A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [52]
BP pegs its chance of success at 60 to 70 percent. (New definition of “pegged”: made up, fabricated.) “We’re doing everything we can to bring it to closure, and actually we’re executing this top kill job as efficiently and effectively as we can,” says BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles.
I don’t know what to make of the word “actually” there. Is he surprised? Or does he know that we know that he’s just BS-ing us?
The University of Texas’s Petroleum Engineering Department chairman watches a live video and says, “It’s not going well.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s failed yet,” says BP’s chief operating officer. With dramatic flair that seems oblivious to the sheer irresponsibility it implies, BP reminds us that the method has never been tried before at such depth. “This is the first time the industry has had to confront this issue in this water depth,” gushes BP’s CEO, the ever-perspicacious Tony Hayward, “and there is a lot of real-time learning going on.”
“We’ve never tried this before in water this deep” is a bad answer when you’ve been drilling in water this deep.
“It’s a wait-and-see game here right now; so far nothing unfavorable.… The absence of any news is good news,” says the chipper Thadmiral.
Thad Allen was a hero in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, yet I find myself unable to believe what he’s telling us. Not entirely fair, but my anger is stoking my cynicism. The impression given—at least the impression I form—is that Admiral Allen is up to his neck in oil and over his head in this debacle. In my mind he becomes government chief of useless statements.
Next, Thad Allen begins talking enthusiastically about BP’s planned “junk shot.” “They’re actually going to take a bunch of debris, shredded-up tires, golf balls, and things like that and under very high pressure shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up and stop the leak.”
There’s that word “actually” again.
It all fails.
Obviously, Admiral Allen has been bugging me. But to be honest, I’m not sure how much of that is him—and how much is me. It’s difficult to maintain one’s objectivity amid so much subjective confusion. The drilling rig wasn’t his responsibility, and he certainly didn’t cause the blowout.
BP announces that it has spent $930 million responding to the spill. The company is acting like an emotionally distant husband seeking appreciation from his wife and children by telling them how much his bills cost.
And rather belatedly, Tony Hayward calls the blowout “a very significant environmental crisis” and a “catastrophe.” After he’d earlier said the oil leaked has been “tiny” compared with the “very big ocean,” his media coaches are earning their fees. But he should try telling us something we don’t already know.
So far, about 26,000 people have filed damage claims.
Researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine Science vessel Weatherbird II report discovering a massive amount of oil-polluted water beneath the Gulf of Mexico, in a layer hundreds of feet thick, down to a depth of well over 3,000 feet, drifting in a several-miles-wide plume stretching twenty-two miles from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Alabama. Chemical oceanographer David Hollander makes this announcement, saying with all due scientific caution that it’s likely oil from the blown-out well.
But really, what else could it be? Let’s review: Oil is gushing from a well. One end of the plume is in the vicinity of that well. And the company running the drilling operation has been spraying dispersants on the seafloor and at the surface to keep as much of the oil underwater as is humanly possible. Scientists have detected oil underwater, ergo—what else could it be from?
“This is when all the animals are reproducing and hatching, so the damage at this depth will be much worse,” says Dr. Larry McKinney of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies. “We’re not talking about adults on the surface; it will impact on the young—and potentially a generational life cycle. At the depth that these