Category Archives: Deepwater Horizon

The Well Is Dead, But Its Legacy Lingers

By | Bio | Published: September 20, 2010

Six thousand feet under: The Transocean Development Driller II at work on a relief well near the Deepwater Horizon site. After several weeks of boring deep beneath the Gulf, the Transocean driller successfully completed its work this weekend, with the ruptured well plugged at its source. However, challenges remain for the communities and companies that were impacted by the Gulf oil spill (Source: Associated Press)

Early yesterday morning, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (formerly known as the Minerals Management Service) formally declared an end to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.  Nearly five months to the day after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and two months after a temporary cap was fitted over the well, pressure tests at the Macondo 252 site confirmed that a cement seal over the well was holding.  These tests indicated that the undersea gusher had been “killed,” meaning there was minimal risk of it spewing more oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico.

We’re as happy as anyone that the well at the Deepwater Horizon site is no longer posing an immediate danger to the waters and wetlands of southern Louisiana. However, we think it’s premature to say that the BP oil disaster, which released more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, has reached its endpoint.  While the well is dead, it has left industries and livelihoods on life support in its wake.  Controversial decisions about drilling moratoriums and fishery closures have engendered fierce debates about the balance between environmental protection and economic activity in this section of America’s Energy Coast.  We feel that there is still a pressing need for BP to work with local officials and community leaders to ensure that a healthy and vibrant ecosystem can coexist with the fossil fuel sector in coastal Louisiana. Because this region is so important to our domestic energy and transport needs, this effort may demand a national commitment to fully support comprehensive restoration of the Gulf Coast.

We aren’t the only ones who share this opinion.  Along with EDF’s coastal Louisiana program, our friends in the organization’s Oceans program have been blogging about the need for sound scientific investigation into the status of the Gulf of Mexico and its marine life.  The editorial board of The New York Times has also weighed in on the subject, and this morning, in an interview with CNN, former Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen stated that cleaning up the Pelican State's marshes and beaches will be a long, drawn-out process.

To effectively deal with the damage from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the people of Louisiana will require input and advice from many stakeholders, including the major oil companies that have operated in their state for decades.  Let’s hope that the death of the Deepwater Horizon well marks the birth of a new phase of honest dialogue and consensus building about safe oil exploration in coastal Louisiana.

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EDF Releases Big Picture Video "Before the BP Oil Disaster: Decades of Destruction"

By | Published: July 30, 2010

News disseminating from the BP oil disaster has been negative, and rightfully so.  Reports indicate that millions of barrels of oil have gushed into the Gulf of Mexico harming coastal wetlands and the wildlife and fisheries they support.  Shortcuts were taken, lives were lost, and industries and environments destroyed because of negligence, corruption, deregulation, and greed.  For as much as we can dwell on what went wrong and whom was wronged, we should also give thought on how to make things right.

Congress will soon be tasked with allocating BP’s reparations for their role in the oil spill.  Gulf coast communities and ecosystems, especially those in heavily impacted areas like Louisiana, should be high priority for these funds.  Removing oil from the coastal ecosystem even after the spill ceases is paramount, but so is the need for long term coastal restoration.  Utilizing BP's reparations to clean up oil as well as restore the land building capabilities of the Mississippi River will repay a debt to the region originating decades ago.

The BP oil spill is the latest insult to an invaluable ecosystem that's been in decline for the last 100 years.  Below is a video produced by the Land, Water & Wildlife (LWW) program at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) that highlights the timeline of this decline.  Beginning with the Industrial Revolution and our country's desire for a shipping channel to and from middle America, moving to the establishment of the Mississippi River levee system and its hydrologic impacts, and ending with the effects of oil and gas development, the video illustrates the historic and present day factors that have contributed to Louisiana's coastal decline.

There is hope for Louisiana though. Steps are already being taken towards coastal restoration, specifically in Louisiana, by state and federal agencies due in large part to the attention and science based solutions that EDF and its partners (National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana) have brought to the challenges the region faces.  These initiatives aim to restore the natural functions of the Mississippi River Delta and make coastal economies and communities more resilient to climate change.

