A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [71]
Tony Hayward gets a fourteen-page letter from Democratic Congressmen Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak. The letter contains nothing he hasn’t already heard and everything he won’t affirm. “Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense,” the lawmakers write. “If this is what happened,” they venture, “BP’s carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig.”
President Obama visits the Gulf for a fourth time, trying to boost tourism by eating in local restaurants. He acknowledges the tragedy and—responding to public criticism—speaks more harshly about BP.
The White House is also pressuring BP to put tens of billions of dollars into an escrow account. As one of the world’s three largest oil companies, BP generates $8 billion to $9 billion every quarter. It spends $5 billion to $6 billion a quarter. The difference—$2 to $4 billion—is its average profit every three months. Under the corporation-shielding federal liability cap, BP is legally on the hook for just $75 million—which, for perspective, is 1.25 percent of BP’s $6 billion first quarter profit this year. If Obama can simply strong-arm billions out of BP, it will be a stunning and masterful coup.
But, needless to say, many Senate Republicans are accusing Democrats and the White House of trying to exploit the oil “politically.” They also accuse Democrats of using the calamity in the Gulf to push “a job-killing climate change bill.” It’s a terrible irony that the blowout has dampened—not whetted—what little appetite there had been in the U.S. Senate to cap greenhouse gas emissions. That’s a shame, because we really need an energy bill that puts people to work in new jobs, building the energy future. Without taking from this event a propelling motivation toward new jobs for new energy, the whole blowout becomes simply a calamity, with no lessons learned, no upside, no value added in honor of the lives lost and the lives so changed. South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham had worked on a climate-change bill for months, but has pronounced it hopeless.
How much oil? The company is now funneling about 16,000 barrels a day from its leaky containment cap to a collecting ship. Federally convened experts currently estimate that the well has been spewing 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day. Every new official estimate is higher than the previous one. Asked how much he thinks is leaking, our Thadmiral demurs: “That’s the $100,000 question.” He later adds that he believes the figure is closer to the low end of the new estimate, 35,000 barrels. Of course, for weeks he’d acquiesced to 5,000. BP’s chief operating officer now says that by the end of June, BP plans to be able to capture more than 50,000 barrels a day.
Meanwhile, oil blobs and slicks coming ashore between eastern Alabama and Pensacola provoke Orange Beach’s mayor to rail, “BP isn’t giving us what we need. We’re screaming for more. We want to skim it before it gets here.”
A year after the Exxon Valdez ran aground, lawmakers passed the federal Oil Pollution Act to ensure a quick and effective response to oil spills. Every region of the country was required to have a tailored contingency plan.
But the plans amount to what the oil industry says on paper, not a demonstration of what it can do—or what might be needed. The Gulf plan considers a blowout of 240,000 barrels a day into the Gulf for at least one hundred days, far worse than the current leak—yet it declares that “no significant adverse impacts are expected” to beaches, wetlands, or wildlife.
The Minerals Management Service approved that plan. The Thadmiral now says the response has been “adequate to the assumptions in the plans.” He adds, “I think you need to go back and question the assumptions.”
Thank you, Thadmiral. That’s been tried.