EPA Tests Dispersant Use For Gulf Oil Spill Prior To Possible Expansion
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 (InsideEPA.com) — EPA and other federal agencies are testing the use of chemical dispersants near the seafloor in response to the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to examine whether it would be effective to expand to the current cleanup effort and future spills use of the chemicals, about which researchers warn little is known of their effects on aquatic organisms.
More than 372,000 gallons of the dispersants have been used so far to prevent leaking oil from the BP offshore oil well and subsequent spill from reaching the shore. The chemicals act like dish soap to break up oil slicks and distribute oil particles throughout the water column. Researchers say the use of the dispersants in the Gulf is unprecedented and that should spur new efforts to research the chemicals’ effects on aquatic life.
BP, which owns the well, conducted three tests deploying dispersants near the site of the leak. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said during a May 12 conference call that the first two tests were inconclusive and that the agency is waiting for the results of the third test before determining whether to authorize additional subsurface dispersant use.
EPA wants to ensure that using dispersants underwater would be at least as effective at breaking up the spilled oil as surface application and would not cause additional human or environmental health impacts, Jackson said. More than 28,000 gallons of dispersants were used in the subsurface tests, Jackson said.
Jackson acknowledged that the dispersants create a risk trade-off, because they expose aquatic organisms that live in the water column and near the sea floor to dispersed oil in an effort to keep that oil from reaching coastal ecosytems that are home to a diverse array of wildlife. Dispersants are “not a silver bullet,” Jackson said, but rather an attempt to find the least adverse method for responding to the massive oil spill.
EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used several methods in testing the dispersant use, including visually observing the amount of oil reaching the surface, measuring changes in oil particle sizes within the water column, calculating the concentration of dissolved oxygen, testing for the presence of chemicals within the water and performing biological tests, according to Jackson and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco.
“There’s always been a desire to test subsea dispersant use,” Jackson said, noting that it could become a more flexible tool to fight oil spills because it can be done regardless of the time of day or weather patterns, unlike other strategies like skimming oil from the surface, burning oil or applying dispersants to oil slicks from the air.
Many Unknowns
Researchers have warned that there are many unknowns when it comes to dispersant use, especially in applying them underwater. A 2005 National Research Council report, “Oil Spill Dispersants: Efficacy and Effects,” is among the most detailed reports to date on the chemicals, but even that report acknowledges significant shortcomings in the availability of existing data and recommended EPA and other agencies establish an “integrated research plan” to further examine dispersant use. An author of that report says little follow-up research has been done since it was released.
Two dispersants have been used so far in response to the Gulf spill, Corexit 9500 and Corexit EC9527A, both manufactured by Nalco Energy Services LP. Material Safety Data Sheets for the chemicals that EPA posted online say the chemicals pose “low” risk to humans and the environment but note that no toxicity studies have been conducted.
Both chemicals are on a list of dispersants that have been pre-approved by EPA for surface use in oil spills more than three miles offshore and in water deeper than 10 meters. Subsurface use has not been authorized beyond the three tests that were conducted.
Congress also is examining the use of dispersants in the wake of the spill. The chemicals were discussed at a May 11 joint hearing of two Senate Environment & Public Works subcommittees. Carys Mitchelmore, a professor at the University of Maryland who has studied dispersants, said it would be “impossible to predict” the consequences of their use in response to the BP spill. She noted in her testimony that little is known about aquatic life that would not have been exposed to oil if not for the dispersant use, and that limited toxicological information exists to fully assess risks to such organisms. She noted that some species are more vulnerable to dispersant exposure.
Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), who chairs the water and wildlife subcommittee, during the hearing pressed EPA officials to step up their research into the chemicals and share their findings with the public.
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Industry Hints At Legal Challenge To Retroactive Increase Of Spill Liability
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 (InsideEPA.com) — The oil industry is criticizing efforts by congressional Democrats and the Obama administration to retroactively raise the industry’s cleanup and other liability for oil spills in the wake of BP’s massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, charging that the high constitutional bar on retroactive laws could present an argument to challenge the measures.
Oil industry officials are also arguing that efforts to raise the liability caps are unnecessary because BP has said it will pay “all legitimate claims.”
“I think it would be absolutely impossible to make [any legislation] retroactive,” one industry source says. “I don’t think you could do it retroactively. I don’t think it would be legally feasible. I don’t know how they can do it,” the official says.
But proponents of increasing the industry’s liability retroactively, including Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), say the Supreme Court has upheld retroactive application of environmental liabilities in several cases where it ruled to uphold the Superfund law’s retroactive liability system.
The industry’s criticisms are directed at similar proposals floated by a group of Senate Democrats and the administration to raise the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) cap on liability for spills. The law, which was enacted in 1990 in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill, creates a trust fund financed by a per-gallon tax on petroleum. The funds are available to cover EPA, Coast Guard and state removal costs, natural resource damages (NRD) and payment for claims of uncompensated damages and removal costs in the event of a spill, which is then replenished by a responsible party. But unless the party is negligent or violates a regulatory mandate, its liability is limited to $75 million for economic damages and $500 million for natural resource damages (NRD). Total payments for a single spill out of the fund are also capped at $1 billion.