The video makes apparent that much work is still needed to restore the Mississippi River’s value to coastal Louisiana and the nation.  The situation is not hopeless.  Yes, the oil that flowed from the Deepwater Horizon is the latest blow to a system which has been crippled by decades of mismanagement.  However, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is also an opportunity to harness national attention and focus BP’s reparations on restoring the land-building powers of the Mississippi and bring a system on the brink of collapse back to life.

Matt Scrafford is an EDF Land, Water & Wildlife Program intern.

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Bonnie Blew, Then Flagged: As Weak Storm Exits Spill Zone, Fears Persist of Further Disruptions to Gulf Coast Cleanup

By | Bio | Published: July 26, 2010

Tropical Depression Bonnie, downgraded from a tropical storm after entering the Gulf of Mexico, hit the southeastern tip of Louisiana early Sunday morning, where severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings were in effect. (Source: NOAA)

After huffing and puffing its way across the Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Storm Depression Bonnie blew few houses down as its remnants showered coastal Louisiana with rain on Sunday. Mercifully, the second tropical storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season packed little punch by the time it hit the Pelican State. Indeed, the storm may have actually benefitted the coast, as its sustained winds of ~30 mph appear to have cleared tarballs from Gulf Coast beaches and broken up mats of floating oil in coastal marshes.

Still, the storm did delay work on relief wells near the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Dozens of oil spill workers were evacuated from the waters near the Macondo site last week, meaning that completion of the static kill procedure and other jobs could be postponed until mid-August or later.

While Bonnie amounted to little more than an overgrown rainstorm, coastal Louisiana isn’t out of the woods yet. Indeed, the peak season for hurricane development in the Gulf of Mexico runs from late September to mid-October, meaning that other, more severe storms could affect spill response. It’s all the more reason why every effort must be made by energy companies in the Gulf to prevent disasters like the BP spill from happening again.

As a first step, four major oil companies announced plans last week to voluntarily contribute $1 billion to a fund for responding to pipeline leaks, rig explosions, and other potential disasters at oil and gas installations in the region. While this is significant, it can’t be the last word on environmental response. Bigger and badder successors to Bonnie could wreak havoc on Louisiana’s wetlands, which is why substantially more resources must be devoted to the protection of this embattled ecosystem.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Oil Spill, Storms | 2 Responses

For Response Workers, Health Problems Could Persist Long After Spill is Contained

By | Published: July 23, 2010

Workers struggle to maintain oil barriers while risking heatstroke and toxic chemical exposure. With limited safety training and uneven protocol on protective gear, some workers have complained of health problems associated with the spill cleanup (Source: www.galileowasright.com)

In our coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, we’ve emphasized the need for thoughtful planning and well-informed restoration of the Gulf Coast. From our perspective, this means a process grounded in sound science and transparent in its communication of health hazards to those closest to the spill zone. Ideally, a well-executed clean-up effort would work wonders for coastal Louisiana, jump-starting a troubled economy with green jobs and ensuring the viability of one of America’s most valuable and resilient natural ecosystems. However, with sub-par safety regulations and slipshod cleanup techniques characterizing the response to this tragedy, the BP oil spill could end up posing a threat to more than just the Gulf Coast’s livelihood—it could actually threaten the lives of its residents.

In an open letter to Coast Guard oil cleanup coordinator Adm. Thad Allen earlier this summer, Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) pushed for transparency in medical monitoring and safety regulation for spill recovery workers. She compared the sickened boat skippers of the Gulf Coast to the wheezing and coughing response crews plagued by respiratory illness in New York after the 9/11 attacks. Maloney urged authorities to trust the reports of pollutants instead of relying on “air quality measures and outdated standards” when accessing the risk pollutants pose to workers.

