BP: Big Problem

Do you keep up with the news?

"BP oil spill, Gulf of Mexico" Artist unknown

Two months after the BP oil rig explosion, my family took our annual trip to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to visit our extended family and celebrate my Aunt’s 50^th Birthday. 

Family on the schooner ride

As a part of the celebration we had planned a sunset schooner ride, a popular tourist activity; but as it got closer to the night we were not sure if the boat would be allowed to sail due to contaminated water. We were fortunate to be one of their last excursions before the oceans were closed to many boats besides oil sweepers. While on the trip we saw patches of tar balls floating in the water as well as a few pieces of oil-covered wood. And in the following days the coastline was dotted with skimmers, police boats and people waiting along the beach to begin the clean up. It was through that experience that I became aware of how much damage off shore drilling could do to such a large amount of the population.

View of the coast from the boat

The process of drilling for oil is very scientific and detailed and even after doing a few hours of research about it I still do not completely understand it. That being the case I will not waste time trying to explain it. However there are some legal requirements that you should be aware of. When any company is planning something that could have possible negative effects they make a contingency plan. This plan highlights anything that the company could foresee going wrong as well as any precautions to prevent that from happening and detailed plans of what to do if anything were to go wrong. You can then imagine how extensive and specific a contingency plan for offshore drilling would be. Most plans would consider things like a power outage, strong storms out on the open sea, possible ecosystems they could be harming while drilling, a fire, and of course the big one, an oil spill. An added difficulty for these rigs so far offshore is the fact that they are hundreds of miles away from immediate help. But, if an oil company does their job right and thoroughly they should have a team prepared that will have the knowledge and resources to fix any problem efficiently and quickly. 

"Sea Lion, San Francisco, Pier 39" by Tim Pearce

Tom Speight, a writer for Commonweal Magazine, wrote an article titled, “Shoddy Work, Shabby Excuses” after the oil spill. Tom writes about BP's contingency plans in the gulf. BP listed, “a wildlife biologist and university professor named Peter Lutz,” who died in 2004, five years before the company even filed the report, as their main scientific contact in the case of a disaster. The company also listed, “walruses as possible victims of an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.” If you have ever seen a walrus you may have realized that they live in cold-water climates nothing, like the warm water of the gulf. I live in the San Francisco bay area, so I have seen the sea lions, a close relative to the walrus, on the piers basking in their profound stench. Is seems like everywhere I go, from the bay to the gulf, I am always surrounded by coastal environments. Because of this I am able to understand the effects on these communities during a disaster in a way that I don’t think many people can.

Just a month earlier CBS released a very similar article highlighting even more mistakes. Their article includes other marine life that live no where near the Gulf, but they also add other catastrophic mistakes.

“The names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal standing network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are no longer in service.”

"Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill-Cumulative Oil Slick Footprint"
By, SkyTruth

            And while this seems just as shocking the article goes on to say, “BP officials have pretty much been making it up as they go along,” not something I would want to hear during a disaster like this. So now we are dealing with the repercussions of their stupidity, of which there are many.

The Gulf coast is not new to a natural disaster. Just 5 years before the spill Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf with a power it had never seen before. In its wake, Karina left communities from Florida to Louisiana beaten up, or in some cases, completely destroyed. My family was also personally affected by this disaster, so I was able to see first hand not only the devastation, but also the recovery.

View out of the front window of my grandparents house

 My grandparents live a block from the beach, and after Katrina they had a “beach front” property. 

Grandparents going through what was salvageable

While their house was ultimately destroyed they were able to salvage almost everything above the water line. The story was very different for their neighbors, and long time friends, just in front of them whose home was completely picked up and carried away. And while devastation was everywhere you turned, it amazed me how much closer the community felt. Neighbors helped each other salvage what they could. 

