http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/water/coast-guard-plans-to-use-dispersants-if-cuban-drilling-produces-oil-spill/1207054
TampaBay.com
By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
Posted: Dec 20, 2011 11:01 AM
As Cuba prepares to begin allowing a Spanish company to drill for oil 12 miles north of Havana next year, U.S. Coast Guard officials say they have learned from the mistakes made during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and will be prepared for the worst should a spill happen so close to the Florida Keys.
“We will attack it quickly, aggressively and as far from our shores as we can,” Rear Adm. William Baumgartner told reporters during a news conference Tuesday.
Attacking an offshore spill from Cuba would include spraying dispersants such as Corexit on any oil slick, to break it up and make it degrade more quickly, Baumgartner said.
“We will use every tool at our disposal,” said the admiral, who commands the Seventh Coast Guard District, headquartered in Miami. “Aerial dispersants are going to be an effective tool. Undispersed oil is more damaging to natural resources than dispersed oil.”
The use of Corexit during last year’s Deepwater Horizon cleanup proved to be controversial, especially after scientists from the University of South Florida and other institutions reported finding underwater plumes of dissolved oil droplets that they feared would affect marine life.
Environmental activists are already questioning whether using such dispersants to break up the oil would be a good idea so close to such sensitive areas as the Dry Tortugas National Park, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, the National Key Deer Refuge and John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park.
“Just because it disappears doesn’t mean it’s not there,” said Jonathan Ullman of the Sierra Club’s South Florida office.
Baumgartner said his goal is not to protect Florida tourist-attracting beaches so much as it is to protect natural areas that are important to marine life, particularly coral reefs, mangroves and sea grass beds.
He said he expects the currents that flow through and near the Keys — the gulf’s Loop Current, the Florida Current and the Gulfstream — will help buffer Florida from contact with most of any oil that might be spilled in Cuban waters. But he conceded that eddies are likely to break off and carry some of the oil close enough to taint the shore.
That’s why he wants to attack it before it ever arrives. In addition to dispersants, Baumgartner said he would use skimmer boats, booms and controlled burns to stop the spill. However, a report on the Deepwater Horizon cleanup found that those tools did little to stop BP’s spill, with only 5 percent of the oil burned, and a mere 3 percent skimmed off the surface.
Cuba has agreed to let a Spanish company, Repsol, drill exploratory wells off its shores. Repsol’s safety record is spotty. In February 2008, its operation in Ecuador experienced a crude oil spill near the Yasuni National Park in a rainforest area. In February 2009, another oil spill occurred in Ecuador’s Amazon region after a rupture in a pipeline.
Repsol is bringing in an Italian-owned, Chinese-made drilling rig to drill the wells. U.S. officials are scheduled to inspect the rig when it reaches Trinidad and Tobago next week, Baumgartner said. Then it would head for Cuba and get to work drilling in January.
Currently Cuba gets its oil from Venezuela and relies on sugar, nickel mining and tourism for its economic wellbeing. But sugar production has fallen off, and the price of nickel worldwide has fallen. Meanwhile its tourism industry has been sputtering — so now the Cubans are ready to consider drilling for oil.
The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated Cuba’s offshore fields hold 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and said the area has “significant potential.” The first block Repsol is expected to explore lies under 5,600 feet of water – 600 feet deeper than where BP’s Deepwater Horizon well exploded in April 2010.
Baumgartner and Capt. John Slaughter, his head of planning, said the main lesson they learned from Deepwater Horizon was to do a better job of coordinating with state and county emergency officials, who complained repeatedly about being ignored during last year’s cleanup. The admiral said he has personally briefed Gov. Rick Scott and talked with state and county officials about his contingency plans for any Cuban incident.
Craig Pittman can be reached at craig@tampabay.com
[Last modified: Dec 20, 2011 12:06 PM]
Special thanks to Richard Charter