How Much Oil Must Be Spilt on Louisiana's Coast Before that Coast is Worth Saving?

The BP Gulf Gusher hit day 57 today. Somewhere between 40 million and 55 million gallons of oil have blown from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico since the well blew out on April 20 and relief is at least six weeks away.

Tens of millions more gallons of oil will have gushed by the time relief wells are completed in August. If the relief wells work, the end of the beginning of this nightmare might be over. BP's record of predicting when they will get this well under control is almost as shoddy as its safety record for North American operations in recent years.

There are doubts within the industry that the relief wells themselves will work in putting an end to the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Louisiana political and business leaders are working more frantically to bring an end to the six-month moratorium on deep water drilling ordered by President Obama than they are to protect Louisiana's coast.

Governor Jindal led a pep rally in Houma and called the White House to urge an end to the moratorium.

Senator David Vitter (John DC/LA) wrote a letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar calling for an end to the moratorium — ooops! No, this letter to the White House is the one I meant to link to (sorry!).

Senator Mary Landrieu questioned Salazar about why the moratorium was ordered when his panel of experts convened in the wake of the blowout did not recommend it.

Newly minted interim Lieutenant Governor Scott Angelle blasted the President claiming the moratorium was based on his dislike of the industry when Angelle launched a PR effort to gin up state support for an end to the ban (or is this another Jindal fund-raising effort by Angelle while on public duty?).

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell criticized the moratorium during a presentation to a joint session of the Legislature on Tuesday (but it did not help him get approval to direct legal work to his contributors the best legal minds he could find to sue BP). And, of course, the Louisiana House of Representatives took a position, as well.

At the core of the issue for those politicians is the fact that the moratorium will cost offshore service jobs. Just how many is subject to debate and the industry is playing it cute, saying they'll wait a month before deciding what to do. Interestingly, other governments are taking a tougher line on environmental and safety requirements as the disaster in the Gulf continues to unfold.

The fact that the affected companies include some of the state's largest political contributors in what has become the state's zone of the deepest political pockets (think the Bollingers and Chouests for starters) and it is easy to see why Louisiana politicians are clamoring for an end to this moratorium.

Money affecting politics? In Louisiana? Nah!

Beyond Politics

To hear his Louisiana critics, President Obama decided to impose the deep water drilling moratorium without considering the economic impact of the decision on Louisiana. That was not the case and, in fact, he made that clear in appearances in Louisiana last week. He also made it clear through a proposal to have BP pick up the tab for those oil workers laid off as a result of the moratorium.

One undeniable fact in the Gulf of Mexico is that the well on the floor of the Gulf that was once drilled by the Deepwater horizon continues spewing very large amounts of oil into the water, just as it has done for the past 56 days.

It has done this despite the best efforts of BP and all of the major players oil and gas industry to get this well capped and the flow of oil staunched.

As we see every day, nothing has worked.

Since the scope of the problem has been recognized, BP's peers have been providing the company engineering and technical assistance because they recognize that this blowout is a problem for the entire deep water drilling industry. Royal Dutch Shell is lending expertise. Chevron is helping BP. Exxon-Mobil is helping.

They are all helping BP because they see this disaster for what it is: a threat to the future of the deep water drilling industry.

And while there are those in state government and the industry parroting figures about how many thousands of wells have been drilled offshore over the years without any accidents, the Deepwater Horizon incident, the resulting gusher, and the so-far-futile attempts to stop that gusher prove conclusively that deep water drilling presents a much higher degree of difficulty than drilling in shallow waters.

Think about how many times someone from BP has used the phrase "never been tried before at this depth" in describing attempts to cap this gusher. Whether it was the Top Hat, Junk Shot, whatever. The depth has been an issue.

The Deepwater Horizon was drilling a mile above the Gulf floor. Other deep water rigs in the Gulf were operating at greater depths.

The industry has demonstrated on a daily basis that it is not prepared to deal with a blowout in deep water where pressures on oil and gas in the ground are greater, where the pressure from the water column of the Gulf is greater, and where the temperature of the water is more extreme. These deep water operations are far more complex than those in shallow coastal waters.

