Wednesday, May 16, 2018

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BP Rig en Route to Offshore Drill Nova Scotia: Are we the next Gulf Coast disaster?

BP Canada drill rig: Too much risk for N.S., protesters say

 April 2010 blowout of the Deepwater Horizon, a submersible rig that was leased to BP Canada’s parent company, BP. The blowout resulted in an explosion that killed 11 crewmen and ignited a fireball visible 64 kilometres away. The Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing and causing the largest oil spill ever in U.S. waters. The U.S. government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels, before the well was sealed.
The spill caused extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and fishing and tourism industries. Criminal and civil settlements and payments to a trust fund had cost the company US$42.2 billion. A judge later ruled that BP was primarily responsible for the spill because of gross negligence and reckless conduct.

The Council of Canadians
May 8 at 1:57pm
"Dr. Bea believes the project [BP's plans to drill up to 7 exploratory wells offshore Nova Scotia] was approved due to a lack of experience in dealing with offshore drilling in Canada.
“It’s ignorance,” he warned. “It’s a lack of knowledge of what other countries have done in very similar circumstances...."
Dr. Robert Bea sees BP Canada’s estimations as blithely “optimistic.' “It brings a chill to my blood," he said. "If there’s a blowout in the wintertime with the North Sea blowing and going, are we going to be able to get a capping stack from Norway to Halifax in 30 days? Hell, no.”
Dr. Bea is a Berkley University Professor Emeritus who has spent the past 64 years working in the oil industry, was the leader of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group and co-founder of the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management.

BP Offshore Drill Project Approval Points to Need for Reform


Nova Scotia Advocate
May 11 at 9:08am
All you ever wanted to know about offshore drilling but were afraid to ask, courtesy of the folks at the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia. Our longest read ever, but also one of our most important ones.


The truth about offshore drilling for oil: What’s missing? - Nova Scotia Advocate
All you ever wanted to know about offshore drilling but were afraid to ask, courtesy of the folks at the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia. Our…
NSADVOCATE.ORG



Given what I recall from descriptions of the clusterfuck  surrounding the blowout of Deepwater Horizon at Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, I wondered why no literature was referenced about this story. After all, that mess started because, basically, they were drilling in pressures past technological capacity. Oh - the blowout preventer - didn't.


Quote from Dr Robert Bea, risk management expert:
“Based on the information provided by BP, the blowout risk is clearly not acceptable,” Bea said in an interview Monday.




Expert questions BP’s drilling plans for offshore Nova Scotia
An engineering expert and former oil industry consultant has raised the alarm on BP Canada Energy Group’s plans to drill off Nova Scotia.
THECHRONICLEHERALD.CA