My uncle, as well as many others, offered there still standing houses as places people could come to sleep or rest. Communities across the nation also came together to support those affected. My mom joined the many non-profits set up after the disaster, providing a connection for families in our community in the Bay Area to “adopt” deserving families on the coast. In the University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy, Fay Pappas explains difference between a natural disaster (like a hurricane or earthquake) and a technological disaster (disasters coming only from man-made things). He says, “Natural disasters often have the unintended consequence of creating a ‘therapeutic community’…The exact opposite is true in a man-made disaster," which is exactly what happened after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

"Exxon Valdez Oil Spill" by, ARLIS Reference

While the Exxon Valdez spill and the BP oil spill are admittedly two very different events, it is the closest example to the uncharted territory in the Gulf.  Like the spill in the Gulf, the Exxon spill was the worst of its time, and there was close to no protocol or procedures on how to assess the situation. In Alaska, this lack of procedural knowledge lead to unrest in the affected communities. In Fay’s article again he also talks about “community damage,” and lists what he considers the 5 major factors in defining community damage. The first is, “work disruption (a period of unemployment following the spill).” The next factor is the stress that comes from lawsuits of the company. In the case of the Valdez spill the case remained in the courts for almost 20 years causing constant stress and strain on those involved in the process. Thirdly is “recreancy” meaning, “craven or cowardly.” The fourth factor is, “’oil spill risk’ or the perception of vulnerability to another spill,” meaning that people are not only afraid of the spill that just occurred, but also of what might happen if another accident were to take place in the same area. And finally he says that community damage can be measured by, “the level of psychological or emotional attachment the individual had to their community.” Close-nit communities are more vulnerable to long lasting damage. In an article by two behavioral scientist, Matthew R. Lee and Troy C. Blanchard, they talk about the positive and negative effects of people’s attachment to their community.

In the article, “Community Attachment and Negative Affective States in the Context of the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster”, the authors acknowledge that the benefits of being in a tight-nit community are stronger, but they also share negative burdens. They say, “those with a stronger sense of community fared better on measure of subjective well-being, particularly, happiness.” I have seen these happy, tight nit communities on the coast myself. Every summer when we visit my grandparents, we are always invited to neighbor’s houses for Fourth of July BBQ’s, or summer night shrimp boils. Since I can remember I love the sense of community I feel at these parties even though I am only with these people once a year. 

Shrimp boil with family friends

As an outsider looking in I can see just how loyal and attached they are to their community. However Matt and Troy mention a few draw backs to community attachment, the most important being that, “it strongly anchors people to [a] place, thus diminishing their ability or willingness to move elsewhere to make a living.” After Katrina a lot of people moved farther inland to safer areas. I watched as neighborhoods I had grown up in over the summers began to disperse. And after the oil spill, people that relied so heavily on the fishing industry for their sole income were paralyzed, when that resource was taken away from them. But for a person who was not affected, it can be very hard to truly understand what they were going through.         

A survey was done on people’s awareness of the BP oil spill. 82% of participants were not from the south. Out of those people, only 18.6% said they did not follow the news after the oil spill. Of those that did follow the news, the most powerful portrayals of the event were photos, followed by videos and personal stories from victims. When asked about their opinions many participants acknowledged their skepticism about the company. One participant with acquaintances on the coast said, “knowing people on the coast, the real stories didn’t always match up with the corporate spin.” Another said;

“I was left feeling that BP tried to sweep as much as it cold under the rug. I fell as though we will see effects of the spill for a couple generations and BP thinks it is over.”

With each comment it is evident that BP did not do as good a job hiding things as they thought. Average citizens with a little bit of interest managed to see faults, imagine what a very concerned citizen would find!

Trying to take part in a disaster far from home can be challenging. Not everyone could easily fly out to the gulf and pick up tar balls of the sand, but that is not the only way to help in this situation. It takes determination from citizens to catch the shortcuts that big companies may try to make and to hold them accountable for their actions. Even if you are across the country be aware of what is going on in your world and don’t believe that everything you read is the truth.

(The following is a parody about the BP oil spill. It highlight BP's lack of preparedness in the aftermath of the spill. I will warn you that there is some inappropriate language but I trust you can handle it)