The Drill Goes On

 

I really didn't want to write about this; Nuclear Weapons are still the greatest threat to life on the planet yet, given time, the petroleum addiction syndrome, may produce the same outcome. You see, if it were not for the addiction syndrome, petroleum has no value or certainly whatever value it did have is long past. The continued use of petroleum aka crude oil or simply “crude” in an advanced technological country like the United States is something apparently much too big for the government to control or regulate. There are so many better sources of energy than this high viscosity liquid that costs so much and causes so much devastation to bring to the market. Why is this so difficult to understand? Is 20 years enough time to accomplish this?

Here you can see how Prince William Sound is doing today.

Actually it doesn’t rank that high in the world’s biggest but sadly there are few places in the world like Prince William Sound. There is also a 1991 HBO Movie Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster that covers the whole story very well. Nothing has changed since then? There were no “lessons learned” from this? No planning, no coordinating, no disaster simulation training, no Failure mode and effects analysis resulted? This failure is almost as inexcusable as the event everyone is now seeing play out in the Gulf of Mexico itself. And 11 lives were lost. I find this unbelievable.

One has to conclude that oil companies simply do not consider disaster recovery and emergency management a part of their corporate responsibilities required by the privilege they are given to profit from the extraction of oil from the planet and its oceans.

If current estimates for the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico are correct, the massive spill could eventually dwarf that of Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 -- previously the largest in U.S. history -- by as much as three times. At a rate of 5,000 barrels a day, for an estimated 90 days, well over 20 million gallons of crude could be pumped out onto the Louisiana coastline. Even then, it might only crack the top 15 largest oil spills in world history. Here are the top five.

GULF WAR

Location: Persian Gulf

Date: Jan. 21, 1991

Amount: Between 160 million and 420 million gallons

How it happened: As Iraqi forces withdrew from their position in Kuwait, they sabotaged hundreds of wells, oil terminals, and tankers. All told, a minimum of 4 million barrels were poured into the Persian Gulf. Within a couple of years however, experts happily reported that the biggest oil spill in history had a surprisingly small environmental impact.

THE IXTOC 1 OIL WELL

Location: Gulf of Mexico

Date: June 3, 1979 - March 23, 1980

Amount: 138 million gallons

How it happened: This exploratory oil well suffered a catastrophic blowout (whereby pressure causes the well to explode), caught fire, and caused the drilling platform to collapse. For months, 10,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil gushed into the ocean every day.

ATLANTIC EMPRESS/AEGEAN CAPTAIN COLLISION

Location: Trinidad and Tobago

Date: July 19, 1979

Amount: 90 million gallons

How it happened: Two fully loaded oil carriers, the Atlantic Empress and the Aegean Captain, collided 10 miles off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago during a tropical rainstorm. Both ships caught fire and began leaking their contents in what would become the largest tanker-based spill ever recorded.

NOWRUZ PLATFORM

Location: Persian Gulf

Date: February 4, 1983 - September 18, 1983

Amount: 80 million gallons

How it happened: During the height of the Iran-Iraq War, an oil tanker hit the Nowruz Field Platform in the gulf and knocked it onto a 45 degree angle, damaging the well underneath. The resulting leak of 1,500 barrels a day could not be capped for months because the platform was under constant attack by Iraqi planes.

ABT SUMMER

Location: Off the coast of Angola

Date: May 28, 1991

Amount: 80 million gallons

The ABT Summer, a tanker holding 260,000 tons of crude, suffered an explosion 900 miles off the coast of Angola. It burned for three days before sinking and was never recovered. Luckily, high seas dispersed the oil and dulled its potential environmental impact.

One aspect of the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico is the response from the U.S. government, environmental science and oceanography.

In Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill, Justin Gillis writes in the May 20^th New York Times:

Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope.

The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean. They are especially concerned about getting a better handle on problems that may be occurring from large plumes of oil droplets that appear to be spreading beneath the ocean surface.

