As the BP deepwater drilling disaster stretches into its second month, the wildlife impacts are mounting. The official totals (likely significantly lower than reality) are bad, with over 1,000 dead seabirds, over 400 dead sea turtles, and over 50 dead marine mammals so far. The first dead sperm whale has been found, and Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathem has documented many more marine mammals in jeopardy in his latest video.
As bad as this is, it's even worse to think that not all the wildlife impacts are from the oil, and more and more reports are coming in demonstrating BP's contractors doing more harm than good.
First, BP denied any oil leak from the well at all. We were told the oil slick came from the Deepwater Horizon fuel tanks. Then the leak was called “minimal.” Over the next two months BP acknowledged 1000 barrels per day, and finally over 25,000 barrels per day, even though BP knew they were low-balling the number.
The Obama administration deepwater drilling moratorium has shut down 27 deepwater drilling rigs until the cause of the BP drilling disaster can be determined and new safety regulations put in place.
The oil industry now claims that “rigs will move out of the Gulf of Mexico and never return” and “50,000 jobs will be lost.” The fact is, some rigs may move, but the vast majority will stay right here. Only
In the entire Gulf of Mexico there 3858 oil platforms that produce or move oil and gas to land-based facilities. There are 244 offshore drilling rigs. Currently only 38 are drilling, 40 are involved in workover operations (existing oil well maintenance) and 59 are “ready stacked” (available to go to work within a few weeks). Sixty-nine rigs are what is called “cold stacked”, they are in effect, “mothballed”, not ready to go to work without weeks or even months of preparation. They have no crew to drill a well and no provisions on board. It is an expensive undertaking to prepare the rig for a job.
The administration moratorium only affects deepwater wells. Only 13% or 1 in 7 rigs are affected. There are only 36 deepwater drilling rigs; 2 are drilling relief wells to kill the BP blowout. Four are doing workover operations. Seven are undergoing maintenance or inspection. This leaves 22 rigs actually affected by the moratorium that are waiting on the new federal regulations.
So we have 50,000 jobs at stake based on 34 drilling rigs. That is difficult to believe.
Of course 50,000 is based the worst-case scenario (and truly impossible supposition) that almost all of the rigs will leave the Gulf. Which brings up another point. If BP and the industry believed a blowout of this proportion was “unthinkable” (pre-BP drilling disaster), why is it they use exaggerated worst-case estimates for Gulf Coast job losses? Hmmmm?
In the “feast and famine” oil industry, it may be just another example oilfield “bluff and bluster?” It usually works on congress....
BP has proved that the offshore drilling industry needs firm regulation that gives safety for the workers and our environment the highest priority.
According to public records, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) has backed off initial threats to assess penalties for BP’s violations of state law “until ongoing investigations of the oil spill are completed.” This decision was reached at a June 8th meeting attended by eight BP representatives and 8 representatives from LDEQ.
This meeting was held to discuss a May 31 Compliance Order and Notice of Potential Penalty issued to BP by LDEQ. This Compliance and Penalty document:
Cited 6 violations of state law related to the BP oil drilling disaster including the “unauthorized discharge of oil and other pollutants;”
Ordered BP to take all necessary measures to stop the violations, and submit a report to LDEQ within a month with detailed descriptions of the circumstances surrounding the violations of state law, and their plan to stop them;
Notified BP of potential civil penalties for its violations of state law.
The penalties would have included the cost associated with the state’s response to BP oil drilling disaster related violations, plus up to $32,500 a day for each of the six penalties. Unfortunately, the meeting between LDEQ and BP resulted in the state backing down on several key elements of the Compliance and Penalty document.
LDEQ did not identify “any additional measures for immediate action” that BP should undertake to curtail its violations, essentially suggesting that BP is currently taking all necessary actions.
LDEQ agreed to allow BP an extra two weeks to submit the report detailing the circumstances of the BP’s violations and their plans to curtail them.
Both parties agreed that “in view of ongoing investigations of this matter…it would be premature for BP to submit comments on the circumstances of the alleged violations and on any proposed penalties at this time.” In a separate letter, LDEQ stated that it “has not commenced and will not commence an action for the assessment of civil penalties until ongoing investigations of the oil spill are completed.”
It is more than a little disappointing to see LDEQ, the state agency that is primarily tasked with protecting Louisiana’s environment, playing nice with BP as oil continues to lap at our shores. It’s true that investigations of BP’s oil drilling disaster are ongoing, but we already know enough to make it clear that BP is one of the responsible parties and needs to be held accountable for their actions. In these rough fiscal times for the state of Louisiana, these fines could have provided a vital source of revenue for the state as it deals with the impacts of the BP oil drilling disaster on our communities, environment, and human health. Still, this Compliance and Penalty document does leave the door open for future penalties. It’s vital that LDEQ moves aggressively now to assess the damages and costs from BP’s drilling disaster to make sure that BP ultimately pays us what it owes.
Yesterday, I went on another mission into Louisiana’s Barataria Bay to document and monitor the impacts, clean-up, and containment efforts in and around Barataria Bay. Having flown above the Louisiana coast on numerous occasions and witnessed massive amounts of oil flowing into Barataria Bay, what I saw came as no surprise to me. And while it came as no surprise, it was nonetheless just as gut-wrenching as it was day one out in the field documenting this catastrophe first-hand. It will never get any easier watching our precious Gulf ecosystem dying a slow, painful death. It will never get any easier photographing birds soaked in oil or porpoises swimming in an oily sheen. It will never get any easier looking at oiled soaked absorbent boom crumpled up in oiled covered marsh grass, knowing that the grass is dying and that it is only a matter of time before the delicate land of which the grass holds together also faces an oily demise into the sea. It will never get any easier looking into the eyes of hardened men and women who have lived off of this land for generations and seeing the pain in their faces as their entire way of life also dies an oily death. It will never get any easier but, we will keep on doing it. GRN will continue to take to the sky and water to document this epic disaster and the even greater epic failure to respond to this BP drilling disaster accordingly.