How can any serious person (that is, not in the pocket of the energy industry) argue to end this moratorium when the causes of the Deepwater Horizon incident are not known; when the measures that might better prepare companies to deal with future incidents have been neither identified nor implemented; and when the gusher resulting from the April 20 explosion and fire still has not been brought under control?

What Cost Louisiana's Coast?

Louisiana's environment, in general, and our wetlands, in particular, have long been considered expendable by the energy industry and by our state's political and business leaders. They were willing to sacrifice a football field of wetlands every 38 minutes in exchange for tax revenue and campaign contributions. When the tax revenue shrank, the political leaders were willing to settle for the campaign contributions.

Since the end of World War II, Jame Carville writes, Louisiana has lost more land than all of Delaware, a significant portion of that attributable to oil and gas activity in the marshes and offshore.

So, let the record show that only Dave Treen and Foster Campbell had the temerity to publicly say that this was a bad deal. Treen said it in the early 1980s while he was governor. Foster Campbell said it during his 2007 campaign for governor (he's still saying it today). Senator Rob Marionneaux of Grosse Tete tried to get a processing tax similar to that proposed by Campbell passed in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon incident but got only six votes in the Senate.

The bottom line is that for the vast majority of Louisiana's political elite —in both parties — sacrificing Louisiana's coastal wetlands and the protections those wetlands provided against storms and tidal surge was an agreeable price in exchange for the largess of the oil industry in the form of taxes and/or campaign contributions.

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon incident, the cost to Louisiana's fisheries and coastal communities appeared to briefly bring around even those who had never shown any interest in environmental matters, such as the Barn Stormin' Bermer Bobby Jindal.

Ah, but when a few thousand oilfield jobs were imperiled by the President's moratorium, Jindal reverted to form, as did the rest of the political elite.

It is apparent that there is a price point where Jindal and others in the Louisiana political elite feel that Louisiana's coast is worth defending. What we are doing now is haggling over establishing that precise price point.

Early on day 57 of the Gulf Gusher, we know that our political elites consider the possible loss of  6,000 deep water jobs outweighs 40 million gallons of oil threatening the coast. If the moratorium sticks and the gusher continues for, say another month, would 10,000 jobs outweigh 50 million gallons of oil?

What if the moratorium sticks and the relief wells don't work (maybe there's a storm in the Gulf) until November? Would 20,000 jobs outweigh 80 million gallons of oil in the Gulf, probably a good bit of it in our wetlands and on our shores?

Our political elites say they value Louisiana's coast. We're just trying to establish the price at which point they will stop selling it out.

BP Gulf Gusher: The End of Oil Patch Socialism?

It's been a grand old time in recent months to hear people who call themselves conservatives rail against the advancing "socialism" they see taking over the United States. Healthcare reform was the trip wire, but, really, any excuse would have done after Barack Obama got elected president.

But, there is a more virulent form of socialism loose in America, in fact right here in Louisiana. It is the socialism that shifts the costs of the destruction of our environment, our economy, and our way of life onto taxpayers and working families, while the profits from the exercise generating the harm are privatized and hauled off into the corporate coffers of companies like BP, Shell, Exxon, and Chevron.

As the surge from every tropical storm or hurricane traveling westward across the Gulf of Mexico demonstrates, Louisiana stands defenseless against storm surge these days. Our coastal marshes are disappearing at an astonishing clip that accelerates with the passage of each storm.

The oil and gas industry bears significant but not sole responsibility for this situation. Still, their drilling activities and their pipelines, combined with the cut off of fresh water flows from the Mississippi, have decimated our wetlands.

Yet, we continue to subsidize the very activities that undermine our future. We pay to raise roads that industry activities caused to sink so that companies can pursue oil and gas in ways that further threaten to ruin our marshlands and fisheries. We give massive tax breaks to the industry to build new plants to that will pollute our air and water and stand idly by as they try to smack down anyone who tries to stand up for the health and well-being of the general public.