But Maloney’s not the only one concerned. Nearly a month later, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) criticized EPA head Lisa Jackson for skirting questions about the safety of COREXIT, the dispersant being poured en masse into the Gulf of Mexico, stating, “I don’t want dispersants to be the Agent Orange of this oil spill.” Mikulski, Maloney, and others have been pressing BP and the EPA for more information on the use of dispersants and their potential side effects on spill workers. While recent studies released by the EPA have classified COREXIT as "non-toxic", EDF scientist Richard Denison has warned repeatedly that dispersants may still have adverse effects for humans and marine life. In addition, workers laboring in the summer heat run the risk of heat stroke, while mere exposure to the oil (regardless of dispersant presence) can cause eye, brain, and skin damage, not to mention problems for the lungs, kidneys, and liver.

But dangerous working conditions are indicative of a more systemic problem. The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) Act hasn’t been updated since the 1970s, begging the question, just how much do BP and federal officials care about the protection and health of spill response workers?

Well, with the hazy details surrounding COREXIT’s side effects, and the shocking revelation that people responsible for clean up were working without access to respirators, the takeaway is troubling. If disasters like the Exxon Valdez oil spill are any indication of the long-term effects of spill-related toxins on cleanup workers, Louisiana could be feeling the public health ramifications of Deepwater Horizon long after all the oil is cleared from the Gulf.

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Chemicals, Congress, Health, Oil Spill, Targeted Jobs | 1 Response

Breaking News from BP: No Oil Leaking Into Gulf from Deepwater Horizon Well

By | Bio | Published: July 15, 2010

Source: Flickr (Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com)

For the first time since April, the Deepwater Horizon well has been capped.

Kent Wells, a vice president at BP Plc, said at an afternoon news briefing that no crude was escaping from a 75-ton cap that had been lowered over the past few days. This is an interim solution, as more permanent relief wells will be drilled over the next few weeks to tap the subsea reservoir of oil and natural gas that had been gushing into the Gulf since April 20.

Drilling had stopped on relief wells for two days while the new cap was fitted. Engineers will be monitoring the cap over the next 48 hours to check pressure underneath. If a solid cap is placed above the well, and pressure falls, this might suggest that the oil is simply moving to another part of the underground reservoir, where it could burst forth in a new leak. If the well has a certain amount of integrity, then the well pressure will remain high under the cap, suggesting that the Gulf oil spill might finally be over.

Now comes the hard part: tabulating the damage.

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Oil Spill | 2 Responses

Let The River Run Through It: Harnessing the Mississippi to Save Louisiana's Wetlands from the Oil Spill

By | Published: July 14, 2010

As shown in this satellite photo of the Wax Lake Delta, the Mississippi River and its distributaries discharge massive amounts of water and sediment into the Gulf. Could they also clear wetlands covered in oil? Some scientists say yes (Source: EurekAlert.org)

In case you lost track, we're now just days away from the three-month anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. As we near the 90-day mark, engineers are still scrambling to cap the well that has pumped millions of barrels of oil into the waters off southern Louisiana. With crude continuing to float into coastal marshes, area residents have been left wondering how oil will be prevented from destroying the wetlands that they call home.

Engineers, energy companies, and the government have proposed a veritable suite of mitigation techniques, from booms to berms to rock dikes, but none has yet emerged as an effective, sustainable, and economically sound solution. Indeed, unfinished artificial islands constructed to shield the coast from the oil spill have already begun crumbling into the Gulf of Mexico.

As a complement to the previously-mentioned proposals, why not use the natural flow of the mighty Mississippi to protect the coastal region? After all, the river’s been flowing into the Gulf and sustaining the delta for thousands of years. Like a massive water hose, the Mississippi could potentially flush oil out of the wetlands and accelerate sediment deposition in degraded parts of delta, making the area more resilient to future disasters.

Several prominent coastal scientists have advocated harnessing the Mississippi River for this purpose. In a memo sent earlier this summer to the EPA Tech Team, Dr. Paul Kemp, a scientist at the National Audubon Society, outlined this method of preventing oil encroachment in Louisiana’s coastal region. Kemp suggested that, at least temporarily, active management of existing US Army Corp of Engineers structures at Old River could allow the flow of the Mississippi to force oil away from the Pelican State’s wetlands.

