(Aired on July 6, 2010)
Do the words Piper Alpha ring a bell? They didn't to me, until I started doing a little research. The Piper Alpha was an oil platform in the North Sea that blew up, killing 167 people. It was 22 years ago today. In terms of loss of life, it was the worst offshore oil well disaster in history.
In the Gulf of Mexico, just over 60 kilometres off the coast of Louisiana, another disaster is evolving. So far, the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill has taken only 11 lives. But the explosion happened on April 20 - more than 75 days ago - and the gusher continues to flow. It is already the worst environmental disaster in American history, and is rapidly becoming one of the worst in the history of the world. In addition to the 6500 square kilometre slick on the surface of the water, there are reports of huge plumes of oil beneath the surface.
The reason I bring up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill once again today is not because there have been any significant new developments. Indeed, the plan is still to get the relief wells in place by August, and then perhaps we can see the flow of oil stemmed. But instead, I bring this up because I know it will take a concerted effort to keep this disaster as a part of our consciousness.
When it's watching news coverage, the public likes to see sexy pictures - oil gushing, rigs exploding, that kind of thing. That's just the way it is. But the pictures in this story are no longer sexy. It doesn't take too long to get tired of watching sludge lapping at the Louisiana shoreline, and that's how the story gets knocked out of the headlines.
So this is me reminding you, cajoling you, drilling it into your head. Please, don't forget.
Showing posts with label Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Show all posts
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Do We Really Oppose Tanker Traffic?
(Aired on June 22, 2010)
Federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has certainly gained support among many British Columbians for his announcement yesterday that his party is opposing oil tanker traffic on the B.C. coast. Ignatieff says it only makes sense to protect a very sensitive area of the province.
While environmental groups, and certainly the big percentage of the citizens of the province, 80% of us in a recent poll, oppose the traffic, big business isn't so happy with Ignatieff's remarks. They come as Enbridge is working through the red tape trying establish an oil pipeline that would wind up in Kitimat, and ship oil by tanker down the coast. Enbridge officials are crying foul, claiming that tanker traffic has never been a problem in B.C. Of course, by that same token, no one working on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico had any problems before last month's oil spill that is currently devastating the environment in that area.
In fact, there were 25 million barrels of oil shipped by tanker from B.C. ports last year. It's a sensitive issue. On the one hand, we are so dependent on oil, and unless we want to stop driving, we have to get the oil from somewhere. Most of it is shipped somewhere by tanker. So a spill of the magnitude of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska is always possible. No one wants to see the disaster caused by such a spill. But what are we prepared to sacrifice if oil sits in the ground instead of our gas tank? What price are we prepared to pay to stop oil tanker traffic? It's easy to talk the the talk, but at the end of the day, are you willing to pay the price? And that's the issue the government has to deal with. You're concerned about gas at the pumps in Kamloops today rising to 1.06 a liter? What happens if it doubles or triples because we shut down tanker traffic?
The principle is a good one. I support it. But I honestly don't know how many of us would if push came to shove and we had to put our money where our mouth is.
Federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has certainly gained support among many British Columbians for his announcement yesterday that his party is opposing oil tanker traffic on the B.C. coast. Ignatieff says it only makes sense to protect a very sensitive area of the province.
While environmental groups, and certainly the big percentage of the citizens of the province, 80% of us in a recent poll, oppose the traffic, big business isn't so happy with Ignatieff's remarks. They come as Enbridge is working through the red tape trying establish an oil pipeline that would wind up in Kitimat, and ship oil by tanker down the coast. Enbridge officials are crying foul, claiming that tanker traffic has never been a problem in B.C. Of course, by that same token, no one working on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico had any problems before last month's oil spill that is currently devastating the environment in that area.
In fact, there were 25 million barrels of oil shipped by tanker from B.C. ports last year. It's a sensitive issue. On the one hand, we are so dependent on oil, and unless we want to stop driving, we have to get the oil from somewhere. Most of it is shipped somewhere by tanker. So a spill of the magnitude of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska is always possible. No one wants to see the disaster caused by such a spill. But what are we prepared to sacrifice if oil sits in the ground instead of our gas tank? What price are we prepared to pay to stop oil tanker traffic? It's easy to talk the the talk, but at the end of the day, are you willing to pay the price? And that's the issue the government has to deal with. You're concerned about gas at the pumps in Kamloops today rising to 1.06 a liter? What happens if it doubles or triples because we shut down tanker traffic?
The principle is a good one. I support it. But I honestly don't know how many of us would if push came to shove and we had to put our money where our mouth is.
