"BP's Containment Cap - Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth?"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“BP’s Containment Cap – Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth?”

June 9, 2010

For forty-six days the news emanating from the Gulf worsened. While there is no accurate way of measuring the volume, according to retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen something like 25,000 barrels per day were spilling into the waters a mile down. On Saturday the first piece of good news appeared, to little coverage by the Press and no hockey sticks thrust in the air by politicians. Nobody wants to be seen celebrating while so many continue to suffer.

British Petroleum specialists, in a remarkable feat of engineering using remotely operated vehicles, cut the riser near the top of the blowout preventer and attached a close-fitted containment cap to siphon oil to the surface. BP is expected to slowly close the vents that are continuing to leak oil. Nevertheless, by Sunday 11,000 barrels a day were being collected. Admiral Thad Allen, who heads the Federal response, said the system is on track to capture 15,000 barrels per day. In a twelve hour period yesterday, 7,800 barrels were collected – faster than the run rate forecast by Admiral Allen the day before. However, the problem of leakage has not been resolved. While we can precisely measure the amount of oil now being collected, the amount of seepage remains unknown, though it is certainly larger than initial estimates.

At least one expert assigned to the government team charged with estimating the flow has concluded that the operation now siphoning more than 15,000 barrels a day has only made the situation worse. Dr. Ira Liefer, a researcher at the University of California in Santa Barbara, a critic of the “cap, container and flow” was given prominent coverage by the New York Times yesterday in venting his views. Despite his group’s inability to measure the leakage, he has already concluded the siphoning operation a failure.

Perhaps Dr. Liefer’s words will prove prescient, but at this point the only voice of reason, authority and an apparent willingness to accept responsibility for his decisions, in this entire mess, is that of Admiral Allen.

The President, after being criticized for failing to display appropriate rage during the first six weeks of the spill, on Monday, after a glimmer of hope appeared, said that if BP CEO Tony Hayward worked for him he would fire him. Commentators on cable networks and the internet are questioning as to whether BP should be allowed to profit from the oil they will be siphoning and bringing safely to the surface. Profiting? Andrew Ross Sorkin, writing in the New York Times, suggested that a worst-case estimate could cost BP $40 billion – more than two years net income for the entire company. (It should be noted that no one has any idea what the costs will be – the costs of cleaning the damaged coast line, the destruction of oyster and shrimp beds, the loss of a livelihood to tens of thousand of fishermen, the moratorium on drilling and the alleviation of suffering of millions of residents in the immediate area.)

Do these commentators have any idea where the money will come from to cover these costs? Regardless of the ultimate disposition of inevitable lawsuits, BP will be tied up in courts for years, so generating cash now at least provides a means by which some of the bills can be paid. The only known beneficiaries will be lawyers.

A third of the Gulf fishing waters has been affected and 140 miles of coast line have been damaged; in some cases it will take decades for nature to reclaim the marshes.

Nevertheless, good news should not go unnoticed. It is hard to believe, despite Dr. Liefer’s objections, that siphoning off an increasing amount of oil is not a positive step. In an article in yesterday’s USA Today, it was pointed out that shipping lanes have remained open in New Orleans, Mobile, Alabama and Gulfport and Pascagoula, Mississippi. Thirty cleaning stations have been set up, but at this point “Only one ship has been doused so far – and that’s because it sat in one place for three days.” While, at this point, 140 miles of coastline have been affected, they only represent 8.3% of the 1680 miles of U.S. Gulf Coastline.

This somewhat Panglossian view should not be construed that I minimize the damage done to the coastal beaches and marshes, nor that I ignore the loss of life in the initial explosion, nor that I trivialize the loss of jobs and the costs that will result to food and energy. I do not. If this is not the largest man-made disaster in our Nation’s history, it must rank among the largest. My house in Connecticut fronts the marshes at the mouth of the Connecticut River; so I am a conscious beneficiary of the abundant and extraordinary forms of life that inhabit those environments. Regardless, while looking a gift horse in the mouth is OK, it should not detract from the fact that good news is good.