In its current state, the Mississippi is a complex man-made water management system that prevents flooding in cities like New Orleans that line its banks. However, experts like Kemp believe that a shift in tributary streams would allow a more "robust" flow. This would keep the oil at bay and buy time for cleanup crews struggling to contain the mess. At the same time, flooding could still be prevented in low-lying communities if levees and pumping stations are managed correctly by river engineers.

Diversion of the Mississippi would have other benefits as well. Land loss is a problem that's been plaguing Louisiana since long before the Deepwater Horizon Spill. Since 1930, over 2,000 square miles of land have been lost, equivalent to 70% of the original ecosystem. Redirecting the natural flow of the Mississippi could not only prevent further disaster in the wake of the BP spill, but could also segue nicely into coastal restoration, as the river deposits much needed sediment back into the Mississippi River Delta. As an added lagniappe, accelerated construction of river diversions could create thousands of near-term jobs for contractors, engineers, and others seeking work.

There are, of course, uncertainties that come coupled with an ambitious river diversion project. For example, freshwater from the diversions could alter the salinity in nearly estuaries and bays, affecting sensitive organisms like oysters that are vital to Louisiana’s fishing interests. It’s also difficult to predict just how effective diversions would be for coastal restoration, but models in place have already been successful in restoring parts of the Atchafalaya and building the Wax Lake Delta.

Still, when weighed against the alternatives, using the river in oil spill response seems like a idea worth pursuing. John Day, a professor emeritus at LSU and an eminent coastal scientist in his own right, captured the potential promise of the river to power remediation of the Gulf Coast, noting

“As the great Mississippi River Delta disappears, so do the ecosystems, economies and people that it holds. The Mississippi River is the solution. It has the water, sediment and energy to rebuild land, defend against hurricanes and again provide habitat, safety, livelihood, and prosperity. We must look to the natural functioning of the delta to guide us in restoration.”

Let's hope someone's listening.

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Flood Protection, Oil Spill | 1 Response

Postcard from the Spill Zone: Jackie Orr's Journey Down Highway 1

By | Bio | Published: July 8, 2010

by Jackie Orr

Remember how we asked you to send us pictures of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Along with the photos that landed in our mailbag, we received messages from people who had traveled down to coastal Louisiana and seen the devastation firsthand. After reading through their compelling stories, we decided to share some here on the blog.  

In this post, Jackie Orr, a professor and published author based in New York, tells us her recollections of a journey she took through southern Louisiana several weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion.  

Murals like these, photographed by the author in a small town in southern Louisiana, capture some of the raw emotions felt by Gulf Coast residents reeling from the spill (Source: Jackie Orr)

The drive from New Orleans to Grand Isle, Louisiana is only 110 miles, but it takes me five hours in the rental car. I am on a trip to see the invisible, to try to get an all-too-quick flash of cultural and political insight into the disaster unfolding along the Gulf Coast.

My desire to visit the island is both selfish and sociological. I’ve just turned 50, and despite my reservations about oil fumes and the content of spill news coverage, I want to spend this milestone close to a stretch of water and land that I can’t stop thinking about. I’m in the business of observation and commentary, and as the two-month anniversary of this branded disaster (the “BP spill”) approaches, I want to understand some of the social complexity absent from national media accounts of the catastrophe.

Fueled with gas from a local Tobacco Plus station, our rental car zips down the highway. We’re now within an hour of Grand Isle. As I get nearer to the gulf, I am engrossed by the surface images. All around, my eyes capture terribly visible evidence of the intimate entanglement of rural poverty and oil industry power in this lush semi-tropical landscape.

Here, in the southern Louisiana bayous, the signs of economic struggle and uneven infrastructural maintenance are everywhere. The abandoned Exxon Mobil station with a big U.S. flag draped across an empty office window. The sagging sheds with spray painted signs of local business scrawled on the side (“Sheila’s Notary”, “Shrimp & Crabs”).  And then there’s the beautiful, angry mural art. In the parking lot of a tattoo shop, I see “BP, You Killed Our Gulf, Our Way of Life,” next to a sculpture of a man in a gas mask and a small girl with fists raised, cradling a sign reading “God Help Us All!” That is when the drive slows down, interrupted every half mile to jump out of the car and photograph another startled image of southern Louisiana’s face, lush and abandoned, ravaged and industrialized.

