A mericans have good reason to be perplexed by the contrary assessments of how much oil remains from BP’s 5 million barrel spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s a problem not just for voters, but also for Republicans and the Obama administration, which recently touted success in cleanup efforts while happily claiming that most Gulf fishing grounds were once again open and providing safe seafood.
The president’s buoyant statements came after the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrated announced earlier this month that roughly three-quarters of the spilled oil had disappeared – eaten my microbes, burned, skimmed, evaporated or dissipated beyond recognition or hazard. NOAA’s estimate left just a quarter of the oil to be accounted for. And much of that, it said, lay in oiled beaches, fisheries and sediment, as well as in some areas of surface water.
Then came the counter-views. An expert team of scientists from the University of Georgia and Georgia Sea Grant released a study last week which said that roughly same amount of oil that the government said had disappeared was, in fact, still around. The Georgia groups said 70 percent to 79 percent of the spilled oil could be found largely in a vast undersea plume in a deep canyon, where it still posed a significant near-term and possibly long-term threat to the ecological health of the Gulf’s sea life and ecosystem.
Researchers at the University of South Florida followed the Georgia groups’ studies with their finding that dispersants may have caused a mass of tiny globules of oil to descend to the ocean floor and settle in the bottom of a deep canyon some 40 miles off the coast of the Florida panhandle.
Another scientific research project, led by Dr. Richard Camilli of the esteemed Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and reported by the journal Science last week, said it also had found a large, deep plume of oil which was dissipating slowly and could continue to threaten gulf fisheries for months or years to come.
These studies clearly contest the efficacy of the optimistic NOAA finding. They must be reconciled before Americans can have any confidence in any view, optimistic or pessimistic. Indeed, there is now an apparent need for the administration to organize a broader scientific inquiry into the competing claims to arrive at a conclusion that all sides could accept or would deem logical.
The authors of the Woods Hole study noted, for example, that their research findings were current just through mid-summer, and that oil-eating microbes may have significantly diminished the volume of remaining oil since then.
Regardless, the discrepancy should prompt Congress, when it returns after the Labor Day recess, to revisit the bill passed by the House last month that would significantly improve safe and environmental protections in off-shore drilling.
The House bill also would eliminate the $75 million liability cap that now is the maximum that oil and oil drilling companies can be required to pay. As we have seen for years – and as BP’s $20 billion down payment on damages confirms – $75 million is such a foolishly light liability cap as to be a joke.
There can be no question now that the existing safety regulations on the oil industry’s off-shore operations are woefully inadequate. Verified safety tests of blow-out preventers and minimum standards for well-bore and sea pipelines, methane gas disposal, operational procedures on drilling, spill response plans and inspections all need to be overhauled.
The Obama administration must make a vigorous case for better oversight, and the Republicans who rejected the legislation before the Labor Day break must be called to account.
Saying the Gulf’s waters, seafood and environmental future are all right is not the same thing as making it so. The Obama team and filibustering Republicans have a lot to do.