A Year After the BP Oil Spill, Uncertainty Reigns

Bob Gramling, author of Blowout in the Gulf, brings us up to speed on what has changed in the Gulf of Mexico in the year following the BP oil spill.

What has changed in the Gulf a year after the blowout of BP’s Macondo well is that the uncertainty along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast has continued to rise. 

Uncertainty about the ultimate, cumulative environmental effects is one that is seen a lot. The news has shown that an unprecedented number of baby dolphins have washed up on shore and there is much speculation, from various predictable camps, as to whether this phenomenon is due to BP oil or a cold winter. And if most of the oil is gone, as headlines told us, why do we still have thousands employed in "cleanup” activities?

Uncertainty about the future of traditional coastal occupations and businesses is everywhere. A fifth-generation shrimper in coastal Louisiana speculates as to whether he will be able to support his family this year, and whether the shrimp he may catch will be safe to eat. The owner of a motel in Orange Beach, Alabama wonders if tourist will show up this summer.

Uncertainty about promised compensation is found across the Gulf and in all walks of life. Ken Feinberg, a lawyer who is working for BP, is in charge of this process. He seems to spend most of his time trying to convince various groups—motel and restaurant owners, fishermen, souvenir sellers, local officials and almost anyone who lives in a coastal economy—that he really has their interests (as opposed to that of his employer) at heart, but few settlements are finalized. Oh, and by the way, he needs to double the amount his law firm is being compensated for his services. The rule is that if you can’t document it, then you didn’t lose it. Most of the commercial fisheries have long worked on a cash basis, so that’s gone. Ditto for tips for waitresses and bartenders. And various public agencies that appear to have received cash from BP with few questions asked seem to find increasingly stupid ways to spend it.

Uncertainty over whether the “new” regulatory regime will work and whether the offshore oil industry will get back to business as usual are both topics of conversation and speculation in the press. We changed the name of Minerals Management Service to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE—how do you pronounce that acronym? Maybe that’s the point), but it’s the same people with the same budget to do offshore inspections. Many down here in this economy so tied to offshore activity (there are over 3,500 rigs in the federal waters of the Gulf, most off Louisiana) argue that the moratorium has hurt them worse than the spill. Their supporters are frequently in print.

Finally, slowly, uncertainty about health is starting to appear. People who live by the beach, worked in the “cleanup,” fishermen who leased their boats to BP and futilely operated them as “vessels of opportunity” by putting out booms because the fishing season was closed last year, are finally starting to go to their doctors. Many are experiencing difficulty in breathing, weakness, memory loss, vision loss, and chronic headaches—and the results from the few that have been tested show up with various carcinogens associated with crude oil, such as benzene, in their blood at levels ten, twenty, and thirty times that found in the general population.

Uncertainty gnaws at people. It drags them down and there is so much of it a year after the BP oil spill.

Comments

[Prasad]

It was a really one of the worst disaster in the history in that sector the work really tough so many precautions have to be taken while working so past is past now the workers have to take preliminary precautions while they working then these disasters will not occur again and again.