Administration officials and others argue there is a need to increase liabilities because the spill trust fund was created before industry began extensive drilling in deep waters, where the risks of uncontrolled spills like the current one are greater than they were at the time of the law’s enactment. “The [BP] spill has also made it very clear that updates are needed to current laws governing the liability that companies have for any damages — for any damage they cause while drilling and transporting oil. The [OPA] , for instance, was passed 20 years ago when offshore exploration and production in deepwater represented a small portion of our energy supply,” Carol Browner, assistant to the President for energy and climate change, said during a May 12 conference call.
Administration Proposes Legislation
In the most recent proposal, the administration May 12 submitted legislative language to Congress that would increase the total fund payments for a single spill from $1 billion to $1.5 billion, hike NRD from $500 million to $750 million and eliminate the current $75 million cap on economic liabilities. The administration’s bill would also immediately raise the per-barrel fee on oil used to create the trust fund from 8 cents to 9 cents, and increase to 10 cents in 2017.
President Obama said in a letter to Congress that the administration hopes the language can be attached to an already pending supplemental appropriations bill.
But administration officials, in the May 12 conference call, stopped short of endorsing a proposal from Menendez and other Democratic senators to raise the economic liability cap from $75 million to $10 billion, saying instead that they will work with Congress on the payment levels. “As you know, there are some bills that have been introduced, but we will be working with [Congress] to determine what the right number is,” Browner said on the call.
Industry officials have raised concerns with the Menendez approach, saying it would make it impossible to obtain insurance coverage. “If you go to $10 billion, there are no $10 billion insurance policies,” one industry source says.
The industry officials are backing another bill, introduced May 5 by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the ranking Republican on the Senate energy committee, and Mark Begich (D-AK), which would temporarily increase the current 8 cent per-barrel fee to 9 cents until the fund reaches a balance of $10 billion from its current balance of about $1.6 billion.
High Constitutional Bar
Industry officials argue that there is a high constitutional bar on retroactive requirements. Constitutional provisions generally bar so-called ex post facto laws but the Supreme Court has allowed retroactive provisions in administrative laws if Congress makes the retroactive requirements explicit.
“It’s very hard constitutionally to go backwards. You run into ex post facto concerns,” one official says. The official continues, “The other thing you can argue is that since the spill is ongoing, it will cover anything that happens after the enactment of the law.”
The official also argues that the administration and Congress should not rush to enact oil spill legislation, noting that BP America Chairman Lamar McKay stressed at May 11and May 12 congressional hearings that the company would pay for all “legitimate claims” out of its own pocket, rather than from the trust fund.
“If BP pays out on its own, why would you want to do something that’s going to increase the costs to do business so much that you’re penalizing the entire nation because you can’t get the oil and natural gas that is needed. I think you have to look at the cost-benefit analysis. You have to make sure you look at all unintended consequences,” the official says.
Raising the liability cap to $10 billion, as Menendez and others are proposing, would discourage future drilling because oil companies would not be able to acquire adequate insurance to cover the potential financial risk, the officials say. The only companies that can show they can function at a $10 billion liability would be the largest private companies and the large nationally owned companies.
But proponents of retroactive application say there is ample precedent for the high court approval. “We have precedent for this,” Menendez said at a May 4 press conference, citing court approval of the Superfund law’s retroactive liability system. “[Superfund] sites were previously polluted, and companies had to be responsible to clean up the site. I think there’s precedent for it, it’s been fully litigated in the courts and has been upheld,” he said.
And Browner argued on the May 12 conference call that White House officials do not believe their legislative proposal is unconstitutional because it updates an existing statute and applies equally to all companies.
She added that although the administration is retroactively seeking to increase industry liabilities, officials would not refrain from pushing BP to fully compensate injured parties. “While we are asking for additional funds, in some cases, the federal government will not relent in pursuing full compensation for the expenses it has occurred and damage caused by this spill. And the legislation contains provisions to help us recoup those costs,” she said.
One provision in the administration’s proposal that could help do that is a request for $10 million for the Attorney General for “litigation expenses related to affirmative and defensive litigation associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that may not qualify as recoverable from the Responsible Parties or the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund,” including “for civil defensive litigation, and civil and criminal enforcement under the Oil Pollution Act, the Federal Torts Claims Act, and the Clean Water Act.”
Explicit Statement On Retroactive Application
An environmentalist who has been following the spill closely argues the administration’s proposal would likely pass muster because it includes an explicit statement of its retroactive application. The liability provisions “shall apply to all responsible parties under [OPA], including any party determined to be liable under the Oil Pollution Act for any incident that occurred prior to the enactment of this section,” the administration’s bill says.
But in a possible bid to preserve portions of the legislation in the event of a legal challenge, the administration’s bill also includes a severability clause that would preserve measures that survived an industry suit or were not challenged. If any part of the bill is found to be unconstitutional, the rest of the provisions “shall not be affected,” the legislative language states.
The environmentalist acknowledges that an effort to raise the liability cap to $10 billion will affect drilling, but notes that BP did not have an insurance policy on the Deepwater Horizon rig, instead opting to self-insure in the case of a spill. If a company has “deep pockets” it can continue to drill with the higher liability cap, the environmentalist says, adding that smaller independent producers are disadvantaged and may need to consolidate to insure against an accident.
Despite finger pointing at recent hearings as to who is responsible for the April 20 rig explosion and resulting spill, the environmentalist notes that under the OPA, BP is the responsible party because it holds the lease and is therefore responsible for the spill cleanup. The OPA does not provide for joint liability, but it does allow the responsible party to pursue a so-called “contribution action.” In such an action, BP could sue Halliburton, the cement contractor, or Transocean, which owned the rig and drilled the well. If BP can show either of those companies or another company is at fault for the explosion and spill, it can recover the costs of cleanup and other damages from that party.