Great to see this issue covered by our local paper. Today's issue also carries our Open Letter to MP Bernadette Jordan. We have copied it here.
Open Letter to Bernadette Jordan, MP South Shore- St. Margarets
Dear Ms. Jordan,
We would like to congratulate you on your recent appointment as the new chairwoman of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
We also note with approval your comment to the Chronicle-Herald that you have viewed your two and a half years on the Fisheries Committee as “just another way to advocate for the people that I represent.”
We do wish, however, that there was more evidence to support that observation.
We trust we don’t need to remind you that the direct contribution of the fishery to the province’s GDP in 2017 was close to $2 billion. About $600 million of that represented lobster landings alone, a large share of which originated in your and neighbouring ridings.
Of course, the economic importance of the fishery to the province’s economy, and to your riding in particular, goes far beyond that direct measure. Income from the fishery is largely spent locally and has a multiplier effect on the regional economy. For every dollar of income the fishery contributes directly, it generates at least another $2-3 of secondary economic activity close to home.
One other characteristic of the fishery is critically important – as long as we take appropriate measures to protect and rebuild our commercial stocks, it is a sustainable and renewable industry, whose economic contribution will only grow year by year into the future. (What we say here of the fishery, of course, also applies to the tourism industry, another vital, renewable contributor to the province’s economy that depends on a healthy marine environment.)
This matters, at a time when our misguided premier is dreaming of the oil industry saving his political skin by discovering some imaginary oil riches offshore. He is so enamoured of that prospect that he is willing to put at risk the reliable and substantial revenues from our traditional fishery and tourism industries, and to do so without even giving the communities most affected a chance to express their opinion in the matter.
The Premier will argue, along with the oil industry, that an oil strike means untold jobs and wealth for Nova Scotians. The historical record says otherwise. Nova Scotians have seen few jobs in the offshore, while royalties from 17 years of industry activity have amounted to less than a year’s income from the fishery. The crucial difference may be that royalties go into the pockets of the provincial government and support Mr. McNeil’s re-election plans, while fishery revenues are widely distributed in the communities where the activity takes place.
We should add one more point to the economic comparison between fisheries and oil industries – imaginative federal and provincial management of our renewable fishery would recognize the far higher returns to investment in rebuilding that fishery to its former health than are likely from investment in high cost non-renewable oil and gas, a dying energy source that will only contribute further to the likelihood of catastrophic climate change. (And what about your government’s Paris commitment to reduce carbon emissions? Didn’t you mean to honour that?)
So, we ask you, given the clear advantage to investment in the fishery over investment in dirty energy sources offshore, why are you and your government embracing the plans of one of the world’s most notorious polluters, the British oil giant, BP, to drill exploratory oil wells so close to our critically important fishery? Don’t you find it significant that virtually every East Coast US State opposes such activity in its offshore?
During the last election, your party and your Prime Minister recognized that the process for assessing projects like this is broken and needs fixing, and promised to ensure that “communities decide” whether developments go ahead. Unfortunately, the decision to approve BP’s plans was taken without a full examination of all the evidence for and against this project, and without the involvement of the communities that bear the lion’s share of the risk, should a major spill occur. Are we to conclude that we were suckers to believe your promise in the first place?
The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CBNSOPB), the regulatory body whose approval of BP’s plans you endorse, is composed of members marinated in the entitled culture of the oil industry. As such, it is incapable of rendering an accurate assessment of the risks and potential costs to competing marine-dependent industries, like the fishery and tourism. It suffers from an inherent conflict of interest as both a promoter and regulator of the oil industry.
The CNSOPB’s decisions minimize the risks, underestimate the costs, and over-estimate the benefits of oil industry activity in the offshore. The interests of competing industries, like fisheries and tourism, are largely ignored.
Your constituents deserve better. They deserve full disclosure of all we know about the risks of exploratory drilling in the offshore. They also deserve the right, as your campaign platform so wisely recognized, to determine what is an acceptable risk to their livelihoods and the economic foundation of their communities. Yet, this is not what they get as long as the CNSOPB has the last say.
Your government’s new Impact Assessment Act (Bill C-69) is currently making its way through Parliament and should be the vehicle for the kind of reform we so desperately need. However, in its present form C-69 will only give more influence to the CNSOPB in decisions on development in the offshore – precisely the opposite of what the evidence calls for. What are you doing, Ms. Jordan, to see the Bill is amended to ensure the fishery and tourism will no longer be subjected to second-class status and unnecessary risk?
You are exceptionally well placed at a critical time in the evolution of the fishery, as a globally successful and sustainable Nova Scotia industry with a bright future, to advocate imaginative management of our offshore for today’s and future generations. Risking that potential for the slim pay-off the oil industry offers is madness.
We at CPONS, along with our fellow members of the Offshore Alliance, a coalition of two dozen environmental groups, fishermen’s organization, fish packers and community advocacy groups, would be happy to collaborate with you in a genuine effort to secure the future for our sustainable industries.
Once again, congratulations on your new appointment. Here’s hoping you truly intend to seize this opportunity to advocate what is best for your constituents – a tough, evidence-based, public assessment of the pros and cons of oil industry exploration in our offshore.
Peter Puxley
Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia (CPONS)
“When you’re drilling that deep, you better know exactly what you’re doing,” said Gretchen Fitzgerald, Atlantic director for the Sierra Club Canada Foundation, in an interview with DeSmog Canada. “With the poor regulations and industry oversight that we perceive out there, we’re not reassured that’s happening. They’re very far from emergency and spill response.”
One proposed solution that BP mentioned in its environmental impact statement is using “booming and skimming operations” which help to physically contain oil within a particular area. ( But that makes no mention of Kevin Costner's specially developed oil recovery craft. )

Then there’s the use of chemical dispersants, which break apart oil into smaller droplets and allow it to more easily mix with water. Almost seven million litres of a dispersant called Corexit was used following the Deepwater Horizon spill. 

( Corexit 9500 is on a list of chemicals which pose particular risk - and it was made to sound as harmless as dish soap. I have ranted on that topic as the practice being a disaster multiplier. In the Gulf of Mexico, it killed rotifers at the base of the marine food chain at a rate of 54x the effects of crude alone. There are natural microbes which will 'eat' crude - but they don't survive Corexit either. Deposits are permanently destabilized so as to move around from storm action and kill unpredictably. Wonderful that is not. )

 Australia has its own pithy commentary about the Great Australian Bight - and drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.

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