<http://www.washingtonpost.com>     Wednesday, May 5, 2010; A04
 
By Juliet Eilperin
The Interior Department exempted BP’s calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.
 
The decision by the department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP’s lease at Deepwater Horizon a “categorical exclusion” from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 — and BP’s lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions — show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.
 
Now, environmentalists and some key senators are calling for a reassessment of safety requirements for offshore drilling.
 
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who has supported offshore oil drilling in the past, said, “I suspect you’re going to see an entirely different regime once people have a chance to sit back and take a look at how do we anticipate and clean up these potential environmental consequences” from drilling.
 
BP spokesman Toby Odone said the company’s appeal for NEPA waivers in the past “was based on the spill and incident-response history in the Gulf of Mexico. . . . Clearly, the Transocean rig accident was unprecedented. Once the various investigations have been completed, the causes of this incident can be applied to determine any changes in the regulatory regime that are required to protect the environment.”
 
“I’m of the opinion that boosterism breeds complacency and complacency breeds disaster,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) on Tuesday, after six executives from the Deepwater project told lawmakers that the oil seepage could vastly increase if the leak can’t be stopped. “That, in my opinion, is what happened.”
 
Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said it is important to learn the cause of the accident before pursuing a major policy change. “While the conversation has shifted, the energy reality has not,” Gerard said.
“The American economy still relies on oil and gas.”
 
While the MMS assessed the environmental impact of drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico on three occasions in 2007 — including a specific evaluation of BP’s Lease 206 at Deepwater Horizon — in each case it played down the prospect of a major blowout.
 
In one assessment, the agency estimated that “a large oil spill” from a platform would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a “deepwater spill,” occurring “offshore of the inner Continental shelf,” would not reach the coast. In another assessment, it defined the most likely large spill as totaling 4,600 barrels and forecast that it would largely dissipate within 10 days and would be unlikely to make landfall.
 
“They never did an analysis that took into account what turns out to be the very real possibility of a serious spill,” said Holly Doremus, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has reviewed the documents.
 
The MMS mandates that companies drilling in some areas identify under NEPA what could reduce a project’s environmental impact. But Interior Department spokesman Matt Lee-Ashley said the service grants between 250 and 400 waivers a year for Gulf of Mexico projects. He added that Interior has now established the “first ever” board to examine safety procedures for offshore drilling. It will report back within 30 days on BP’s oil spill and will conduct “a broader review of safety issues,” Lee-Ashley said.
 
BP’s exploration plan for Lease 206, which calls the prospect of an oil spill “unlikely,” stated that “no mitigation measures other than those required by regulation and BP policy will be employed to avoid, diminish or eliminate potential impacts on environmental resources.”
 
While the plan included a 13-page environmental impact analysis, it minimized the prospect of any serious damage associated with a spill, saying there would be only “sub-lethal” effects on fish and marine mammals, and “birds could become oiled. However it is unlikely that an accidental oil spill would occur from the proposed activities.”
 
Kieren Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver “put BP entirely in control” of the way it conducted its drilling. “The agency’s oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum’s self-serving drilling plans,” Suckling said.
 
BP has lobbied the White House Council on Environmental Quality — which provides NEPA guidance for all federal agencies– to provide categorical exemptions more often. In an April 9 letter, BP America’s senior federal affairs director, Margaret D. Laney, wrote to the council that such exemptions should be used in situations where environmental damage is likely to be “minimal or non-existent.” An expansion in these waivers would help “avoid unnecessary paperwork and time delays,” she added.
 
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were talking Tuesday about curtailing offshore oil exploration rather than making it easier. In addition to traditional foes of offshore drilling such as Democratic Sens. Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.), Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and centrists such as Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said they are taking a second look at such methods.
“It’s time to push the pause button,” Baucus told reporters.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june10/oil2_05-05.html
PBS Newshour
Dr. Sylvia Earle
Transcript
JUDY WOODRUFF: And now: the risks to marine life. There has been growing concern among some researchers about whether dispersants used at the bottom of the Gulf could be harmful. BP officials said today that it conducted two tests of the effect of the chemicals and it is assessing the effects.
For more now on the marine life underwater, we turn to Sylvia Earle. She is an oceanographer and explorer in residence at “National Geographic.” She was formerly chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And she has closely studied the Gulf of Mexico.
Sylvia Earle, thank you very much for talking with us.

And while we wait for the bulk of this oil to come ashore, tell us a little bit more about what is going on out in the water, on the surface and underneath. First of all, where is this oil going?

SYLVIA EARLE, oceanographer: A lot of people are focusing on the effects when the oil does eventually come ashore. But the real problem is for the ocean itself and the life that is out there.