http://deepseanews.com/

How the Oil Spill Affects Fisheries: Interview with Dr. Dave Kerstetter

Filed under Conservation & Environment, Oil Spills, Scientist! by Kevin Zelnio

To understand how the oil spill affects the fisheries and fishing communities, I turned to Dr. Dave Kerstetter, a research scientist at Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center. Dave has a background in applied fishery science and is interested in the intersection between fisheries science and public policy.

Kevin Zelnio: You are involved in the Oil Spill Response Task Force, a collaboration among many Floridian universities. What is your role in the Task Force and what do you hope to accomplish?

Dave Kerstetter: At this point, there’s little active interaction — at least not for most of us listed on the website — although there’s obviously lots of work going on individually and by the northern Gulf folks in general. This is also not meant in any way to replace or disparage the massive increase in effort by state and federal marine agencies to conduct pre-oil sampling and monitoring.  As I understand it, the point of the Task Force was to proactively organize the Florida marine academic resources rather than take the traditional piecemeal approach that’s been seen in other sorts of large-scale events.

As the president-elect of the Florida Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, I know first-hand that we have world-class fisheries and other marine-related scientists here in the state.  The challenge is how to best use us in monitoring, assessing, and ultimately mitigating the effects of this spill. There will be an e-mail listserve set up shortly, which I expect will increase dramatically these academic interactions, as would the spill reaching the Loop Current and thereby suddenly affecting a much broader area very, very quickly.

KZ: There are already reports of many fishermen’s livelihoods affected by the oil spill. As a fisheries scientist you have a unique position where you interact with the fishing industry and the fish. Can you predict how this affects the near term and long term commercial fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico from the perspective of the fishermen and the fish?