In Louisiana, energy is still king. The job of the rest of us is defined as being to shut up, suck it up, and clean it up.

This is oil patch socialism. It is a hybrid of the worst of capitalism and socialism. Under this system, profits are the sole domain of the energy companies while the environmental, ecological and economic downsides of their activities are the sole responsibility of the general population.

Louisiana Has Been Expendable

Louisiana has always had a love/hate relationship with the oil and gas industry.

We loved the jobs and the tax revenue. Working in the oil patch was hard but you did not need much of an education to make pretty good money out there.

The energy companies hated us. They hated our land, our marshes and our people — or, at least, that's what one could conclude judging by the way they've treated us. If something broke, they dumped it off of the rig site. Oilfield waste? If they were merely borderline irresponsible, they left the wastes in man-made pits around the drilling sites. If they had less of a conscience, they dumped the stuff into ditches, bayous and streams.

The energy companies have been the anti-stewards in Louisiana. Taken as a whole, they acted as if no one would use the land or water they needed to pursue their work. It was damned near a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Louisiana's land, water, wild life, and people were all expendable in the eyes of the industry.

As long as the costs were hidden, this was considered a fair deal by those who led the state. But, viewed in the long term, this was always a one-sided deal. The money made in the short term by individuals and government by allowing unfettered access to oil and gas in the marshes and off the coast was gone by the time the cost of that activity became clear.

It took a former oil industry engineer to figure it out:

The oil industry has been good to Louisiana, providing low taxes and high-paying jobs. But such largesse hasn't come without a cost, largely exacted from coastal wetlands. The most startling impact has only recently come to light—the effect of oil and gas withdrawal on subsidence rates. For decades geologists believed that the petroleum deposits were too deep and the geology of the coast too complex for drilling to have any impact on the surface. But two years ago former petroleum geologist Bob Morton, now with the U.S. Geological Survey, noticed that the highest rates of wetland loss occurred during or just after the period of peak oil and gas production in the 1970s and early 1980s. After much study, Morton concluded that the removal of millions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and tens of millions of barrels of saline formation water lying with the petroleum deposits caused a drop in subsurface pressure—a theory known as regional depressurization. That led nearby underground faults to slip and the land above them to slump.

"When you stick a straw in a soda and suck on it, everything goes down," Morton explains. "That's very simplified, but you get the idea." The phenomenon isn't new: It was first documented in Texas in 1926 and has been reported in other oil-producing areas such as the North Sea and Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Morton won't speculate on what percentage of wetland loss can be pinned on the oil industry. "What I can tell you is that much of the loss between Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Terrebonne was caused by induced subsidence from oil and gas withdrawal. The wetlands are still there, they're just underwater." The area Morton refers to, part of the Barataria-Terrebonne estuary, has one of the highest rates of wetland loss in the state.

The energy companies won't admit their contribution to the disappearance of Louisiana's coastal marshes. They agree it's a bad thing, but they want someone else to pay for it. Certainly not them. Shell Oil's decision to sign on as a lead sponsor of the America's Wetland

The Port Fourchon Perpetual Motion Machine

Port Fourchon, Louisiana, is the port from which deep water offshore drilling activities off our coast are serviced. It is a busy, extremely valuable port. It is located near Grand Isle. And it is in danger of being washed away by the very forces it was created to service.

The only way to get a truck to Port Fourchon is to drive down LA 1. That wasn't much of a problem back when the port was first built back in the 1960s. But, as coastal subsidence has picked up steam and as port activity picked up with the development of the deep water drilling industry, LA 1 began sinking right along with the houses and businesses along it. This jeopardized the future of the port.

That's correct. The disappearance of the marshes caused by drilling, canal cutting, pipeline laying threatened the road that is the only land line to and from the port whose sole reason for being is to serve the energy industry.

