Background on the BP Oil Spill

1. Background on the BP Oil Spill

2. Deepwater Horizon • Semisubmersible drilling rig • Less affected by waves than ships • Designed in early ‘60’s for off-shore drilling activities • Owned by Transocean ™ • Leased to British Petroleum ™ (BP) • Located 41 miles from Louisiana Coast (Macondo Prospect) • http://www.ngoilgas.com/media/media-news/news-thumb/100421/deepwater_oil_rig.jpg

3. Casing for oil rig • Drilling for a new well ~19,000 feet deep (~3.5 miles) • At the time of the accident, the casing was being made http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Casing-Diagram.jpg

4. Problems with Deepwater Horizon • 2008: 77 people evacuated when rig started to sink. • 2010: Operation behind schedule • 2009-2010: Concerns about high pressure explosion in casing • 2010: • Mud falling into the undersea oil formation, • Sudden gas releases, • A pipe falling into the well, • Several occasions of the blowout preventer leaking fluid • Gas pressure twice as high as it should be

5. Blow-out preventer (BOP) • Blow-out: uncontrolled release of crude oil and/or natural gas from an oil well or gas well after pressure control systems have failed. • BOP: A large valve or series of valves that can seal off an oil or natural gas well being drilled

6. Blow-out (gusher) http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasGasStations/BeaumontGusherPCTem.jpg

7. BP Well head • Fitted with a BOP • Not fitted with remote-control or acoustically-activated triggers for use in case of an emergency evacuation • Modifications to the BOP were made that increased its risk of failure • US Minerals Management Service did not require remote-control or acoustically-activated triggers (unlike in Norway and Brazil) • Unreported damage to BOP (60 Minutes)

8. The Explosion • On April 20, an explosion aboard the rig killed 11 crew members and triggered the spill. • Abnormal pressure accumulated inside the marine riser and as it came up it "expanded rapidly and ignited”—a blowout • The explosion was followed by a fire that engulfed the platform

9. The Spill • The well is gushing as much as 60,000 barrels of crude a day into the ocean • BP is capturing some of the leaking oil through two systems near the seafloor that are diverting crude and natural gas to vessels on the Gulf’s surface. (06-28-10) • BP is installing and testing a riser for a third oil-collection vessel (06-28-10)

10. Plugging the well • Plugging the well will be difficult because the column of mud BP will pump into the wellbore must have a higher pressure than the rocks under it • BP agreed this month to set aside $20 billion in an independently managed account to cover cleanup costs and compensation claims from people affected by the spill.

11. Mississippi Delta was already in trouble • The delta marsh protects the city from hurricanes by absorbing the excess water from a hurricane • The Mississippi Delta is disappearing (football field of marshland lost every 38 minutes) due to • Levees- save New Orleans from flooding but prevent flooding from the Mississippi River which return sediment to the marshes-without the sediment, the marshes sink • Canals-Used for oil transportation, but removed land from the marshes • Canals-Allows salt water into delta which destroys the marshes • Studies have shown that global warming increases the intensity of storms and hurricanes (Dr. Kerry Emanuel of M.I.T)

12. Coast 2050 not funded (Bush Administration) • Coast 2050--a blueprint for restoring coastal Louisiana, devised by Louisiana's Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and all 20 of the state's coastal parishes (counties)-14 billion dollars • Bush administration supported plan to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most promising projects of Coast 2050

13. The cost of repair • Largest environmental restoration project in the nation’s history, far surpassing the $12 billion cost to repair Florida's Everglades. • Estimate: $50 billion spread out over thirty years • Federal government will want BP to pay– BP will claim that their was damage prior to spill and the Fed. Gov. should pays • Gulf provides 1.2 billion pounds of fresh seafood and produces 30 percent of the nation's domestic crude oil production • Fed. Gov. must balance nature against jobs and billons of dollars in annual revenue • Recommendation: Gulf of Mexico Restoration Trust Fund, built from a per-barrel tax on oil http://fredericksburg.com/News/Web/politico?p_id=2313

14. Assessing the Damage • Natural Resource Damage Assessment, is required by a federal law imposed in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster • So far, efforts (Fed Gov and BP)are focused on finding spilled oil • Need to assess damage to the Gulf ecosystem, from birds to shrimp to whales and even to the people who use the coast for work or pleasure. • Each plan is signed by an official of the government and a representative of BP.

15. Examples of some damage assessment plans • Study of the oil's effect on marine mammals ($1.8 million) • Use pompoms to search for oil underwater near the shore • Search for dead birds Attempts to assess this spill's ecological impact confounds scientists at many turns

16. Exxon-Valdez Spill • Unleashed 11 million gallons of oil in 1989 • Engulfed 1,300 miles of coastline • Killed 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbour seals, 250 bald eagles, two dozen killer whales and an unknown number of salmon and herring • Now, 21 years later, there is no visible oil, most of the wildlife has returned and there has been an economic recovery that suggests the future may not be as bleak as predicted for those living in the Gulf of Mexico. • Scientists estimate 70 per cent of the oil from the Exxon Valdez evaporated or biodegraded, 14 per cent was cleaned up and 13 per cent sank to the sea floor. The remaining two per cent can still be found by digging under the soil on uninhabited islands in the Sound. According to time lapse photographs on beaches that were left untouched the oil disappeared within seven years of its own accord.