And the dispersants, in a sense, compound that problem. They may help apparently get rid of the oil, but it really breaks it up into smaller pieces and adds additional toxins to the system. When you look at the water column, it isn’t just water. It’s filled with life, especially this time of the year, when a lot of the creatures are spawning, such as the little shrimp and other organisms that make the Gulf a living system.

I have been talking to some of my colleagues at the Harte Research Institute down in Corpus Christi. They focus on the Gulf of Mexico. And they’re really concerned about, not just the spill, but also the use of the dispersants, and I think, perhaps most of all, the complacency that so many people seem to have about what is happening in the ocean itself.

The ocean, of course, is where the action is. It is why there is life in the sea, that there — the fact that there — there is that big body of blue water. The blue heart of the planet in the ocean itself.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Take us into the — give us an understanding of what some of that marine life is underwater that is so vital, you were saying to us earlier today, for human life, whether you live on the seashore or anywhere.

SYLVIA EARLE: We’re all dependent on the sea. With every breath we take, every drop of water we drink, we’re connected to the ocean. It doesn’t matter whether you ever see the ocean or not. You’re affected by it. You — you’re life depends on it.

And it is that critical area from the surface down to about 300 feet where most of the action takes place, in terms of small organisms in the sea that take sunlight and generate oxygen, grab carbon dioxide, produce the beginnings of the great food chains in the sea, starting with the little microscopic organisms that then are consumed by the next level of small things, and so on up through the food chain, to creatures as large as dolphins and whales, and, of course, human beings.

The problem is that the toxins that are entering the sea and have been entering the sea from other sources now for decades, go up the food chain, concentrate the further up you go. The older and bigger fish are the ones that are accumulating the — the most of these toxins.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And I hear…

SYLVIA EARLE: Those are the ones, of course, that we target for eating.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And I hear you saying it is not just the oil itself. It is these chemical dispersants that are being used to make the oil — actually, to change the shape of the oil, the form of the oil, and to make it safer as it comes on land.
But you’re saying that may do more damage to what is underwater.

SYLVIA EARLE: Well, studies have been done on these dispersants. They’re like detergents, if you will, that break down the oils and make them seem to go away.
And what actually happens, of course, is that they take a different form, and they’re still in the ocean. And those studies that have been done in connection, for example, with the Exxon Valdez spill and elsewhere in the world, this doesn’t really the problem. It just makes the appearance of a place look better. And it keeps the oil from going into the beaches.
If the beaches are the focus of your concern, that’s a good thing. But if you’re looking at the state of the ocean and the health of the ocean, it’s not a good thing. And we all should be concerned about the health of the ocean, because our health, our lives depend on keeping the ocean in good shape.
Now, we have done so many things to the sea in the last 50 years or so, taking large quantities of wildlife out, putting large quantities of various trash and toxins into the sea. And, already, the ocean is stressed. This is just one more big insult to the injuries already felt.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to quote to you something that — we had an engineer, a man named Kenneth Arnold, on the program last night, who has worked for a number of oil companies. He’s been in the oil industry all his — throughout his career.
And he said, yes, this is a terrible accident, but, essentially, he said, accidents will happen. We learn from them. We move on, and it will be safer — drilling of all kinds will be safer in the future.

SYLVIA EARLE: Well, I think that is true. I think the oil industry has learned from past experiences. And a certain kind of complacency, I think, had begun to set in, because drilling, as such, has become safer over the years, so much so that the big problems that we have experienced in recent times have been from the transport of oil, not from the drilling.
I mean, there is not a — there is no such thing as a no-impact drilling activity, but they have minimized the — the effects, and really had come to believe, many of us had, that the attention should be focused elsewhere.
But you can never put down your guard when working in extreme environments, especially depths of the sort that we’re talking about here, a mile underwater. It is really hard to — as we now are discovering, people knew in advance that this was a tough environment to — if something should go wrong, how do you fix it?
Well, precautions were taken, but not enough.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Oceanographer Sylvia Earle, thank you very much for talking with us. We appreciate it.
SYLVIA EARLE: Thank you.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/06/tech/main6464474.shtml

 As Americans anxiously wait for a slick in the Gulf of Mexico to wash up along the coast, globules of oil are already falling to the bottom of the sea, where they threaten virtually every link in the ocean food chain, from plankton to fish on dinner tables everywhere.

Meanwhile, a giant concrete-and-steel box seen as the best short-term solution to bottling up the disastrous oil was loaded onto a boat Wednesday and the 100-ton (90-metric ton) contraption began its journey to the leak site about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast.

Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of at least 200,000 gallons (755,000 liters) a day since an offshore drilling rig exploded last month and killed 11 people. Officials hope to lower the concrete-and-steel box the size of a four-story building to the bottom of the sea by week’s end to capture some of the oil.

For marine life, though, the damage is already done, experts said.

“The threat to the deep-sea habitat is already a done deal it is happening now,” said Paul Montagna, a marine scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Hail-size gobs of oil the consistency of tar or asphalt will roll around the sea’s bottom, while other bits will get trapped hundreds of feet (meters) below the surface and move with the current, said Robert S. Carney, a Louisiana State University oceanographer.

Food Chain Impact

Scientists say bacteria, plankton and other tiny, bottom-feeding creatures will consume oil, and will then be eaten by small fish, crabs and shrimp. They, in turn, will be eaten by bigger fish, such as red snapper, and marine mammals like sea turtles.

The petroleum substances that concentrate in the sea creatures could kill them or render them unsafe for eating, scientists say.

“If the oil settles on the bottom, it will kill the smaller organisms like the copepods and small worms,” Montagna said. “When we lose the forage, then you have an impact on the larger fish.”

Making matters worse for the deep sea is the leaking well’s location: It is near the continental shelf of the Gulf where a string of coral reefs flourish. Coral is a living creature that excretes a hard calcium carbonate exoskeleton, and oil globs can kill it.

CBSNews.com Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf
Gulf Oil Spill, by the Numbers

The reefs are colorful underwater metropolises of biodiversity, attracting sea sponges, crabs, fish, algae and octopus.

“In my mind, they are at least as sensitive to contamination to oil as coastal habitat,” said James Cowan, an oceanographer at Louisiana State. “They are in deeper water, so they are kind of out of sight, out of mind.”

There are other important habitats in shallower waters, such as an ancient oyster shell reef off the Mississippi and Alabama coasts. It is a vital nursery ground for red snapper and habitat for sponges, soft corals and starfish.

Scientists are watching carefully to see whether the slick will hitch a ride to the East Coast by way of a powerful tide known as the “loop current,” which could send the spill around Florida and into the Atlantic Ocean. If that happens, the oil could foul beaches and kill marine life on the East Coast.

“Once it’s in the loop current, that’s the worst case,” said Steve DiMarco, an oceanographer with Texas A&M University-College Station. “Then that oil could wind up along the Keys and transported out to the Atlantic.”

The Gulf ecosystem is already stressed by fertilizer and other farm runoff from the Mississippi River and the loss of wetlands to erosion and development. About 2,100 square miles (1,345,000 acres) of wetlands have disappeared since the 1930s in southern Louisiana.

Every summer, algae caused by fertilizer runoff sucks up the oxygen in a large patch of the Gulf, creating a “dead zone” from which all sorts of sea creatures must escape. This year, they will be swimming into waters fouled by the oil spill.

“We’re always wondering when we may reach the point where straw breaks the camel’s back,” Montagna said. “At some point you have to wonder if we will see catastrophic losses.”

http://www.abc-7.com/global/story.asp?S=12445470&clienttype=generic&mobilecgbypass
Florida voters re-think offshore oil drilling

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida voters have reversed their view on drilling off of the state’s coast, according to new poll released by Mason-Dixon.

Statewide, only 35% currently support offshore drilling, while a 55% majority are now opposed to it.

That is in stark contrast to a poll conducted 11 months ago, where 55% of the state’s voters were in favor of offshore drilling and only 31% were opposed.

Support for drilling peaked at 61% in August 2008, amid the soaring price of gasoline nationwide and rising concerns about energy independence.
OFFSHORE DRILLING SUPPORT SupportOpposeUnd.August 200861%32%7%April 200959%28%13%June 200955%31%14%May 201035%55%10%
Mason-Dixon analyst Brad Coker notes opposition is now widespread, with strong majorities opposed in four of the state’s five major regions. A small plurality in North Florida (47%) is still in favor of drilling, but opposition is between 54% and 60% in the rest of the state.

Coker says Republicans are now the only group to still favor drilling (57%), but even that support has dropped significantly. In June 2009, 80% of GOP voters backed it, but that support has now declined by 23-points. Additionally, support among Democrats has dropped from 36% to 19% and independents who favor it slid from 51% to 27%.

HOW THE POLL WAS CONDUCTED
This poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C. from May 3 through May 5, 2010. A total of 625 registered voters were interviewed statewide by telephone. All stated they vote regularly in state elections.

