Still in Deepwater
Ten years after BP’s Gulf disaster, offshore drilling is dirtier and more dangerous than ever
Ten years after the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, we’re still ignoring the lessons of the deadly BP Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster. But it’s not too late to remember, learn and start phasing out offshore drilling.
We’re still drilling and spilling more than ever in the Gulf of Mexico. Neither the oil industry nor the federal government knows how to contain a catastrophic blowout or the oil spill it causes. And the most significant offshore-drilling safety improvements derived from that disaster have been undone by the Trump administration.
Today workers on these offshore platforms are still risking their lives, just like the 11 workers who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010. Coastal communities and the fishing and tourism industries could all still be shut down by a major oil spill at any moment. Endangered whales and many other Gulf species still haven’t recovered from the nearly 5 million barrels of oil that polluted their homes.
But some things have changed. The decade since Deepwater Horizon has been the hottest on record, one marked by more extreme storms doing record-breaking damage and unprecedented wildfires from California to Australia, all tied to climate change. And those troubling trends will only get worse because burning fossil fuels pumped more than 350 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from 2010 through 2019.
But the alarm bells being rung by climate scientists and the lessons of Deepwater Horizon have gone ignored by the oil industry and the Trump administration.
- In January 2018 Trump proposed vastly expanding offshore drilling off every coast in the United States, totaling over 90% of federal ocean waters.
- The Trump administration also rolled back offshore safety regulations meant to prevent the kind of blowouts that rocked Deepwater Horizon. Documents reveal that the administration weakened these regulations over the objections of agency staff.
- In the Gulf Coast, the largest fossil fuel lease sale in U.S. history happened during the second year of the Trump administration, offering industry more than 78 million acres in the Gulf.
- In California seven offshore-drilling platforms near Santa Barbara have been shut down since 2015 by the failure of the corroded oil pipeline that served them. However ExxonMobil is pushing hard to restart its three offshore platforms and transport that oil in up to 70 tanker trucks per day on California’s coastal Highway 1 and on hazardous Highway 166, where a recent tanker truck crash spilled 4,500 gallons of oil into the Cuyama River.
The reality is that, 10 years after Deepwater Horizon, offshore drilling remains inherently dirty and dangerous. Oil spills from offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf happen hundreds of times per year, from small spills to gushers that last for years. Working on offshore drilling rigs is also one of the most dangerous jobs out there, about seven times more dangerous than the average U.S. job.
We all remember helplessly watching 10 years ago as a Macondo Prospect well gushed oil into the Gulf, day after day, uncontrolled, for nearly three months. So many of us vowed: never again.
Then we saw its terrifying toll on imperiled wildlife: 92 endangered sperm whales killed in the Gulf, setting their recovery back by decades; 166,000 sea turtles killed and 500,000 more exposed to oil; around a million dead seabirds; a bottlenose dolphin population that is still diseased and dying; and the critically endangered Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whale population reduced by 22% to just 33 whales that now face extinction.
And then, after media coverage tampered off, we watched as the oil industry and Trump administration systemically weakened reforms and returned offshore drilling to business-as-usual. So now, as the planet warms, as more species move toward extinction, and as our public health systems buckle, this fight is more important than ever.
The only way to truly implement the lessons of Deepwater Horizon is to end all federal fossil fuel leasing, start phasing out existing offshore oil drilling and protect our public waters from the fossil fuel industry.
Kristen Monsell is the legal director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans program. She can be reached at kmonsell [at] biologicaldiversity.org.