DK: What a broad question!  Yes, there are already many commercial fishers and recreational anglers and charter captains who are being negatively affected by the spill.  This can happen either directly (see the attached .pdf on the latest time-area closure by NOAA Fisheries) by stopping fisheries completely or indirectly through public perception of their products.  We tend not to think about these indirect impacts, but they can be just as real; customers canceling orders of oysters from non-affected grounds as a commercial example or clients canceling upcoming charter trips in the Keys have very real impacts nonetheless on these captains.  The Miami Herald, for example, has been very good over the course of this event in providing on-the-ground coverage of these impacts to fisheries.

Many other impacts are infrequently considered by non-fisheries folks. During a constituent conference call earlier this week with NOAA, one of the Keys crab pot fishers discussed how federal regulations might consider fishing gear coated with oil as toxic waste, with all the resulting disposal difficulties for a small owner/operator with 250 pots and for a fishery with several hundred participants.  I don’t think this has been the case yet, but these events have historically affected oil and fuel prices, which also have very immediate impacts on vessels using 100 gallons of diesel per fishing day.  A recent concern has been raised about whether the simple transit of a fishing vessel through the affected area requires it to be specially cleaned, which NOAA is still addressing.  There are many such indirect effects, many of which we just don’t know yet.
The direct impacts — other than the biological ones I’ll address below — are still rather minor for the Gulf as a whole with most fisheries other than the shrimp and local recreational ones.  The shrimpers have to deal with state time-area closures as well as federal regulations, and trying to balance those out economically (e.g., “Do I take my boat from Alabama to Texas for only a two-week season?”) will remain a challenge.  The pelagic longline fleet targeting yellowfin tuna has apparently moved into other, non-affected portions of the Gulf, which makes it one of the lucky mobile ones. I’ve been getting reports that many fishing tournaments in the northern Gulf have been or are considering being canceled, many of which bring millions into local economies.  The real challenge will be if (when?) the spill makes it into the Loop Current, which will then immediately make this a state-wide problem for many additional fisheries.

KZ: Which particular fisheries will be the most susceptible to damage from the oil spill and when would you expect them to recover?

DK: Most of what happens at this point — from a fisheries perspective at least — depends on where the oil actually goes. (Sure, the oil forming a slick at the surface is a horrible thing for fish eggs and larvae, many of which are pelagic at those life stages, but you’ve covered some of that already.)  If the oil stays offshore, then you affect the pelagic and coastal pelagic fisheries; e.g., the commercial yellowfin tuna fishery out of Louisiana and the kingfish recreational fishery in the northern Gulf. If it stays offshore, but goes down, through natural or chemical degradation or some other process, then you’ll impact the snapper-grouper and shrimp fisheries. Should it go inland, then you’ll have impacts on all your important coastal fisheries, including the poster-child for recreational fisheries restoration, the redfish (red drum). You’ll also wipe out the (market and/or) fishery for oysters and blue crabs, and it’ll have negative larger effects on every species dependent on coastal saltmarsh habitats.

If (once) it gets into the Loop Current, then take these same impacts, change “saltmarsh” to “mangrove”, then repeat for impacts along the southern Florida coast. One of the more interesting things I’ve learned this past week was that the dean of the NSU Oceanographic Center did work with oil spills in tropical habitats.  He commented that chemical oil dispersants were very toxic to corals, but not so to mangroves, who actually did better if the oil coming inland to their prop roots was broken up using those same dispersants. Both environments are vital to many of our species down here, so having a King Solomon-style “splitting the baby” moment of which habitat to ultimately mitigate may be something already being considered at state and federal levels.

KZ: How do ecological catastrophes like this affect management decisions for these fisheries?

DK: This remains to be seen. We have a meeting of the HMS Advisory Panel — kind of the trans-regional substitute for a fishery management council that advises NOAA Fisheries on highly migratory species (HMS) management — this week in Silver Spring, and while this is on the agenda, I don’t know what NOAA’s going to say or do about it. Many of the individual fisheries are state or regional fishery management council managed, which makes them a bit more flexible in terms of acting quickly for temporary openings/closings. However, tracking those changes is tough, as you’ve got to know or monitor each state individually. It does appear, however, that there’s been a much greater recognition of fisheries economic and social impacts today versus the Exxon Valdez incident, which is good to see from my perspective.