Â
Long after the media has left and moved on to another explosion, we will still be here telling the story about our coast and communities. We will continue to defend our wetlands and defend ourselves. We will continue to defend the coast. We will continue fighting for the health of the rivers and streams that feed into the Gulf, like the Pascagoula in Mississippi and the Apalachicola in Florida. We will continue to fight for healthy bays and estuaries in Texas and Alabama. Our mission at the GRN is, in part, to protect and restore the natural resources of the Gulf of Mexico. And, as yesterday clearly demonstrates, the natural resources of the Gulf will need plenty of protection and restoration for a long, long time to come.
Assessing the damage caused to the Gulf by the BP deepwater drilling disaster is a monumental task, but is necessary to ensure that BP pays for the restoration of the coast and ocean that they have destroyed. The formal mechanism to assess these damages comes from the 1990 Oil Pollution Act (OPA), which states that a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) must be done. NRDA is a legal process to determine the type and amount of restoration needed to compensate the public for harm to natural resources and their human uses that occur as a result of an oil spill. This assessment is supposed to be conducted by trustees, which include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and natural resource agencies from the impacted states, as well as the responsible party (BP).
That being said, last Thursday I was invited by NOAA to “shadow” one of their NRDA pre-assessment trips, where they were trying to assess the presence of sub-surface oil in areas in Barataria Bay and to the east of Grand Isle. I took them up on their offer, so and I, along with folks from Oceana and the Ocean Conservancy, hopped into 2 flat-bottom boats in Barataria and followed the assessment team as they stopped in several places in Barataria Bay to see if there was sub-surface oil. They were using plastic “pom-poms,” which adhere to oil, to detect sub-surface oil.
(Click here for pictures that I took of NOAA deploying pom-poms, oiled marshes, floating emulsified oil, skimmer boats and other interesting things on the trip.)
NOAA Staff Deploying Oil-Detection Sentinel With Plastic "Pom-Poms"
Basically the idea is that oil is attracted to and sticks to the pom-poms, so NOAA thinks that this might be a quick and easy way to assess the presence and relative quantity of sub-surface oil. Utilizing these pom-pom arrays, they measured oil by dragging them along the bottom of the shallow water, weighing them down to rest at the bottom of the shallow water for 24 hours, and attaching them to a pole and submerging the pole vertically for 24 hours.
As we shadowed the NRDA team, we saw several boats filled with boom, workers on the shore, and a couple skimmers. One interesting thing was the amount of dolphins that were well into the Bay. Our boat Captain said that he had never seen so much dolphin activity. I can’t attribute this strange behavior to the oil directly, but there certainly seems to be a correlation.
The newest edition of Wave Maker's News, GRN's quarterly update on the pressing issues facing the health and quality of the Gulf region's waters and wetlands, has just been released. GRN's Healthy Waters team is continuing our efforts to protect the rivers, streams, wetlands and coastal waters of the Gulf region. Since oil began spewing into the Gulf over two months ago, we've been working aggressively to deal with the short and long-term implications of the BP deepwater drilling disaster. In this edition of Wave Maker's News, read more about our efforts to address the impacts of the BP drilling disaster, recent victories for clean water in Louisiana and Mississippi, and continuing work to protect Florida from nitrogen and phosphorous pollution.
Recently, I had the pleasure of leading an amazing crew of GRN volunteers to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in middle Tennessee. Bonnaroo, which is in its 9th year, draws over 80,000 people to a huge field in rural Tennessee for a weekend of sweaty camping, great music, and an incredible festival atmosphere. Bonnaroo has also made a major commitment to hosting an eco-friendly festival – including inviting groups like GRN to set-up booths in “Planet-Roo” and get attendees involved in protecting our environment and communities.
This year, our crew had an awesome weekend talking to thousands of festival-goers from around the country and world about the BP oil drilling disaster and how they can help protect the health of the Gulf of Mexico. It was truly inspiring to meet people from all walks of life and many, many different places who all shared a commitment to helping the Gulf region get through this difficult time.
One of the questions that we had for festival-goers was: What do you have to say to BP CEO Tony Hayward? Check out the slideshow below to see some of their answers (warning: some people expressed their feelings in rather strong language).
(Carolyn Cole/LA Times/June 14, 2010) - Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, helps the rescue effort.
Two very disturbing reports about the BP drilling disaster’s affects on Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles were published recently
1. The offshore oil slick and Gulf of Mexico currents mix to create a deadly combination. “Young turtles swarm around oil spill” - Houston Chronicle article - “Thousands of endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle hatchlings are congregating in areas near the BP oil blowout as predicted - with deadly consequences, a Florida researcher said Thursday.”
2. A BP turtle rescue team was prevented from collecting endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles trapped in the offshore oil slick.
SeaTurtles.org article and video interview of Louisiana boat captain hired to rescue animals injured by offshore oil.
This blog has been following the recent wanderings of Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles equipped with satellite tracking devices. “Karen” was tagged and released after she laid 79 eggs near Galveston, Texas, on May 18, 2010. She stayed near Galveston until June 6th when she entered into Louisiana waters near Sabine Pass. She has been swimming east towards the oil ever since. Over the weekend she swam from an area outside the oil danger zone. She is now in the middle of the oil that has drifted to the coastal wetlands, only 50 miles from the Deepwater Horizon well site. We hope one of the turtle rescue boats finds her in time.