So, the State of Louisiana and the Federal government have undertaken a billion dollar-plus effort to raise the road to Port Fourchon so that the companies there can continue to drive the processes that sank the earlier version of the road. Part of the new road is complete. Work is continuing on the other segments.

The commission running Port Fourchon is also undertaking efforts to raise protections around the port itself, to protect the port against storm surge after waves from Hurricane Katrina damaged the facility. Ironically, the energy port sits on the front line of climate change where the impact of rising sea levels will evident first.

It is worth noting that one reason that Port Fourchon is so successful is because it sits on the tip of dry land at such a southern point. Having access to the port saves companies servicing deep water rigs and wells a trip of between 40 and 50 miles up to the Port of Morgan City for supplies. It is a convenience to the industry that the state and federal governments are increasingly being asked to support.

This is not a bad thing per se. But it is another example of how this very profitable industry gets to spread the costs of its activity across society while it gets to retain the profits.

A Gusher of Change?


With oil continuing to gush unabated out of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, evidence mounts that the massive pollution is a result of Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) operation as an arm of the industry rather that of a protector of the public interest.

According to a May 10 story in McClatchy News Service,"The oil industry, not the federal agency that regulates it, plays a crucial role in writing the safety and environmental rules for offshore drilling, a role that critics say reflects cozy ties between an industry and its regulators that need to be snapped."

There was a 2008 Department of the Interior Inspector General report that detailed a corrupt relationship between MMS and the oil and gas industry it was supposed to regulate. Even with the change of administrations, MMS has retained its revolving door relationship with industry.

President Obama's decision to split the MMS into two sections — one to manage leasing and the other to regulate safety and compliance — will make a difference, but it comes too late for the Gulf of Mexico, where large plumes of oil have been discovered by scientists in recent days beneath the surface of the water.

That cozy relationship with industry should ring familiar in the Louisiana because state government has been nothing if not accommodating to the industry over the decades, regardless of the party affiliation of the governor in charge.

Senators Mary Landrieu and David Vitter have continued to be supportive of the industry even in the face of this potentially catastrophic event (so, too, has Congressman Charlie Melancon who is running against Vitter in November).

But, at what point do our leaders begin connecting the dots and recognize that the interests of the energy industry are not the same as the interests of the state of Louisiana and its people? How much more land do we have to lose? How long do our fisheries have to be closed? How many displaced fishermen and their families have to be permanently out of work?

Even if the gusher were capped today, the effects of this incident are going to be around for a long time. Business as usual — letting the industry have carte blanche to do what it pleases — is no longer an option.

Jindal vs. Jindal: The Governor fights his own policies in BP Gulf Gusher

As the catastrophe that is the BP Gulf Gusher unfolds, Governor Bobby Jindal is finding that he is scrambling to deal with forces that he and his allies did much to unleash. The governor has met the enemy and it is himself — or, at least, the product of his earlier work.

As Congressman from Louisiana's First Congressional District, Jindal was the leading House proponent of the legislation that opened up that section of the Gulf of Mexico where the BP well now gushes thousands of barrels of oil per day into the open water, threatening Louisiana's economy and the fragile ecology of our coastal wetlands.

There was a time when Jindal was fighting with Senator Mary Landrieu over who should get credit for opening up this area to drilling and the higher royalty rates that production in those waters would bring to Louisiana. That argument seems to have gone quiet in recent weeks as the damage from the BP accident mounts.

Now, after years of downplaying or ignoring the adverse environmental impact of the oil and gas industry on the state, Jindal is embracing a radical strategy to hurriedly buildup barrier islands by dredging the Gulf to fill in gaps between barrier islands in a desperate attempt to prevent the oil from the underwater gusher from reaching the state's coastal estuaries. Consistent with his past, though, Jindal wants to launch the work without an environmental impact study.

The idea to restore the barrier islands has been around for years, but Jindal never took up the cause — even back in his first year in office when the state had a budget surplus.

Now, with the state strapped for cash and confronted with an economic, ecological and environmental catastrophe that he and his energy buddies long maintained could never happen, Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Billie Nungesser will meet on Monday to pitch their plan to BP executives and the Coast Guard.