Friday, June 18, 2010
BP's Payout Fund Completely Irrelevant
(Aired on June 16, 2010)
BP announced today that it will set aside $20-billion to pay the victims of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This announcement, of course, is completely irrelevant.
It means nothing. It wouldn't matter if BP said it will set aside a zillion-kajillion dollars, and it wouldn't matter if the total was $10. BP had earlier said that it will pay for the damages caused by the oil spill. That's the statement the company should be held to. Any attempt to put a dollar value on the damages at this stage of the game is completely ridiculous. The company hasn't even stopped the flow of oil into the gulf yet, so it has no idea how much just that action will cost. To say then that they will set aside $20-billion for the victims is completely premature. No one knows ultimately how much damage this will cause and how many victims the spill will claim.
BP's Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, also issued an apology today for what it calls a "tragic accident" - an apology that is likely meant to head off any court proceedings. Once again, Svanberg apologized to the American people, but this may amount to being a disaster that impacts the entire hemisphere, not just one country.
There is no room for middle ground here. This company has to be held to account completely for what has happened.
The number that BP has come up with - $20-billion - has clearly been pulled completely out of thin air, and must be an attempt by the company to put a cap on how much it will pay out. We now how successful BP is at putting caps on things that are out of control. The company won't have any more success with this cap.BP announced today that it will set aside $20-billion to pay the victims of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This announcement, of course, is completely irrelevant.
It means nothing. It wouldn't matter if BP said it will set aside a zillion-kajillion dollars, and it wouldn't matter if the total was $10.
BP had earlier said that it will pay for the damages caused by the oil spill. That's the statement the company should be held to. Any attempt to put a dollar value on the damages at this stage of the game is completely ridiculous. The company hasn't even stopped the flow of oil into the gulf yet, so it has no idea how much just that action will cost. To say then that they will set aside $20-billion for the victims is completely premature. No one knows ultimately how much damage this will cause and how many victims the spill will claim.
BP's Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, also issued an apology today for what it calls a "tragic accident" - an apology that is likely meant to head off any court proceedings. Once again, Svanberg apologized to the American people, but this may amount to being a disaster that impacts the entire hemisphere, not just one country.
There is no room for middle ground here. This company has to be held to account completely for what has happened.
The number that BP has come up with - $20-billion - has clearly been pulled completely out of thin air, and must be an attempt by the company to put a cap on how much it will pay out. We now how successful BP is at putting caps on things that are out of control. The company won't have any more success with this cap.
BP announced today that it will set aside $20-billion to pay the victims of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This announcement, of course, is completely irrelevant.
It means nothing. It wouldn't matter if BP said it will set aside a zillion-kajillion dollars, and it wouldn't matter if the total was $10. BP had earlier said that it will pay for the damages caused by the oil spill. That's the statement the company should be held to. Any attempt to put a dollar value on the damages at this stage of the game is completely ridiculous. The company hasn't even stopped the flow of oil into the gulf yet, so it has no idea how much just that action will cost. To say then that they will set aside $20-billion for the victims is completely premature. No one knows ultimately how much damage this will cause and how many victims the spill will claim.
BP's Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, also issued an apology today for what it calls a "tragic accident" - an apology that is likely meant to head off any court proceedings. Once again, Svanberg apologized to the American people, but this may amount to being a disaster that impacts the entire hemisphere, not just one country.
There is no room for middle ground here. This company has to be held to account completely for what has happened.
The number that BP has come up with - $20-billion - has clearly been pulled completely out of thin air, and must be an attempt by the company to put a cap on how much it will pay out. We now how successful BP is at putting caps on things that are out of control. The company won't have any more success with this cap.BP announced today that it will set aside $20-billion to pay the victims of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This announcement, of course, is completely irrelevant.
It means nothing. It wouldn't matter if BP said it will set aside a zillion-kajillion dollars, and it wouldn't matter if the total was $10.
BP had earlier said that it will pay for the damages caused by the oil spill. That's the statement the company should be held to. Any attempt to put a dollar value on the damages at this stage of the game is completely ridiculous. The company hasn't even stopped the flow of oil into the gulf yet, so it has no idea how much just that action will cost. To say then that they will set aside $20-billion for the victims is completely premature. No one knows ultimately how much damage this will cause and how many victims the spill will claim.
BP's Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, also issued an apology today for what it calls a "tragic accident" - an apology that is likely meant to head off any court proceedings. Once again, Svanberg apologized to the American people, but this may amount to being a disaster that impacts the entire hemisphere, not just one country.
There is no room for middle ground here. This company has to be held to account completely for what has happened.
