As we approach the one-year anniversary of BP’s Deepwater Horizon approaches (April 20) and the price of oil is headed north of $100 a barrel, oil companies are looking to get back into the exploration business in the Gulf of Mexico. Tuesday, we covered a new combination oil extraction and processing facility that was approved for use for the first time in the Gulf and now the Interior Department has approved Shell Oil’s proposal for more deep-water exploration.
Seems Shell has had an exploration plan for 26 years for its Auger field lease, which was approved in 1985. A newly approved plan supplements the original plan with a proposal to drill three exploratory wells in approximately 2,950 feet of water 130 miles offshore Louisiana. Those plans, of course, were not included in the 1985 set because back then nobody drilled for oil that deep because the technology to do it didn’t exist.
The Interior Department and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement go to great lengths in their joint press release to sound convincing that Shell’s new plan addresses the newfound safety concerns raised by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. And once Shell has an approved deep-water plan in place, it can propose even more exploratory drilling.
I found this part of the Interior press release especially disturbing:
The SEA [site-specific environmental assessment] included new scientific information that had not been previously available for consideration or analysis. Based on its review, BOEMRE found no evidence that the proposed action would significantly affect the quality of the human environment. Therefore, BOEMRE determined that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was not required and issued a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI), which allowed the supplemental exploration plan to be approved. (emphasis added)
To me, that phrase “human environment” seems to mean the place above the water where we gill-less beings live, not the 3,000 feet of water in which Shell will drill. It sounds like a nice way to shortcut approval and get them boys back a-drillin’. As we saw with Deepwater Horizon, however, the entire Gulf of Mexico, from its briny deeps to the top of its waves to its beaches and estuaries is a human environment. When you pump untold millions of barrels of oil into that environment, the human toll is astronomical. That’s not to mention the animal toll, which the Interior Department doesn’t mention.
Just ask BP — it’s still paying (or not paying, actually) for the toll its spill had on the natural and human environments.
It’s been less than a year since the United States’ worst oil disaster ever, and here we are rushing to get our straws into the reservoir because gas is nudging up toward $4 a gallon again.
But, worse yet, it seems the fail-safe mechanism that everyone is counting on to prevent another disaster — the blowout preventer — doesn’t work. According to a recent study by Det Norske Veritas, the basic design of the blowout preventer that is the standard of the oil industry simply doesn’t work. It didn’t work on Deepwater Horizon and it likely won’t work on the next blowout.
So let’s review: The agencies charged with oversight of the oil drilling industry are relying on outdated safety plans and are relaxing their exclusions to allow for more deep-water oil exploration and drilling, and the main safety mechanism that we’re all relying on to prevent another catastrophic oil spill doesn’t work. Sounds like the makings of another major disaster.
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