“It seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled,” Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “It seems baffling that we don’t know where the oil is in the water column.”

Apparently the thinking goes something like this: the oil companies caused the spill from mistakes, incompetence, or illegal activity so they should bear the expense of cleaning it up. That sounds reasonable however the problem is that the government waits too long to even monitor what is really going on. This has happened enough times now that the government should be supervising the recovery process from the beginning. Obviously when compared to BP or Exxon, the government isn’t pulling in the same level of profits. And the country is in pretty bad shape already and taking on a project like managing the BP incident would be a very big project.

The administration acknowledges that its scientific resources are stretched by the disaster, but contends that it is moving to get better information, including a more complete picture of the underwater plumes.

The administration has mounted a huge response to the spill, deploying 1,105 vessels to try to skim oil, burn it and block it from shorelines. As part of the effort, the federal government and the Gulf Coast states have begun an extensive effort to catalog any environmental damage to the coast. The Environmental Protection Agency is releasing results from water sampling near shore. In most places, save for parts of Louisiana, the contamination appears modest so far.

The big scientific question now is what is happening in deeper water. While it is clear that water samples have been taken, the results have not been made public.

They need to be made public and the entire process requires transparency. Livelihoods and irreplaceable resources are at risk and BP is keeping secrets?

So what conclusions can we draw? I find this amazing, but it looks like drilling for oil is going to continue as it has in the past.

But one central fact is unlikely to change. The world — particularly the United States — needs the oil that BP and other companies pump, and governments have demonstrated again and again that they are prepared to accept the collateral environmental risks. Deep-water wells are among the most promising new sources of oil, particularly since many are in politically stable regions.

“If we want to have oil, there are risks involved,” said Dieter Helm, a professor of energy policy at the University of Oxford. “You can’t expect in the global oil business that there won’t be such instances every 10 years or so. Given the number of oil wells there are, given how much is offshore, it’s impossible to imagine a world where it’s 100 percent certain that there won’t be such disasters.”

Ok so get use to it. But why, there are so many downsides associated with carbon based energy sources:

They pollute the environment.

They are responsible for climate change.

Extracting coal and oil are dangerous high risk processes.

And most importantly, the planet is running out of them. Well this is good news at least.

I’ve already discussed at some length how other energy sources are so superior to those based on carbon. Just browse through this blog and you’ll find lots of examples. Or there is this: Admiral Rickover: The future of fossil fuels. Written in 1957, this should be part of the reeducation process of fossil fuel ideologues.

Political leadership could change all of this but where does one set priorities? Health care reform is a fact and regulating banks and the Stock Market seems to be on the verge of clearing Congress. That leaves wars, immigration reform and an energy policy. An energy policy is really needed or the United States will continue its fade into mediocrity. Thanks so much Dick Cheney for your fine performance.

In any case, here are scenarios on what the government could do about the current problem in the Gulf:

WHITE HOUSE PUSHES BP

The federal government, not in the oil well business, is limited by what direct impact it can have on stopping the leak. The U.S. military does not have skills in the oil sector and officials have stressed the Pentagon is already providing whatever support it can to assist the U.S. response to the disaster.

The Obama administration has piled heavy pressure on BP to speed up its efforts to plug it up. "We are continuing to push BP to do everything that it can," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

LEGAL ACTION

In terms of potential legal action, the Obama administration's Justice Department eventually could charge BP with violating U.S. environmental laws. So far, the Justice Department has not launched an investigation. Officials there say they are monitoring the situation to ensure BP pays for the cleanup as promised.

Reparations for the last major oil spill, the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, were tied up in court for years as the company appealed an Anchorage, Alaska jury's award of $5 billion in punitive damages and it was reduced to $2.5 billion. The U.S. Congress has talked of raising a liability cap of $75 million to $10 billion for such disasters.

