For whom the oil tolls

On April 20th around 10pm local time, a drilling vessel leased by British Petroleum (BP), the “Deepwater Horizon,” exploded, killing eleven workers. At the wellhead, 5,000 feet below the ocean surface, the fail-safe blowout preventer (BOP) did not pinch off the well as it was designed to do. The ruptured well gushes an estimated 5,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon accident mirrors the Ixtoc I accident and spill of 1979.

Deepwater Horizon was still afire when the inevitable question about oil exploration on the continental shelf surfaced: Is offshore drilling for oil worth the risk? The short answer, environmentally and economically, is yes.

We don’t often think about risk—the harm done should an event occur and the probability of that event occurring—until something happens. As an example, I live in a risky home. My home is surrounded by large, shady oak trees. During the summer they keep my house cooler. They add monetarily to the house’s value and lower the cooling cost. They could also crush my house if any of them fell. Obviously, the only safe tree is a horizontal tree; and four tons of wood crashing through my ceiling into my bed could spoil the start to an otherwise lovely day, yet I choose to keep the oaks.

It’s fine to choose to risk your life (and your wife’s), I hear you say, but this is oilmageddon. The rupture endangered more than those people on the drilling platform; it endangers the ecological and economic underpinnings of the area. Birds and turtles are already washing ashore covered in oil. Fish will die. Shrimpers, oystermen, and fishermen can’t work. In all, it will cost billions in lost revenue and cleanup. This is a big deal. Yet, it’s not the end of the vegetation, wildlife, tourism, seafood, or anything else. The states along the gulf coast should be back to normal within a year after BP plugs the leak. Oil has spilled before into the ocean before: naturally, accidentally, and on purpose.

In 1991, Saddam Hussein wanted to ruin everything before his troops withdrew from Kuwait. He ordered destruction of the Kuwaiti oil fields, and had the valves opened at the oil terminal near Kuwait City, dumping between six and eight million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf. At the rate the 25,000 barrels a day, it would take the BP spill eight months to equal six million barrels.

Saddam’s scorched earth policy revealed just what the earth can do. Initial reports from Greenpeace and others were of “unprecedented” destruction of fragile ecological services and possible large-scale extinctions. Similar things are being said now, “We may well be living with the consequences of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill for the rest of the 21st century,” wrote James William Gibson in an editorial printed in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. While Professor Gibson, who teaches sociology at Cal State Long Beach, may be right about the social and political consequences, he widely misses the mark by 99 years for the environmental consequences. The effects probably won’t last two years, let alone a century.

Just one year after the largest marine oil spill in human history, a team of researchers from the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at Unesco found little lasting damage to the coral and fisheries. The area’s animal life was in better shape than the most optimistic pundits had predicted—after only one year. Oil evaporates, breaks up, gets digested by microbes, and becomes annoying bits of tar.

BP did not intend to spill the oil, at least in part, because they are responsible for the cleanup. The costs will likely run into the billions. Yet, “The Economics of Allowing More U.S. Oil Drilling” printed by the conservative American Enterprise Institute considered the environmental costs along with benefits and found onoffshore drilling more than worth the risk. The authors, economists Robert Hahn and Peter Passell, analyzed production costs and externality costs such as clean-up costs, lost productivity due to traffic congestion, health costs, and greenhouse gas. The results indicate that even at a price of $50 per barrel the economic benefits greatly outweigh the cost. And the cost of this oil spill could rival the Exxon Valdez cleanup of $12.5 billion.

While the cleanup goes on, the question of what went wrong is already being debated. The Congress has opened hearings but I don’t expect that will tell us much because the people on both sides of the table will be posturing.

Strangely enough, the answer to the question of whether we should drill or not drill is technological and only nominally political. We have already voted with our wallets. Now we might not allow the drilling in our backyard, but that hardly matters does it? We need our fix. Get it from the North Sea or Nigeria, but get it. In the meantime, as we watch the oil slick grow in the gulf and watch endless loops of oily birds being cared for, remember this: the mess is not permanent.

The federal National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has excellent resources on this and other oil spills:

• Cumulative Trajectory Maps
• Oil Spill Downloads
• Fisheries Downloads
• Oil and Coral Publications
• Assessment and Restoration