This lunging from position to position is evidence that protection of the coast and environmentalism is new to Jindal. The moves smack of having no grounding in the subject matter. The proposed solutions illustrate a lack of understanding of the complexity of the issue and the hazards that the proposed solutions entail.

The oil that once fed Louisiana's government and families is now eating Bobby Jindal's lunch.

Moving Day at The Office

The clearest sign that the Jindal administration was completely unprepared for an incident like what has become the BP Gulf Gusher can be found in a bureaucratic move he made at the start of the current fiscal year. That's when Jindal moved the Louisiana Offshore Oil Spill Coordinator's Office out of the Office of the Governor and down into the bureaucracy of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections.

According to the LOSCO website, "LOSCO’s primary function is to ensure effective coordination and representation of the state’s interests in all matters related to spill response and prevention." It is worth noting that the homepage of the LOSCO site has not been updated since 2006.

One area of the site that has been updated is the "Contact/Staff" page, which was updated on April 30. There the physical location of the office is given as the Department of Public Safety & Corrections' Public Safety Services office near the Baton Rouge airport.

Jindal buried LOSCO so deep in the bureaucracy that it is not mentioned anywhere on either the full Department of Public Safety and Corrections site, nor on the Public Safety site run by the Louisiana State Police.

It was not always like this.

State Representative Sam Jones of Franklin headed the LOSCO office in the administration of Governor Kathleen Blanco. Jones told The Advocate that the move demonstrated a lack of institutional knowledge on Jindal's part.

“The onus being who responds to a disaster? The governor,” said Jones, D-Franklin, one of former Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s closest aides.

Jones said the oil spill coordinator now must navigate DPS’ hierarchy before reaching the governor’s ear.

State Police Col. Mike Edmonson, who oversees DPS, confirmed Jones' analysis of the layers of bureaucracy now between LOSCO and the governor, but denied there was any delay in getting information to the governor. Edmonson said he advises the governor based on information from the staff at the Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office.

“I know what’s going on. I’m briefed every morning,” he said.

Edmonson told The Advocate that Roland Guidry, the head of the Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office, is on the ground responding to the disaster. What does that mean? Is he deploying boom or holding Jindal's jacket?

Dredge, Baby, Dredge!

At the heart of the catastrophe that is building as a result of the BP Gulf Gusher is the fact that nothing on this scale has ever happened before. The damage inflicted to Louisiana's coast and wetlands by the oil and gas industry has been a slow-motion disaster best viewed through a time-lapse perspective. The BP Gulf Gusher, on the other hand, is happening now and at an alarming rate.

It's not like people did not know that this was possible. Still, through effective lobbying, BP successfully fought federal moves to force them to include safety measures on the rig that might have prevented the current catastrophe.

Still, the scale of the problem is forcing techniques to be used that have never been tried on this scale before — like the thus far unsuccessful attempt to drop a coffer dam over the blowout preventers to capture the oil. It worked in shallower waters on a smaller scale, but came up short over the weekend. Another try will be made early this week.

Using dispersants is another approach that has worked on smaller scale spills. In this incident, though, it is raising serious concerns about the impact of these toxins on aquatic life. Do we risk killing our fisheries in our attempt to save them?

Confronted with an unabated flow of oil from the floor of the Gulf that might be five times larger than official estimates of 5,000 barrels per day, Governor Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser will push a plan to dredge areas of the Gulf near barrier islands in an attempt to use the spoil to catch the oil before it hits the marshlands and estuaries.

The Times-Picayune reports that rough drafts of the plan show filling in gaps within the Chandeleur Islands, east of the Mississippi River and Breton Sound, and building up barrier islands to protect the Barataria Basin west of the river. Nungesser had similar plans on the shelf already, as part of a coastal restoration and storm protection initiative that the parish has been discussing with the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Professor Robert Twilley of LSU's School of the Coast and Environment told The Advocate's Outdoor Editor Joe Macaluso that there are no good options at this point.