Those interviewed were selected by the random variation of the last four digits of telephone numbers. A cross-section of exchanges was utilized and quotas were assigned to reflect voter turn-out by county.

The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus 4 percentage points. This means that there is a 95 percent probability that the “true” figure would fall within that range if all voters were surveyed. The margin for error is higher for any subgroup, such as a gender or party grouping.

special thanks to Richard Charter

McClatchy New Service
May 8, 2010

 http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/07/v-print/93761/despite-spill-feds-still-giving.html
Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: May 08, 2010 03:29:10 AM

WASHINGTON  Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday  the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling

The exemptions, known as “categorical exclusions,” were granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.

“Is there a moratorium on off shore drilling or not?” asked Peter Galvin, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration’s continued approval of the exemptions. “Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred and nothing appears to have changed.”

MMS officials said the exemptions are continuing to be issued because they do not represent final drilling approval.

To drill, a company has to file a separate application under a process that is now suspended because of Salazar’s order Thursday.

However, officials could not say whether the exemptions would stand once the moratorium is lifted.

MMS’ approvals are expected to spark new criticism of the troubled agency and the administration’s response to the spill.

Salazar announced Thursday that there’d be no new offshore drilling until the Interior Department completes the safety review process requested by Obama. The department is required to deliver the report to the president by May 28.

Given the MMS approvals, however, Galvin said the administration’s pledge appears disingenuous.

“It looks to me like they’re misleading the public,” he said.

MMS spokesman David Smith said his agency conducts a thorough review before it determines whether to grant such exemptions.

“It’s not a rubber stamp,” he said.

BP did not return calls for comment.

MMS set out rules that allow for the exemptions from some environmental requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as long as the sites in question are not relying on new or unusual technology, or within high seismic risk areas, or within the boundaries of marine sanctuaries or in regions with hazardous bottom conditions. MMS also assesses the impact on biological and archeological resources.

In the gulf, Smith said, MMS has a “wealth of environmental data” from studies of the region that it can rely on when reviewing the requests from the energy firms.

That’s why oil and gas companies that were given the exemptions said the approvals were routine and shouldn’t have raised any environmental concerns.

Apache Corp. said it was granted four exemptions for updating production equipment and drilling wells on existing sites and for drilling in the vicinity of an existing site. Appropriate environmental studies were conducted before the purchase of the leases for those sites, said Bill Mintz, a spokesman with Apache.

“We followed the procedures and the government didn’t change the procedures,” said Mintz. “The decisions are made according to rules in a framework that has been established.”

Anadarko also cited a previous environmental assessment of a site where it applied for a waiver.

“Protecting the environment and the safety of our personnel are our highest priorities,” said John Christiansen, a Anadarko spokesman, Walter Oil & Gas also received one for a survey of an existing site off the coast of Louisiana.
Environmentalists, however, say that MMS’ checklist for determining whether to grant such exemptions are far too broad and relies on sweeping environmental impact studies that are undertaken before the purchase of leases.

Holly Doremus, a professor of law at Boalt Hall, University of California at Berkeley, said MMS has had a culture of minimizing environmental reviews of oil and gas development dating back to its inception in 1982.

“That’s related to the fact that oil companies have a great deal of power over MMS and there hasn’t been much oversight,” she said. “My guess is that these things are routinely being signed off on as categorical exclusions even though they deserve a closer look.”

Other companies that received the waivers include: Shell, Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corporation, Royal Exploration Company, Inc., MCX Gulf of Mexico, Tana Exploration Company, Tarpon Operating & Development, Rooster Petroleum, Phoenix Exploration Company, and Hall-Houston Exploration III.

Tracy L. Austin, spokeswoman for Mitsubishi International Corporation, which owns MCX Gulf of Mexico, said she could not comment on MMS’ handling of the exemptions overall.

“While we understand that the MMS has come under criticism for failing to adequately regulate the industry, with respect to our operations, we believe the MMS has acted responsibly,” she said.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have already called for reform of MMS after news that BP was granted on exemption for the Deepwater Horizon site. That waiver was first reported by the Washington Post.

“If the conclusion is we need new regulation to prevent something like this from happening again, we’d welcome that because we believe we operate in a safe and environmentally responsible manner,” said Mintz with Apache. “But right now, the current rules say certain activities can proceed based on the studies that have been done.”

In 2008, a series of government watchdog reports implicated a dozen current and former employees of the MMS in inappropriate or unethical relationships with industry officials.

The reports described “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” in the Royalty in Kind program, in which the government forgoes royalties and takes a share of the oil and gas for resale instead. From 2002 to 2006, nearly a third of the RIK staff socialized with and received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies.