A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [86]
Nearly two hundred miles from shore, a $3 billion floating oil platform much larger and more complex than the Deepwater Horizon straddles the deep ocean like a giant steel octopus. Named Perdido (Spanish for “lost”), this colossus pumps oil from dozens of wells in water nearly two miles deep—while simultaneously drilling new ones. The pipelines flowing from wells to rigs like this can be tens of miles long. Compared to this monster, the Deepwater Horizon was a simple little rig with the luxury of focusing on one task in relatively shallow water. Meet the new wave: ultra-deep platforms.
It’s safe, of course. Accidents are rare, as we’ve seen. And also, of course, the stakes—and the risks—increase as the rigs get larger and more complicated.
“Our ability to manage risks hasn’t caught up with our ability to explore and produce in deep water,” says Edward C. Chow, a former oil executive now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Perdido, for example, lies twenty hours away from supply-boat help. It lives in a realm of hundred-mile-an-hour hurricanes and mountainous walls of angry, battering-ram waves. Its delicate underwater equipment and many pipelines feel the insistence of currents and mud slides, but lie far beyond human reach in their own underwater metropolis populated by unmanned submarines and robots. Down there, it’s Dune—but without people.
In 2005, Hurricanes Rita and Katrina damaged or destroyed hundreds of offshore platforms and pipelines. (About thirty thousand miles of pipeline crisscross the Gulf of Mexico seafloor.) The gulf’s oil and gas production shut down for weeks. I hope we don’t someday look back at that as a quaint time of heroic people. Meanwhile, new rigs have recently arrived in the Gulf that can drill in water 12,000 feet deep.
“Going to the moon is hazardous. Going to Mars is even more hazardous,” says University of California professor Robert Bea. “The industry has entered a new domain of vastly increased complexity and increased risks.”
On May 27, Obama had extended the ban on deep exploratory drilling for six months. Today, June 22, a federal judge strikes down the moratorium, saying, “Are all airplanes a danger because one was? All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? That sort of thinking seems heavy-handed, and rather overbearing.”
Of course, that’s not the point. When a plane crashes, hundreds of thousands of people don’t get put out of work, nor do they perceive their communities, livelihoods, and self-identities threatened; an entire region doesn’t lose tens of billions of dollars. That’s a difference. The judge says the six-month moratorium would have an “immeasurable effect” on the industry, the local economy, and the U.S. energy supply. Maybe he can’t measure it, but economists should be able to tell us how many jobs, what overall effects, things like that. All those big robes and that big bench don’t guarantee much. Beware the man behind the curtain.
And yet, I have to admit that even I’m not sure that the Obama moratorium is necessary. It seems that regulators could greatly improve rules and tighten oversight without a moratorium. But I just don’t like the judge’s juvenile logic. His silly comparisons are off base. Rather than blind justice at work, I see a certain blindness. Like most everyone in this mess, he doesn’t grasp the big picture: this isn’t like a plane crash; it’s like aviation safety procedures. There are systemic problems to fix.
In response, the Interior secretary says he will order a new moratorium, one