The BP Oil Disaster: Avertible catastrophe

[Warph]

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post · Saturday, Jun. 26, 2010

Source: http://www.financialpost.com/Avertible+catastrophe/3203808/story.html#ixzz0s4nXfhXm


Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.

The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. "Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn't capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana's marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.

The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company's expense. "If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands," says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.

In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer --the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment --unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water--the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that." In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls "crazy."

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. "Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands," he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.

Then again, perhaps he should not be all that perplexed at the American tolerance for turning an accident into a catastrophe. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989, a Dutch team with clean-up equipment flew in to Anchorage airport to offer their help. To their amazement, they were rebuffed and told to go home with their equipment. The Exxon Valdez became the biggest oil spill disaster in U.S. history--until the BP Gulf spill.

- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers.


A little list here of what the hell is going on:

As I read "Avertible Catastrophe,".... the Financial Post's amazingly analysis of the BP oil spill in the Gulf Of Mexico.... I started putting together a list of the identifiable errors and mistakes the Obama administration made.  And as I made that list, I noticed that they had hit so many of the classic categories of BLUNDERS that it could almost serve as a textbook example of how NOT to do things.

1) The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good.

Okay.... the Dutch government owns quite a few oil-skimming vessels that have tremendous capacity.  They can suck up huge amounts of oil-laden water and remove most of the oil.  But the EPA won't let them work on this disaster.  The Dutch ships don't meet US standards.  According to those rules, water returned to the sea must be 99.9985% clean.  The Dutch ships fall short of that metric, and don't have the capability to store and carry that water ashore for more thorough cleaning.  Let's say that the Dutch ships remove only 95% of the oil in the water.  Isn't that still a hell of a lot better than nothing?

2) We Are The Smartest In The World.

Also known as the "NIH" syndrome -- "Not Invented Here."  To acknowledge that others might have good ideas.... even, possibly, better ideas.... would be to acknowledge that the Obama administration does not have all the answers, and that others might have a good idea or two.  And if those outsiders are part of the oil industry, that's even worse.

3) No One Else Must Be Allowed To Win.

The very slack Obama administration must own all actions taken in this disaster.  Couched in the context of "we want to make sure it's done right," they have worked to block efforts by those not directly under their control.  That way, they don't have to risk others getting credit for successes and, consequently, proving that the Obama administration is not the best and brightest.  That would diminish the reputation of the Obama administration, and that would not be tolerable.

4) Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste. (Thank you, Rahm)

There's a school of thought that every crisis is also an opportunity. Indeed, there's an old urban legend that the Chinese word for "crisis" is formed by combining the characters for "danger" and "opportunity."  The Obama administration has indeed seized on this crisis as an opportunity to push its own agenda.  It's trying like hell to impose a ban on all offshore drilling in the Gulf, which will throw thousands and thousands out of work and seriously bone the US economy.  It shook down BP into forfeiting its legal protection under existing liability laws and giving up a $20 billion "compensation" fund to be administered by Obama's hand-picked crony, with no oversight whatsoever (and legally arranged to come ahead of other BP creditors should they file bankruptcy).  It's using it as a cudgel to beat up on the entire oil industry.  It's making serious hay in denouncing and blaming "Big Business" and the Republicans for destroying the Gulf Coast.

In the rush to let as little of this crisis to go waste, though, they're forgetting one little detail: they're not doing a hell of a lot to stop the ongoing disaster and start the cleanup.  Indeed, it almost looks like they're willing to let the leaking go on and on and on until they've wrung every bit of opportunity for political gain out of it.

The four states that are currently being threatened by the oil, three of them voted for McCain in 2008 -- and the fourth barely went for Obama.  They're all southern states.  There are times when you have to set politics aside, when you have to rise above your prejudices and biases and simply accept any and all hands willing to offer assistance, when you have to recognize that your foes might have something to offer.  This disaster in the Gulf should have been one of those times, for our "post-partisan" president.  But it seems he doesn't want to be the president of all Americans, even those who didn't vote for him. 

....Warph