PAYING THE BILL

The federal government will pile heavy pressure on BP to foot the complete bill, with Americans in no mood to use taxpayer dollars for the disaster after the billions of dollars spent to bail out banks and auto companies.

ProPublica is reporting that that the Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to bar BP from receiving U.S. government contracts, a move it said would cost the company billions of dollars in revenues and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.

Obama is creating a commission to investigate the cause of the spill, evaluate industry practices and study government oversight. One likely scenario is that Obama will put off his plans to expand offshore oil drilling, making it unlikely that Republicans would join in energy legislation.

The president, house Democrats face congressional elections in November, is getting modest marks from the public on his handling of the spill.

A Pew Research Center poll on May 11 found 38 percent of Americans approved of his handling of the oil leak and 36 percent disapproved. Opinion about Obama's performance is not as negative as opinion about former President George W. Bush's response to the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO

The worst-case scenario is that it takes BP two more months to complete drilling a relief well that the company has said would provide the ultimate solution to halt the oil flow. A better solution: BP is working on attempting a "top kill" -- pumping heavy fluids, and then cement, into the well to stop the flow in the next few days.

"I think the best-case scenario is actually either late Sunday or early Monday as this top kill procedure works and the flow stops. ... I think worst case is it takes us until the relief well gets down which is probably early August," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said on CBS's "The Early Show."

The Obama Administration is attempting to move the U.S. energy assets to renewal sources like wind and solar. Hydroelectric is a renewal energy source which the U.S. is already heavily invested in. Presently the impact of the other options in this category (renewable energy sources) is still minimal.

According to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the U.S. is now obtaining its base energy assets from coal, oil and nuclear. He understands the problems with coal and oil. This leaves nuclear and apparently the U.S. is looking at starting to build new fission nuclear reactors in the coming decades. There is of course a prejudice against nuclear power in the United States but this is not 1980. Perhaps nuclear energy could fulfill the then naive promise of its peaceful use that popular culture gave it in the years following WW II, i.e., ~1946-1956.

At this point there is no reason not to. Difficult and high risk strategic projects have been successfully implemented before. For example, the development of the fission reactor used in the first nuclear submarine deployed by the U.S. Navy had to overcome obstacles like these:

In the early 1950s, a megawatt-scale nuclear reactor took up an area roughly the size of a city block.

The prototype for the Nautilus propulsion plant was the world's first high-temperature nuclear reactor.

The basic physics data needed for the reactor design were as yet unavailable. The reactor design methods had yet to be developed.

There were no available engineering data on the performance of water-exposed metals that were simultaneously experiencing high temperatures, pressures and multi-spectral radiation levels.

No nuclear power plant of any kind had ever been designed to produce steam.

No steam propulsion plant had ever been designed for use in the widely varying sea temperatures and pressures experienced by the condenser during submarine operations.

Components from difficult, exotic materials such as zirconium and hafnium would have to be extracted and manufactured with precision via techniques that were as yet unknown.

An impossible task one might assume but all the objectives were met leading to what has to date been a flawless outcome.

There isn’t a direct technology transfer implied here, there are obvious issues of scalability; however the problem is one of design and methods. Any high risk design must include the rules of a safety culture environment.

The huge impediment though is the American people. I’ve written extensively about the denial of reality and disregard for science in the United States. The ignorance, stupidity and paranoia of the radical right has always been present in American politics and at times their subversive qualities are difficult to overcome by rational thought. So pathetic, if one reads what they believe, it is comedy. There are numerous examples in this Dana Milbank article in the Washington Post. Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be.

Currently we have the most intelligent collection of individuals in government since…I’m not sure...the New Deal or the era of the Apollo project perhaps. Something like that is needed now. However there are few signs that this is understood.

As President Obama said at his inauguration:

In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by nine campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.

At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.”

(L)et it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

I am concerned, deeply concerned that the moment in time when the country’s problems can be moved toward resolution is passing.