; many local products keep the money in your community!
I agree also with the chemicals used to sink the mess to the bottom,,TERRIBLE and Criminal, but i,ll bet they were approved of by VERY high ranking people, to curb the millions of tv viewers from seeing just how much of a mess was created by just one accident, disgust, does not begin to express my feelings, peter
AMEN BRO!
Mother Ocean has been under attack for so many decades--with garbage dumping, sewer dumping, chemical dumping in rivers & streams & most recently, Nuclear disaster in Japan & all the debris that is reaching our beloved Pacific shores as I write this.
Clearly, our Oceans cannot take the human and disaster assalts. Drilling for oil in the ocean is NOT the solution to our addiction to oil. Instead, it will be the demise of the human race.
Dear Folks at EJ, I am glad there are people that keep eyes on the doers of harm to the environment. We pretty much know it,s a thin line they walk between harming and taking care not to. We do need the resources of course, but not just to make some people into billionaires and at the expense of natures wonders. They definitely need to be overseen and strictly, specially when it comes to paying for their mistakes. The only way to curb their greed and carelessness is through their pocketbook. Make them pay through the nose when they destroy, and they will strive to be more careful. Whether on land or sea, oil drilling is somewhat harmful at least, but when not careful, things happen terribly as we saw in the gulf. We probably can guess that other happenings similar to this has happened before and never found out about, that's why the accident in the gulf should of made us more watchful,but we have so many things going on and between trying to make ends meet and the other catasrophies around us and around the world, it,s not easy less are a reporter or have time to research everything, and no average citizen has the time to do that, and that's what they bank on. Keep up the good work, peter
I live in northern New England and and facebook friends with about 70 people living in the Gulf of Mexico. I friended most of them last summer/fall. Every person I friended has gotten sick with respiratory/skin infections, nerve damage, internal bleeding (from the Corexit dispersant) and/or internal infections.
Dr. Riki Ott (rikiott.com) says she believes 9 million people in the Gulf have been/are being exposed to high enough levels of chemicals from oil and dispersant in the air and rain water to have serious health consequences. She was saying this is true for 4-5 million people, but now she's saying 9 million. Some people have died from these symptoms. It is common knowledge among the fishermen, crabbers, oysterers, and shrimpers that Corexit is still being sprayed by plane and boat on a daily basis. Why is that?
Plenty of dead tube worms, crabs, horseshoe crabs, man 'o wars and other jellyfish, and fish are washing up on the shores of the Gulf- and have been all along this past year. this is ongoing. There is water off beaches that is brown and it used to be aqua blue. The tourists have no idea about this and merrily swim in that water. I know Gulf residents who go daily to the beach near where they live, take video and/or pictures and post them on facebook. It is HORRIBLE. And according to Gulf residents who are counting, way over 100 dead dolphins, adults and babies, have washed up since the beginning of the year across MS, LA, FL, and AL. The usual number of dead dolphins by this time in a new year is two or three. Here is the photography of one such resident: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=denise+rednour&aq=0
Thank you for sharing this important information which has been surpressed by the main stream corporate media and the lackeys of the oil companies in government
Poisoning the Gulf:
Kudos to Earthjustice for filing a Freedom of Information Act request to discover the toxicity of dispersants. We know that Corexit is toxic and dangerous to humans and animal life. The real question is why was a lethal chemical poured into the Gulf of Mexico when a safer, greener alternative was available.
With all due respect, Earthjustice could use its incredible power to drive for legislation demanding that only 'green' environmentally-safe chemicals be used in the future. Such chemicals are available and will definitely be needed; the April 2010 spill will not be the last.
Thank you.
For the Ocean,
Mary M Hamilton, Executive Director, SandyHook SeaLife Foundation
Those of us who are committed to the environment, to saving what is pristine and beautiful, for the animals, the ecology, and ourselves, are getting disgusted by the ongoing disavowal of these letters, the denial of the need to put energy and effort into stopping what is ongoing.
How many letters make a difference? Do any of these pleas reach people whose minds are open and not closed to a crucial matter that does and will affect us all?
It seems like the neverending problem as day after day, we are truly assaulted with an affront to the dignity of wilderness, to what makes getting up each morning a moment of appreciating the sacred, the sanctity of these sanctuaries, and love itself so palpable in the soaring of birds and the blossoming of trees.
So I am saying, how do we change hearts and minds that have somehow turned what is for us all, into a very selfish endeavor, namely the despoiliation of what is, beautiful and true?
I know that our very language, our "lingua franca" is dependent on Nature, and that when I ask how can people hibernate like this, I am referring also to the bears, and in "baring our souls on line", in reiterating the beauty of Thoreau, "In wilderness is the preservation of the world" surely there is someone out there, who is not "that" out there, who will listen to these pleas, to please, please stop. How can people be so cruel? How can you look at a struggling sea bird, coated with oil, the water polluted with the slick of black oil, and not think, what we are doing is so wrong, so beyond Wrong?
The problem has to do with preaching to the choir. I do not know how to change hearts and minds that are closed shut, like the traps that keep our wilderness from being born again.
We NEED them. We truly do, and IF this continues, the hard way is mournful, beyond sad, and will destroy us all.
I am so upset by this Administration's rush to reinstate deep water drilling when basically it is no safer than it was the day before the horrific BP Gulf oil disaster. After a too brief moratorium permits are being handed out every few days. Just as President Obama and his people hare rushing ahead with their nuclear agenda, even during an ongoing nuclear disaster, he seems intent on freely continuing an unenlightened energy policy that is poisoning our planet and making all life unhealthy. The unconditional embrace of dirty fossil fuels and nuclear energy is not very smart but it does make these industries happy and good election money sources for both republicans and democrats.
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