The number that BP has come up with - $20-billion - has clearly been pulled completely out of thin air, and must be an attempt by the company to put a cap on how much it will pay out. We now how successful BP is at putting caps on things that are out of control. The company won't have any more success with this cap.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
BP Turning into the Big Bad Wolf
(Aired on May 26, 2010)
Between right now and the time I finish this editorial, 7 barrels of oil will have flowed from the Deepwater Horizon spill into the Gulf of Mexico. And that's if you use numbers provided by British Petroleum. If you use numbers being put forward by other experts, the spill is increasing by 20-times that rate. That means during the duration of this editorial, 140 barrels of oil will have spilled.
Today, BP started pouring heavy mud into the wellhead to see if it can stem the flow. That would be followed by concrete, and then supposedly we'd never hear of that well again. It is becoming more and more unbelievable that safeguards weren't in place to prevent the environmental catastrophe that continues to unfold. As I mentioned shortly after the well explosion happened, the installation of a $500,000 acoustic switch likely would have prevented this spill.
But then again, the lack of regard for anything but pure profit seems to be what BP is all about. Five years ago, BP was sued when some of its employees died in a refinery explosion in Texas. It was alleged that the company was housing employees in structures that were vulnerable to explosion during the workday. As a lawyer was researching the suit, he found an internal BP memo that crassly plugged the employees lives into a cost benefit framework. In other words, each lost life was assigned a dollar value and measured against the cost of protecting that life by upgrading the structure. The memo used the Three Little Pigs as a metaphor - in other words, what would it cost to build a straw house, a wood house, or a brick house?
In the end, the memo concluded that fully protecting its employees lives was not worth the lost profits the company would incur. BP fundamentally reneged on its responsibility to protect its employees, and now it has done the same for protecting the environment.
Having said that, there's another 140 barrels of oil down the drain.
Between right now and the time I finish this editorial, 7 barrels of oil will have flowed from the Deepwater Horizon spill into the Gulf of Mexico. And that's if you use numbers provided by British Petroleum. If you use numbers being put forward by other experts, the spill is increasing by 20-times that rate. That means during the duration of this editorial, 140 barrels of oil will have spilled.
Today, BP started pouring heavy mud into the wellhead to see if it can stem the flow. That would be followed by concrete, and then supposedly we'd never hear of that well again. It is becoming more and more unbelievable that safeguards weren't in place to prevent the environmental catastrophe that continues to unfold. As I mentioned shortly after the well explosion happened, the installation of a $500,000 acoustic switch likely would have prevented this spill.
But then again, the lack of regard for anything but pure profit seems to be what BP is all about. Five years ago, BP was sued when some of its employees died in a refinery explosion in Texas. It was alleged that the company was housing employees in structures that were vulnerable to explosion during the workday. As a lawyer was researching the suit, he found an internal BP memo that crassly plugged the employees lives into a cost benefit framework. In other words, each lost life was assigned a dollar value and measured against the cost of protecting that life by upgrading the structure. The memo used the Three Little Pigs as a metaphor - in other words, what would it cost to build a straw house, a wood house, or a brick house?
In the end, the memo concluded that fully protecting its employees lives was not worth the lost profits the company would incur. BP fundamentally reneged on its responsibility to protect its employees, and now it has done the same for protecting the environment.
Having said that, there's another 140 barrels of oil down the drain.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Is the BP Spill the Chernobyl of Our Time?
(Aired on May 7, 2010)
With the occurrence of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 - and the subsequent Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 - the nuclear energy debate was never the same. In fact, the potential inherent in nuclear energy has been sullied ever since. It will be interesting to see if the current disaster unfolding off the Gulf Coast of Louisiana will have the same effect on offshore drilling for oil.
Crews are trying to position what's best described as a contraption atop the spill to siphon some of it off into a tanker. But this is the first time it's ever been tried, and there are no guarantees as to its success. The sad thing about this whole mess is that it could have been prevented, and pretty cheaply. British Petroleum chose not install a device called an "acoustic switch" on the wellhead deep beneath the surface. An acoustic switch is a backup safety device that would have allowed officials to have relieved the pressure remotely. As it is now, thousands of barrels of oil are flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every day. Had the switch been in place, much of the damage could have prevented.
And here's the kicker; an acoustic switch costs approximately $500,000. That's absolutely a pittance for a company like B.P., and pales in comparison to the cost of the damage that this disaster has caused. It likely would not have prevented the explosion and the loss of 11 lives, but it could have prevented what may turn out to be one of the worst environmental disasters of our time.
If Canada and British Columbia ever pursue drilling off our Pacific coastline, we can't leave it up to companies to make their own safety rules. This disaster in particular should prove that any and all safety devices need to be installed and maintained in large scale drilling operations. The nuclear debate hasn't recovered since Chernobyl, and offshore oil drilling may never recover from this.