In a larger sense, it’s hard to build such events into fisheries management regimes; simply put, losing entire year-classes is tough to anticipate. Most management actions are based on such small numbers of fish or other marine animals that these large-scale events will sometimes wipe out progress over years of work and sacrifice. We could potentially lose more turtles in this spill than were saved with circle hooks, for example. Alternatively, it’s hard to argue for a catch-and-release fishery for a fish stock about to be impacted by the spill. For my particular sort of applied fisheries research, it’s hard to get fishers to participate in cooperative work when your margins for management are so narrow and easily breached, and no-one I’ve talked with — NO-ONE — has any delusion that BP will pay for much of anything regarding the mitigation of biological or economic fisheries impacts. While the ecological community seems to be more in a wait-and-see attitude about BP funding biological assessments, I side more pessimistically with the fisheries folks, our President’s continuing happy talk notwithstanding.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Wall Street Journal
May 11, 2010
By RUSSELL GOLD, STEPHEN POWER And VANESSA O’CONNELL

Executives from BP PLC, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton Co. began pointing fingers on Monday over who bears ultimate responsibility for the April 20 oil-rig explosion that took 11 lives and is spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The question will loom large at a Senate hearing Tuesday that will hear from executives of the three companies.

BP, Transocean and Halliburton are set to blame each other in Congressional hearings for last month’s big oil-rig explosion and spill. Neil King, Bob O’Brien and Neal Lipschutz discuss. Also, Kara Scannell weighs in on Congressional hearings intended to find out what caused Thursday’s sudden market plunge.
BP, the well owner, blames the failure of a big set of valves on the sea floor, known as the blowout preventer, to halt the blowout once it started.

A different account comes from Halliburton, a contractor in the drilling. This account is corroborated to some extent by Transocean, as well as by two workers on the drilling rig, The Wall Street Journal has determined.

This account describes a failure to place a cement plug within the well. The plug is designed to prevent gas from escaping up the pipe to the surface.

Before such a plug is placed, the job of keeping underground gas from coming up the pipe is done by heavy drilling fluid inside the well, commonly known as “mud.” The plug is normally put in before the mud is removed, but according to the account of Halliburton, Transocean and the two workers, in this case, that wasn’t donedrilling mud was removed before a final cement plug was placed in the well.

It is not clear why such a decision would have been made. Rig owner Transocean says that BP, as owner of the well that was just being completed, made key decisions on how to proceed. BP declined to comment on this account of the drilling procedures.

Tim Probert, Halliburton’s president of global business lines, plans to testify Tuesday that his company had finished an earlier step, cementing the casing, filling in the area between the pipe and the walls of the well; pressure tests showed the casing had been properly constructed, he will testify.

At this point it is common practice to pour wet cement down into the pipe. The wet cement, which is heavier than the drilling mud, sinks down through the drilling mud and then hardens into a plug thousands of feet down in the well.

The mud then is removed and displaced by seawater; the hardened cement plug holds back any underground gas.

In this case, a decision was made, shortly before the explosion, to perform the remaining tasks in reverse order, according to the expected Senate testimony of Mr. Probert, the Halliburton executive.

“We understand that the drilling contractor then proceeded to displace the riser with seawater prior to the planned placement of the final cement plugŠ,” Mr. Probert says in the prepared testimony, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The “riser” is part of the pipe running from the sea floor up to the drilling rig at the surface.

Lloyd Heinze, chairman of the petroleum engineering department at Texas Tech University, agrees that this is an unusual approach. “Normally, you would not evacuate the riser until you were done with the last plug at the sea floor,” he said in an interview.

A worker who was on the drilling rig said in an interview that Halliburton was getting ready to set a final cement plug at 8,000 feet below the rig when workers received other instructions. “Usually we set the cement plug at that point and let it set for six hours, then displace the well,” said the worker, meaning take out the mud.

According to this worker, BP asked permission from the federal Minerals Management Service to displace the mud before the final plugging operation had begun. The mud in the well weighed 14.3 pounds per gallon; it was displaced by seawater that weighed nearly 50% less. Like BP, the MMS declined to comment on this account.

