http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/todays-paper/cleanup+unlikely+coast/3049464/story.html
Montreal Gazette
Drilling under way; Spill redress ‘difficult,’ Chevron said in 2005
BY ANDREW MAYEDA, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE MAY 20, 2010
Chevron Canada warned regulators five years ago it would be unable to clean up the vast majority of any big oil spill at a rig off the coast of Newfoundland that is poised to set a record for the deepest offshore oil well drilled in Canada.
Chevron began exploratory drilling this month in the Orphan Basin, about 430 kilometres northeast of St. John’s. The project is known as Lona O-55. At 2,600 metres below sea level, it is considerably deeper than the existing White Rose, Terra Nova and Hibernia rigs off the Newfoundland coast. Those three rigs are the only active offshore projects in Canada.
The well at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico is about 1,500 metres deep.
The unprecedented nature of the Lona O-55 project has raised concerns among environmentalists and industry observers about how Chevron would respond were the well to blow out, as it did in the Deepwater Horizon case.
An environmental assessment commissioned by Chevron and its partners in 2005 estimated there is only a 0.0086 per cent probability of an “extremely large” oil spill of more than 150,000 barrels. The probability of a “very large” spill, defined as greater than 10,000 barrels, was pegged at 0.026 per cent.
There is considerable dispute over the size of the Gulf Coast spill, but U.S. government officials believe it is leaking at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day, meaning it is approaching 150,000 barrels. The Chevron report notes that, before the Gulf Coast disaster, there were only five extremely large spills in offshore drilling history.
However, the report also concedes that, were a large spill to occur on the rough seas off Newfoundland, the company would be hard pressed to clean it up.
“Physical recovery of spilled oil off the coast of Newfoundland will be extremely difficult and inefficient for large blowout spills,” the report states.” First, the generally rough sea conditions mean that containment and recovery techniques are frequently not effective. Second, the wide slicks that result from subsea blowouts mean that only a portion of the slick can be intercepted.”
The Chevron report estimates that only two to 12 per cent of an offshore spill could be retrieved under “typical wind and wave conditions.”
Stephen Hazell, a lawyer with environmental-law organization Ecojustice, said big offshore projects such as the Lona O-55 should be subject to tougher reviews.
Last week, the Newfoundland government appointed a marine safety and environmental management expert to review the province’s prevention and response plans.
Special thanks to Richard Charter