With the occurrence of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 - and the subsequent Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 - the nuclear energy debate was never the same. In fact, the potential inherent in nuclear energy has been sullied ever since. It will be interesting to see if the current disaster unfolding off the Gulf Coast of Louisiana will have the same effect on offshore drilling for oil.
Crews are trying to position what's best described as a contraption atop the spill to siphon some of it off into a tanker. But this is the first time it's ever been tried, and there are no guarantees as to its success. The sad thing about this whole mess is that it could have been prevented, and pretty cheaply. British Petroleum chose not install a device called an "acoustic switch" on the wellhead deep beneath the surface. An acoustic switch is a backup safety device that would have allowed officials to have relieved the pressure remotely. As it is now, thousands of barrels of oil are flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every day. Had the switch been in place, much of the damage could have prevented.
And here's the kicker; an acoustic switch costs approximately $500,000. That's absolutely a pittance for a company like B.P., and pales in comparison to the cost of the damage that this disaster has caused. It likely would not have prevented the explosion and the loss of 11 lives, but it could have prevented what may turn out to be one of the worst environmental disasters of our time.
If Canada and British Columbia ever pursue drilling off our Pacific coastline, we can't leave it up to companies to make their own safety rules. This disaster in particular should prove that any and all safety devices need to be installed and maintained in large scale drilling operations. The nuclear debate hasn't recovered since Chernobyl, and offshore oil drilling may never recover from this.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Louisiana Oil Spill a Grim Reminder of What Can Happen
(Aired on May 3, 2010)
The tragedy off the Louisiana coast as a disastrous oil spills threatens wildlife and one of the most beautiful coastlines and wildlife sanctuaries in the world points out that man is more often than not his own worst enemy. As crews try to contain a spill that threatens to make the Exxon Valdez pale by comparison, wildlife is already starting to be hit, and it could be decades before it all plays out.
An oil platform blew up, 11 men died, and this was a rig that had a lot of new technology, supposedly technology to prevent these kind of spills from happening. Didn't work. Now the frantic work of containing the spill takes high priority. The cost will be in the billions. The cost to the coastline and the wildlife in some very fragile eco-systems is priceless. Much of that coastline is sensitive shrimp ground. It could be totally destroyed.
And while you're thinking of this, think of the fact that it will happen in our northern Arctic Ocean once drilling starts up there. And it will start up there at some point in time. The big oil interests already seem to think that it's a foregone conclusion. And more problems will occur. And it will happen off the B.C. coast if the province is successful in lobbying Ottawa to lift the offshore drilling ban.
Much of the concern that has been raised in B.C. and the Arctic deals with tanker spills like the Exxon Valdez, but now we're seeing a whole different side of things with the drilling platform explosion. If these kinds of spills can be triggered by an oil rig explosion whose safety devices didn't work to shut off the flow of crude, that puts a large additional risk when it comes to danger signs. We are ill prepared in this country for a spill of any magnitude, wherever it might occur.
The events in Louisiana should perhaps give us a little bit of incentive to get our act together before we start putting the holes in the ground.
The tragedy off the Louisiana coast as a disastrous oil spills threatens wildlife and one of the most beautiful coastlines and wildlife sanctuaries in the world points out that man is more often than not his own worst enemy. As crews try to contain a spill that threatens to make the Exxon Valdez pale by comparison, wildlife is already starting to be hit, and it could be decades before it all plays out.
An oil platform blew up, 11 men died, and this was a rig that had a lot of new technology, supposedly technology to prevent these kind of spills from happening. Didn't work. Now the frantic work of containing the spill takes high priority. The cost will be in the billions. The cost to the coastline and the wildlife in some very fragile eco-systems is priceless. Much of that coastline is sensitive shrimp ground. It could be totally destroyed.
And while you're thinking of this, think of the fact that it will happen in our northern Arctic Ocean once drilling starts up there. And it will start up there at some point in time. The big oil interests already seem to think that it's a foregone conclusion. And more problems will occur. And it will happen off the B.C. coast if the province is successful in lobbying Ottawa to lift the offshore drilling ban.
Much of the concern that has been raised in B.C. and the Arctic deals with tanker spills like the Exxon Valdez, but now we're seeing a whole different side of things with the drilling platform explosion. If these kinds of spills can be triggered by an oil rig explosion whose safety devices didn't work to shut off the flow of crude, that puts a large additional risk when it comes to danger signs. We are ill prepared in this country for a spill of any magnitude, wherever it might occur.
The events in Louisiana should perhaps give us a little bit of incentive to get our act together before we start putting the holes in the ground.
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