As the heavy mud was taken out and replaced with much lighter seawater, “that’s when the well came at us, basically,” said the worker, who was involved in the cementing process.

The worker’s account is corroborated by an email account sent by another person on the rig. He said that engineers wanted to flood the well with sea water before setting the final plug. As they were taking out the mud, the blowout began with a flood of drilling fluid being pushed out of the well, followed by a series of explosions.

Halliburton’s Mr. Probert’s prepared statement says: “Prior to the point in the well construction plan that the Halliburton personnel would have set the final cement plug, the catastrophic incident occurred. As a result, the final cement plug was never set.”

Halliburton says it was following Transocean’s orders and is “contractually bound to comply with the well owner’s instructions on all matters relating to the performance of all work ] related activities.”

Transocean Chief Executive Steven Newman is expected to tell the Senate the explosion occurred “after the well construction process was essentially finished.” His prepared testimony then blames the blowout on a failure of the well’s lining, saying the blowout had to be caused by “a sudden, catastrophic failure of the cement, the casing or both.”

When asked Monday night, Transocean agreed that the cement plug had not been placed in the well but that it had started the process of removing the mud, which it said was at BP’s behest.

Such plugs are placed only temporarily. The idea is that the well owner can later reopen the well and begin producing oil from it.

The chairman of BP unit BP America Inc., Lamar McKay, is expected to testify that “we are looking at why the blowout preventer did not work because that was to be the fail-safe in case of an accident.ŠTransocean’s blowout preventer failed to operate.” According to his prepared statement, reviewed by the Journal, he will say, “All of us urgently want to understand how this vital piece of equipment and its built-in redundancy systems failed and what measures are required to prevent this from ever happening again.”

Mr. Newman of Transocean says in his prepared testimony that it “simply makes no sense” to blame the blowout preventer. At the point that the blowout occurred, “the well barriersthe cementing and the casingwere responsible for controlling any pressure from the reservoir,” his testimony says.

Two Senate panels, on Energy and Natural Resources and on Environment and Public Works, are to hear the testimony. In addition, the U.S. Coast Guard and the MMS are holding hearings Tuesday and Wednesday in Kenner, La.

BP’s efforts to control the leaking oil haven’t worked so far. As a result, reverberations from the disaster could affect BP’s global ambitions to expand its already large footprint in deep-water drilling. No other company has invested as heavily as BP has in the high-risk, high-reward business of deep-water oil exploration.

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said Monday that the global oil industry “has drilled over 5,000 wells in greater than 1,000 feet of water and has not hitherto had an issue of this sort to contend with.”

Neil King Jr. and Rebecca Smith contributed to this article.
Write to Russell Gold at russell.gold@wsj.com , Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com  and Vanessa O’Connell at vanessa.o’connell@wsj.com  

Interior Plans to Split Minerals Management Service
By SIOBHAN HUGHES And STEPHEN POWER

WASHINGTON.  The Interior Department plans to announce Tuesday its intent to split the Minerals Management Service into two divisions, one focusing on gathering royalties from oil and gas companies and another focused on safety inspections.

An Interior Department official confirmed the plan. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will make an announcement at 1 p.m. EDT.

The Associated Press reported on the planned split earlier Tuesday.

The reorganization comes amid a vast Gulf Coast oil spill that has called into question the efficacy of the government’s regulation. The tiny agency currently plays dual roles, focusing on collecting money as well as on ensuring the safety of oil rigs. Some former employees have said that amounts to a conflict-of-interest, as employees must focus on keeping oil revenue flowing while also focusing on safety.

A Wall Street Journal examination of the MMS’s track record last week found several instances of the agency identifying potential safety problems and then either not requiring follow-up or relying on the industry to craft a solution. In some cases, the industry didn’t do its part.

The Journal also found that the safety record of U.S. offshore drilling compares unfavorably, in terms of deaths and serious accidents, to other major oil-producing countries. Over the past five years, an offshore oil worker in the U.S. was more than four times as likely to be killed than a worker in European waters, and 23% more likely to sustain an injury, according to International Association of Drilling Contractors data, which is adjusted for man-hours worked.

