Deep Sea Nightmare

The on-going disaster with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has no end in sight, with measure after measure intended to plug the well, which is currently spewing oil at the rate of over 2,700 gallons per minute, failing. The new ‘top kill’ method is failing, as did the plan by BP to cap and funnel away the oil in a big box a few weeks ago. So as this spill eclipses the Exxon Valdez disaster and becomes the US’s worst oil spill ever, and continues to devastate the gulf shoreline, with the precious marshes and wetlands along the Louisiana coastline and Mississippi delta, as well as the rich Gulf fisheries, what are the lessons here?

Certainly, my perspective is going to be more as it relates to Jamaica and small island developing states, with some general science interspersed throughout. Like the Katrina disaster, this latest incident threatens to loom over President Obama the way Katrina loomed over his predecessor. However, as a percentage of GDP or any other economic measure, both Katrina and this oil spill didn’t/wouldn’t devastate the entire country’s economy as it would if it hit a small island, whose smaller size and more vulnerable population, in terms of economy, resources, etc, would be set back many years. So clearly, with the continued surging demand for oil and gas driving companies to push out further and further in the search for the commodity, we, as small countries, have to be careful when allowing these types of activities off our coast.

While BP and the other oil and gas companies did engineer and design fail-safe mechanisms for their rigs and wells (the current disaster was the result of a rig fire and a cascade of other problems before and afterwards), clearly these were not enough. And they were left scrambling to figure out what to do afterwards, with plan after plan failing, all prefaced with the claim that none of them have ever been attempted at such depths before. In which case, why did they even go drilling in such depths without having the necessary contingencies?

And marine and international laws are funny as well. If this occured somewhere else, where the spill plus plume began to foul up international fisheries and beaches in multiple countries, can you imagine the mess, in more ways than one?