A bridge for the 21st century, framing a trailer built for the 20th: Constructed to withstand hurricanes and floods, the sleek causeway linking Grand Isle with the mainland stands high above an elevated home resting on supports in the foreground (Source: Jackie Orr)

The most dramatic intersection of environmental decay and multi-billion dollar industry appears as we near Grand Isle. A surreal expanse of causeway rises up out of the scattered wetlands. The sleek, four-lane highway bridge towers over rotting buildings buckling toward the ground in a post-Katrina, post-industrial swoon.  It is like a scene out of science fiction, as the oil industry and local officials develop 21st-century transportation structures to work around a landscape destroyed by 20th-century mismanagement. It's as if the human and the environmental toll can be packed away and forgotten if it is tied up in a ribbon of concrete and asphalt. What kind of trick is this, this attempt to live ‘beyond’ the scale of man and nature? How fitting and how fearful to be delivered to the small stretch of Grand Isle by the sweeping curves of a hyperreal, high-tech causeway, one that seems to float above the ravaged coastal marsh.

I arrive on Grand Isle just as the sun is going down. It’s a short walk from the motel across the road to the Gulf Coast beach. Already two Greenpeace activists staying at the motel have warned that people are being arrested for walking on the beach. So I approach slowly, climb up the small sand dune past the hand-written sign “Beach Closed.” With a weird shock, I see the vista in front of me. Military jeeps line up along the coastline as work spotlights are raised by men and women in military camouflage. Yellow booms are laid across a beach studded with bright blue Porta-Potties spaced every forty yards or so as far as the eye can see. A storm comes in from the southeast with gorgeous layers of purple-grey clouds piling on top of each other. It takes some time, kneeling in the sand, before I start to see the oil rigs, dozens of rigs visible on the horizon. The Gulf of Mexico is a liquid field of oil rigs.

Line in the sand: Stretched all along the beach, a yellow boom rests on the southern shore of Grand Isle. In the distance, an oil rig looms on the horizon (Source: Jackie Orr)

But I don’t see the oil until hours later, after dark, when I return to the beach just before midnight to cross over the yellow boom. On the other side, I start to see the pools of oil, mirroring moonbeams and the light of military flood lamps. Pools the size of rowboats are found up and down the beach. Their consistency is that of a thick sludge, as I find when I run a stick through a shallow one. The wet sand itself feels sticky under my feet as I near the water’s edge. There are no images here, in the dark, just the sound of the ocean coming and going. All at once, I imagine the huge plumes of oil moving beneath the water’s surface, unseen in the murky depths.

In the sunlight the next day, as the national media search for oil-soaked birds continues (“Day 50, and only two oiled pelicans recovered by my count, Tom”), the oil-steeped history of Grand Isle becomes at least partially visible. Driving the short seven miles from one end of Grand Isle to the other, I discover the enormous Exxon Mobil plant that stretches almost a mile along the island’s northern edge. To many here, the presence of the oil industry in southern Louisiana remains an organizing, reassuring force, especially when juxtaposed with the chaotic lockdown of the coast. Offshore and onshore, the transnational energy majors are deeply embedded in local landscapes of labor and profit. Everyone knows someone who works in the plant or works on a platform. This is the realm of King Oil, and even in this landscape of destruction, cleanup crews and public officials seem to tiptoe about like interlopers. I speak with two workers from central Minnesota, brought down by BP to staff their company’s sand sifting equipment. Despite the militarized look and feel of things, they report that “nobody, absolutely nobody knows what’s going on.”