The U.K.home to one of the largest offshore-drilling industries in the worldhas already adopted a regulatory structure similar to the one that the Obama administration is moving toward. In 1998, after a fire aboard a North Sea platform killed 167 people, the U.K. separated its offshore safety-oversight agency from the revenue-gathering side.

After that change, the U.K.’s safety record improved. The improvements also came at a time of increased mechanization of rigs, which improved the safety of offshore drilling world-wide.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@dowjones.com

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-senators-criticize-oil-companies.html
Los Angeles Times/Greenspace

May 11, 2010 |  9:42 am
The blood, er, oil flew this morning even before oil executives at the Senate hearings into the ongoing Gulf of Mexico spill began to testify. Democrats and Republicans alike on the Senate energy committee were criticizing industry officials and government regulators of failing to safeguard against the blowout leak, which has been gushing thousands of barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico following the late April sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

The senators also blasted executives from BP, Transocean and Halliburton for pointing fingers at one another over the cause of the disaster. “I can see the liability chase that’s going to go on,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said, adding that he was looking forward to the panel of company executives that is still to come “to see who’s going to fess up to what.”

Senators have spared little vitriol for the industry or their government regulators. A sampling: Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M), head of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said: “I don’t believe it is enough to label this catastrophic failure as an unpredictable and unforeseeable occurrence. I don’t believe it is adequate to simply chalk what happened up to a view that accidents just happen. If this is like other catastrophic failures of technological systems in modern history — whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, Three Mile Island, or the loss of the Challenger — we will likely discover that there was a cascade of failures: technical, human and regulatory.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the committee’s top Republican: “Many times I have said that there are words and then there are actions — and actions necessarily have consequences. Hopefully, all actions associated with the Deepwater Horizon incident were in good faith and compliant with our laws. If that is not the case, there will be no excuse.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) wondered if years of successful drilling in the gulf had led to “laxity or complacency” among regulators and industry. Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho): “It seems to me that we have been totally unprepared to respond to this … that really doesn’t surprise me, that the government is not able to respond to this.”

And Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked why the government allowed industry to drill “with near-certainty that blowouts would occur, without adequate backup devices. Why?”

The oil company execs are up now.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/11/1624127/activists-protest-offshore-drilling.html

BY JENNIFER LEBOVICH

JLEBOVICH@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Environmental activists rallied against offshore drilling Tuesday
morning in Miami Beach.

With large, black-plastic tarps — meant to replicate oil slicks —
blowing in the wind, several dozen people passed over sunbathers and
tourists in beach chairs in an attempt to show the impact oil would
have on the pristine beaches.

“The cost of offshore oil drilling is tremendous,” said Jonathan
Ullman of the Sierra Club and one of the organizers of Tuesday’s
event. “We’re seeing the environmental loss, the tourism loss. We’re
calling for no more offshore oil drilling.”

Representatives from groups that included the Sierra Club, Greenpeace
and Surfrider gathered with politicians on the beach off of Ninth
Avenue and Ocean Drive.

“Let me assure you of something, if the oil lobby has the opportunity
to put rigs within four miles of our coast, they’ll do it,” said Sen.
Dan Gelber, a Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, who
last week joined other Democrats in calling for a special session to
put a drilling ban on the November ballot. “This is our time to stand
up . . . so Florida can say we do not want oil rigs near our shore.”

Gelber was joined by commissioners from Miami Beach, who also called
on emergency managers in Miami-Dade County to be prepared should the
oil slick come to South Florida.

Adding his voice to those opposing oil drilling was Joe Garcia, who is
vying for the House seat being vacated by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart,
whose district spans western Miami-Dade, eastern Collier and Monroe
counties.

“I oppose drilling for oil anywhere near Florida’s beaches,” said
Garcia. “It’s simply a risky proposition that Florida cannot afford.
This issue goes beyond party lines.”

The ralliers held signs that read “Save our state” and “Clean
beaches are our birthright.”

One surfer was painted in head-to-toe black, holding a blackened surfboard.

Their message didn’t resonate with Krisann Robar, 40, visiting from Wisconsin.
“I personally think we need to drill more,” said Robar, who
identified herself as a Tea Party member.

The protesters tried to pass over the sunbathing Robar with the
makeshift oil slick, but she declined.

“We need to find out what happened and make it safer for next time,”
she said about the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Special thanks to Richard Charter