“We have to remember that our coast is more than the wetlands, and when you place dispersants and it affects the bottom of the seabeds along the Continental Shelf, that it affects our entire ecosystem in some way,” Twilley said.

“The seabed there is a very rich biological system and the fishing is great along the shelf, and we can discount the effect it has on our shoreline,” he said.

“We need to appreciate that our wetlands, our barrier islands and our offshore fishing are intertwined,” Twilley said. “And understand that everybody loses, no matter where this oil goes, because it will touch something. We just have to minimize the effects.”

The rush to try to do something — anything — to attempt to mitigate the damage from the oil carries its own risks.

That would require taking a more patient perspective than Jindal seems capable of achieving.

The Political Posturing Continues

Despite his efforts to appear rising above the politics that seem to influence his every move, Jindal can't put it aside.

In an email to supporters this week, Jindal lists three parish presidents he's working with to deal with the BP Gulf Gusher — Nungesser, St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis, and St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro. That's all fine and proper.

However, the Governor failed to mention one president he met with regarding the response to the spill during the past week.

Apparently, the name of the Democratic President of the United States is still too jarring for Jindal to mention to his supporters. No, even with all of this at stake — a large segment of our economy, the future of our coast and marshlands — Jindal still can't bring himself to play this straight.

Something about Climate Change that Mary Does Not Get

Will someone please tell Senator Mary Landrieu that she represents the state of Louisiana and not the oil and gas industries!

Landrieu was the lone Democrat to vote against ending a Republican filibuster against provisions in the energy bill which would have mandated that utilities get at least 15 percent of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020.

The bill, in its final form, does some good things, but it could have done much more if not for Landrieu's placing of the interests of oil and gas companies ahead of the interests of the people of the state she was elected to represent.

Why do I say Landrieu voted to defend the interests of a leading industry over the interests of the state? For starters, there is the matter of the accelerating rate of climate change, which is speeding the melting of the polar ice cap and the cap in Greenland.

Less ice, means more water in the oceans, which translates into rising sea levels. Louisiana's coast is very flat. Rising sea levels combined with sinking land is a bad combination for us.

How bad? Check out the images from the University of Arizona at the top of this post.

The image on the left is what Louisiana's relationship with the Gulf of Mexico was like earlier this year. The image on the right shows the impact of a one-meter rise (a little more than three feet) would have on our state. Look at it closely (you can find another set of the images here).

Orleans and Jefferson parishes are inundated. Terrebonne and LaFourche, too. Gulf waters reach up to I-10 in West Baton Rouge Parish. Most of Cameron and Vermilion parishes are under water.

Oh, well, you might say, "that won't happen for a century. We'll be gone and someone else will have figured out what to do."

Wrong!

The pace of the melting is increasing.

Well, then, it's hopeless you might say.

Wrong again!

McKinsey & Company (the business consultants) recently released a report (PDF) that substantial progress could be made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next 23 years without disrupting the U.S. economy. It focuses on increased energy efficiency as a means of reducing the growth in the release of greenhouse gases.

But, McKinsey report states that the measures that need to be taken include the very kind of energy production shift that Landrieu wrong-headedly blocked by supporting the Republican filibuster against the energy bill:

5. Reducing the carbon intensity of electric power production — 800 megatons to 1,570 megatons. This potential derives from a shift toward renewable energy sources (primarily wind and solar), additional nuclear capacity, improved efficiency of power plants, and eventual use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies on coal-fired electricity generation.

This is McKinsey & Company writing! It's only radical if you're so deep in the back pocket of the energy industry that you think their farts are perfume.

Again, why is this important? Go to the images at the top again.

Louisiana, due to our geology, topography and geography, is going to be among the areas most dramatically affected by rising sea levels (not the only one, to be sure!).

It would be nice if any of our elected officials would give even the slightest indication that they understand what is at stake here.

The senior Senator from Louisiana has gone all 'flat earth' on climate change at a time when we need her to be rational. Maybe her polling numbers have unnerved her?