Sitting a lawn chair (made with petroleum-based plastic?), I collect my thoughts. How can we comprehensively address the environmental destruction wrought by BP and others without ignoring the complex ways that places like Grand Isle depend deeply, sometimes desperately, on the oil industry? How can we point fingers and how can I chronicle this oil spill when my journey to tell this story required a jet-fueled plane flight from New York City and a trip in a rental car gassed up in southern Louisiana? Can we possibly ignore the importance of Gulf Coast oil in our domestic energy mix? With this enormous well still spewing oil, how can we fathom that what’s happening in the Gulf and on the shores of Grand Isle is only part of a larger disaster that’s been unfolding for decades?

In visible and invisible ways, the oil industry is part of the everyday infrastructure of our lives, whether we live in New Orleans or New York. By the shores of the Gulf, I see, feel, and know that their coastal spill is our collective disaster.

Jackie Orr is a performance theorist and an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University. She teaches and writes about cultural politics, contemporary power, and the history of U.S. militarization. Her book, Panic Diaries: A Genealogy of Panic Disorder, examines the cultural effects of individual and collective terror.

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Guest Post, Oil Spill | 2 Responses

Where Oil and Water Once Mixed: The Historic Balance Between Fish and Fuel in Coastal Louisiana’s Economy

By | Bio | Published: June 24, 2010

Logo of the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. The annual event, held in Morgan City each summer, is scheduled to go on this year, regardless of whether or not the spill has been contained (Source: The Louisiana Shrimp & Petroleum Festival)

To Americans living far from the Gulf Coast, it might seem mind-boggling that lawmakers there would be clamoring for the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling to end. After all, each day for the past two months, as many as 4.2 million gallons of sweet crude have been gushing from the broken riser of Deepwater Horizon, sullying the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The treasured wetlands of Louisiana and white-sand beaches of nearby states are now awash with tar balls and mats of oil. About a third of the Gulf of Mexico has been closed to fishing since the beginning of the month.

Yet it was a federal judge in New Orleans who ruled Tuesday to repeal the drilling freeze, prompting immediate calls for a legal appeal by the White House and national environmental groups. It begs the question, why do outsiders see the issue so differently from those most directly affected by the oil spill?

Crawfish and Crude Oil

It has a lot to do with Louisiana’s long and complicated history of living with oil and water. Like engineers of some otherworldly gumbo, residents of southern Louisiana communities have cobbled together livelihoods based on crawfish and crude oil for the better part of a century. They have celebrated the wealth that fish and fossil fuels have brought to the wetland parishes, transforming a region once known for poor, backwater communities into an economic engine for Louisiana. This is the state that has hosted an annual shrimp and petroleum festival for seventy-five years, a land in which families have sent their sons to oil platforms and shrimp trawlers in equal measure for generations.

Now, the Deepwater Horizon disaster threatens both the energy and seafood industries like nothing before. The moratorium on fishing in the Gulf, coupled with the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf, have plunged the economy into chaos. Where there were once active fishing docks, boats now idle under the summer sun. Coastal communities that once catered to the needs of offshore rigs have seen businesses fold, and local tax revenues have taken a hit at a time when Baton Rouge has instituted sharp cutbacks in state spending.

(Click to enlarge) A map of the Gulf Coast by Matthew Baker, a California-based geographer. The red dots denote active oil drilling sites, the purple dot shows the site of Deepwater Horizon, and the brown shading illustrates the growth of the oil slick up to May 26 (Source: Flickr (blackpool_esri)).

To get a sense of how important fossil fuels have been to the economy of coastal Louisiana, take a look at the map (at left) of the Gulf Coast. No fewer than 3,700 drilling platforms dot the waters off Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. These rigs, which dominate the view from the shore, are connected to miles of undersea pipelines. Thousands of people work in difficult conditions every day to keep the system functioning.

Communities have not tethered themselves to the energy sector for no reason. Indeed, some have argued that Louisiana has paid a high price (in terms of environmental damage and public health outcomes) because of its fuel-intensive economy. Rather, Louisianans have worked on drilling rigs, in oil refineries and at pipeline facilities because of the huge demand for fossil fuels from people across the United States. That’s right folks, your virtually inexhaustible need for petroleum, natural gas, and petrochemicals (illustrated to fantastic effect in a chart (below right) from The Guardian) has nurtured and maintained the web of energy facilities enveloping the Gulf Coast.

