Further thoughts on deepwater horizon
Posted on | May 3, 2010 | 2 Comments
The Gulf of Mexico drill rig disaster is casting a growing shadow on the discipline, if that’s the correct word, of oil spill prevention, cleanup and response.
Not since the EXXON VALDEZ incident, more than two decades ago, has so much attention been focussed on “measures taken” and “lessons learned.”
There will, we can be sure, be many lessons learned.. One is that the marine environment and its protection is of great political and economic significance.
When a few friends and I formed the North American Marine Environment Protection Association (NAMEPA), three years ago, it was with an awareness that the private sector, the government, engineers and scientists still had to reckon with the peculiar nature of oil spills, particularly those involving large quantities of the stuff.
What we have before us in the Gulf of Mexico is the greatest field test of our abatement and response systems, that has ever been.
Tragically, eleven lives have been lost, and an untold amount of damage already done. I can’t help the feeling, however, that we are now, after a gap of 20 years, face to face with the “beast” — the overriding issue of how to make the system work better.
There is plenty of room for second thoughts, starting with the need for our Congress to adequately fund the said system.
Budget changes should be an early, and welcome, casualty of the unfolding tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico.
Comments
2 Responses to “Further thoughts on deepwater horizon”
Leave a Reply
May 10th, 2010 @ 2:00 am
Congress? No, I think not. It is for the explorers who profit from their successes to develop and deploy adequate measures to mitigate their mistakes. I believe this incident makes it very clear that assurances made of containment and cleanup in the case of a deepwater spill were at best optimistic, at worst false.
May 11th, 2010 @ 6:55 pm
BP’s frantic efforts to place a ‘top hat’ on the 1.5 mile deep well head to try to capture the escaping oil appear to be of an experimental nature, this ‘solution’ never having been used before. This accidental blow-out surely will (and must) challenge existing conceptions of what constitutes proper environmental risk assessment and control. Murphy’s Law tells us that if something can go wrong, it will. If we accept this, can we also accept that we must be properly prepared for the worst case scenario and have in place tried and tested containment measures that can be rolled out immediately? The deciding factor is affordability. But, who decides what is financiallly affordable? Most likely, a combination of different interests (government through legislation, industry through self-regulation, the general public through the usual political processes …). The process of decision-making is never clear-cut and always long in duration. Meanwhile, the gushing oil well continues to escape all human and technical control – much like the ash clouds of the Icelandic volcano, which also continues to do just what it likes!.