Ten years after Deepwater Horizon oil spill, fears of offshore drilling persist
20 April, 2020
On April 20, 2010, the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform claimed the lives of 11 staff and unleashed a torrent greater than four million barrels of oil in to the Gulf of Mexico.
A decade later, the practice of deepwater drilling remains widespread off the lengthy coasts of the United States.
While government oversight was tightened in the wake of environmentally friendly disaster, conservationists say the risks of a fresh leak could possibly be growing as falling prices may bring about staffing cuts by the big producers.
Today, oil rigs continue drilling off the shores of Alaska and California, however the vast majority (nearly 1,900) are in the Gulf coast of florida, off the coasts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
Around 17 percent of the country's crude oil and five percent of its gas comes from this huge maritime zone, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Offshore drilling rigs, their productivity steadily increasing due to technological advances, have always been considered as the most profitable way for the United States to make sure energy independence.
"Deepwater was drilling deeper than almost any well available at the time," said Phil Flynn, a power analyst with the Price Futures Group. "It had been the equivalent of landing a guy on the moon."
But in modern times deepwater drilling has lost a few of its shine as new approaches for hydraulic fracking -- injecting liquid deep into the earth to release gas at relatively modest cost -- have gained ground.
Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the US government strengthened regulations around deepwater drilling.
Starting in 2011, former president Barack Obama's administration created the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), separating its activities from those linked to promoting the petroleum industry -- two sometimes conflicting missions that up to then had both been managed by the same agency, the Minerals Management Service (MMS).
The big petroleum companies were also necessary to provide greater guarantees that they were properly managing the risks associated with offshore drilling.
In the meantime, those companies have developed increasingly effective systems for quicker containing any explosions that do occur.
In 2010 2010, the states around the Gulf of Mexico watched with mounting concern as it took BP nearly 90 days to prevent the Deepwater Horizon leak, which fouled beaches, damaged tourism and killed an incredible number of sea creatures.
BP spent tens of vast amounts of dollars to completely clean up the oil spill, settle various law suits, compensate companies that had suffered spill-related losses, and help restore the region's environment.
"The rest of the companies learned a lot from the bad experience that BP had and improved their procedures internally," said Donald Boesch, who served on the commission established by Obama to research the causes of the accident.
"Some are suffering from more precautions and devoted more efforts than others into this," added Boesch, a professor of marine science at the University of Maryland.
President Donald Trump's objective of making america the world's top oil producer, an objective attained early in 2018, led to a weakening of the guidelines regulating the industry.
The Trump administration's "philosophy is more supportive of growth of oil production in america, and deregulation," Boesch said.
In January 2018, the White House announced its intention to open almost all of America's coastal waters to oil and gas drilling, a decision that sparked sharp resistance from several states and is the subject of several still unresolved legal battles.
"Rather than learning lessons from the BP disaster, President Trump is proposing to radically expand offshore drilling, while dismantling the few protections set up consequently of the catastrophic blowout," said Diane Hoskins, a campaign director for the nonprofit Oceana, which works on ocean conservation issues.
Oceana, in a written report published Tuesday on the financial and ecological consequences of the Deepwater accident, concludes a new disaster is more, not less, likely than it was 10 years ago.
Oil-rig safety and governmental oversight have "not improved," the report states, adding that "expanding this industry to new areas puts human health insurance and the surroundings at risk."
The current crisis facing the petroleum industry -- hit hard by the sharp drop in consumption and in world oil prices amid the global coronavirus pandemic, makes the picture a lot more worrisome, some analysts say.
"If the firms are under financial stress, they have to spend less by reducing the quantity of their workers. With that comes a risk," Boesch said.
"That's what we saw through the Deepwater accident," he added. "These were behind schedule drilling that well. Their decisions were affected by a desire to complete up quickly, so they cut corners.
"I'm concerned the situation is set up in order that it could happen again."
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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