A Muddled Outlook on the Future

(Click to enlarge) The chart above illustrates average daily oil consumption in 2009. Note that the United States uses more than twice as much oil each day as its nearest competitor, China (Sources: BP Statistical Review of World Energy; The Guardian)

Up until the spill, it seemed like the combination of oil and water would continue to deliver for Louisiana. The state economy, while not flying high, was not stagnating through the recession either, buoyed by steady demand for energy products and the increasing popularity of Louisiana-style seafood outside the Pelican State. Indeed, the Houma, LA metropolitan area, a major center for oil rig maintenance and fishing, registered the lowest unemployment rate in the nation (3.65%) in February 2009.

However, this “salad dressing” solution to Louisiana’s economic troubles has been shaken, stirred and upended by the explosion of Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent spill. As the harsh new reality of an oiled coast sinks in, Louisianans are facing the dilemma of questioning the oil/water balance that has defined their state for so long.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Fish, Oil Spill, Unemployment | 4 Responses

Could the BP Spill Pave the Way for Green Jobs and a Sustainable Economy on the Gulf Coast?

By | Published: June 23, 2010

President Obama addresses local concerns about the effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill on fishing, drilling, and tourism in a meeting last week in Mississippi (Source: Reuters)

As oil continues to leak in the Gulf of Mexico, coastal Louisiana’s economy gets steadily worse by the day. Fishing closures are devastating the Pelican State’s seafood industry, while a controversial moratorium on drilling is taking its own toll on the Louisiana workforce.  Combined with the broader economic slowdown and its chilling effect on the labor market, this environmental disaster could trigger economic depression in the wetland parishes, especially if deficit reduction measures like cutting aid to the unemployed take precedence over sustained recovery investment on the Gulf Coast.

Economists like Paul Krugman have argued that curtailing much needed aid to the jobless will aggravate an already significant economic crisis. That's why we think the Gulf oil spill offers an unprecedented opportunity for President Obama to implement an idea he's been talking about since the campaign trail: an expansive green jobs program. In establishing one for the central Gulf Coast, the federal government could offer a hand-up, rather than simply a hand-out, to communities near the spill zone.

A Benenson Strategy Group poll of Americans confirmed that 63% of those surveyed favored a strong climate bill limiting pollution and fossil fuel emissions. Such legislation could be instrumental in securing new funding for restoration of wetlands and other areas that naturally sequester carbon.  The explosion of Deepwater Horizon and the oil spill that followed are admittedly tragic, but they may also serve as a turning point for the way business is done on the Gulf Coast. This will be especially true if they trigger significant investment in wildlife recovery and wetland rehabilitation in addition to more traditional green-collar sectors like weatherization.

According to estimates from the EPA, the proposed American Power Act could save the economy up to $312 billion dollars while also creating 540,000 new jobs over the next 20 years. If the government uses a portion of the funding in that legislation, along with some of the $20 billion set aside for BP spill relief, to create green, sustainable jobs in places like coastal Louisiana, it could go a long way towards helping the embattled ecosystem and economy of the Gulf Coast.

In some ways, we’re witnessing a repeat of what we saw after Katrina. Then, as now, people across the nation demanded movement towards definitive and responsible action on environmental issues, but after the telethons and public service announcements ended, motivation ebbed and support waned. What matters now is whether the administration can channel public demand for climate legislation and environmental remediation towards delivering a green “New Deal” to people impacted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Green Jobs, Oil Spill, Stimulus, Unemployment | 2 Responses

Events: President Obama Addresses the Nation on the Gulf Oil Spill, June 15

By | Bio | Published: June 15, 2010

Do you have a question for the White House about the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Tonight could be your chance to ask.

At 8 PM Eastern / 7 PM Central, President Obama will address the nation about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the steps that will be taken to restore the Gulf Coast and its battered economy. Shortly after the speech, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will be answering user-submitted questions about the spill.

Visit the White House’s YouTube channel to send in your queries and view the President's address.

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Events, Interactive Media, Oil Spill | Tagged | 1 Response