A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [29]
February 1996. The Norwegian-owned, Liberian-flagged, Russian-crewed Sea Empress grounds on the coast of Wales, spilling about 24 million gallons near densely populated seabird nesting rookeries, likely killing over 50,000 birds.
March 23, 2005. An explosion at BP’s Texas refinery kills fifteen people. Determined: “willful negligence.” BP’s $108 million in fines fail to return any of the workers to their family dinner tables but stand as the United States’ highest-ever workplace safety fines. Those record-setting fines represent less than 2 percent of BP’s $6 billion profits for the first three months of 2010.
2005. Great Britain’s Health and Safety Executive issues a warning about a Transocean-owned rig leased by BP in the North Sea, saying the rig’s remote blowout-preventer control panel had not been “maintained in an efficient state, efficient working order and in good repair.” The office also accuses Transocean of bullying and intimidating its North Sea staff.
2006. BP spills 200,000 gallons of oil in Prudhoe Bay. The North Slope’s biggest spill, it is caused by corrosion in poorly maintained equipment. BP is eventually ordered to pay $20 million in fines.
September 14, 2007. In a letter, the Fish and Wildlife Service agrees with the Minerals Management Service’s conclusion that deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico poses no significant risk to endangered species like the brown pelican and the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle. The agencies consider only spills totaling 1,000 to 15,000 barrels. And they say such spills would have less than a one-in-three risk of oiling the critical habitat for either of the endangered species.
October 2009. An environmental assessment for an area of the Gulf covering the site of the Deepwater Horizon blowout (Lease Sale 213) says, “The effect of proposed Lease Sale 213-related oil spills on fish resources and commercial fishing is expected to cause less than a 1 percent decrease in standing stocks of any population, commercial fishing efforts, landings, or value of those landings.” It concludes thus: “There would be very little impact on commercial fishing.”
November 2009. A BP pipeline ruptures in Alaska, releasing about 46,000 gallons of oily gunk onto the tundra.
January 2010. In a letter to the president of BP Exploration (Alaska), Congressmen Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak refer to “a number of personnel incidents involving serious injury or death” and question whether proposed BP budget cuts might threaten the company’s ability to maintain safe operations.
March 4, 2010. President Obama lays out a Gulf Coast plan, “to deal with the catastrophic dangers of rising sea levels, hurricanes, and erosion, and invest in restoring barrier islands and wetlands in Mississippi and Louisiana.” The White House adds, “Unless we stem the rapid rate of loss, Gulf ecosystems and the services they provide will collapse.” And the Department of the Interior adds, “Finally, a president that has said we are going to take charge of this.” This is not about concern over oil leaks. The concern: the Mississippi River Delta has been slowly falling apart for more than half a century. Causes: levees and flood controls built since the 1930s also starve marshes of the sediments and nutrients that created and maintained them; 14 major ship channels have been gouged through the wetlands to inland ports to facilitate Mississippi River commerce; and countless canals and channels have been dug by oil companies for boats, pipelines, and oil-rig servicing.