http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/09/5_key_human_errors_colossal_me.html

New Orleans, LA

Published: Sunday, September 05, 2010, 6:00 AM Updated: Sunday, September 05, 2010, 3:08 PM
David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

A string of mistakes, first by people, then by a supposedly fail-safe machine, sealed the fates of 11 rig workers and led to the fouling of the Gulf of Mexico and hundreds of miles of its coastline.

More than 100 hours of testimony before a federal investigative panel, two dozen congressional hearings and several internal company reports have brought the genesis of the spill into sharp focus. The record shows there was no single fatal mistake or cut corner. Rather, five key human errors and a colossal mechanical failure combined to form a recipe for unprecedented disaster.
e rig’s malfunctioning blowout preventer ultimately failed, but it was needed only because of human errors. Those errors originated with a team of BP engineers in Houston who knew they had an especially tough well, one rig workers called “the well from hell.” Despite the well’s orneriness, the engineers repeatedly chose to take quicker, cheaper and ultimately more dangerous actions, compared with available options. Even when they acknowledged limited risks, they seemed to consider each danger in a vacuum, never thinking the combination of bad choices would add up to a total well blowout.

Tens of thousands of offshore wells have been drilled without incident. Drill teams often face difficult conditions miles down in a hole, but they use a battery of tests and equipment to proceed safely. That’s why the first time BP went with the less-than-safest option — choosing a well structure with fewer barriers against kicks of gas — nobody batted an eye.

Plenty of wells had used a similar structure of metal tube linings. Halliburton, the cementing contractor, simply recommended more devices called centralizers to make that design safer. But the second misstep came when BP’s engineering team ignored Halliburton.

Again, that shouldn’t have caused a panic: The British oil giant had another contractor on board the rig to definitively test the well’s integrity once the cement was in place. But then a third money-saving and time-saving corner was cut: BP decided to send that contractor home 11 hours before the accident, without running the test.

Rig officials might have been able to do without that test if they had correctly interpreted the readings from a subsequent pressure test. But expert testimony and documents suggest key error No. 4 occurred when rig officials erroneously viewed that test as a success.

Maybe none of that would have led to a blowout, if BP hadn’t made questionable decision No. 5: replacing heavy drilling mud with light seawater in the mile-long riser connecting rig to well, and in the top third of the hole itself, before setting a final plug.

And lastly, removing that mud barrier, the principal defense against gas kicking to the surface, might not have been fatal if the rig’s blowout preventer, the massive metal stack that shuts off the well in an emergency, had functioned properly. It did not.

As money pressures mount, caution cast aside

The Macondo well, in the Mississippi Canyon 50 miles southeast of Venice, vexed both the men who designed it and the ones who drilled it. The Transocean rig Marianas drilled a shallow portion of the well, but had to go back to a shipyard for hurricane repairs last November. In February, Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon moved in to take its place.

The troubles continued. Daily drilling reports show that on March 10, hydrocarbons flowed into the well in a sand layer several thousand feet above the oil reservoir, and a piece of drill pipe got stuck. The pipe was never retrieved.

Rig workers and engineers say they lost thousands of barrels of drilling mud during the process and don’t know why. The heavy mud is a principal barrier against gas kicks, and also helps keep drills lubricated and carries earthen shavings out of the way.

The constant problems caused huge delays and extra expense, creating additional pressure on the workers and managers to finish the project quickly and cheaply. Documents show that the Deepwater Horizon had been scheduled to drill a different well 43 days before the accident. The Macondo well, budgeted by BP to cost $96 million, had cost at least $40 million more than that when it blew, records show.

BP’s Gulf drilling manager, David Sims, acknowledged in testimony that “every conversation, every decision has a cost factor.” E-mail messages and reports by BP engineers in the weeks before the accident make reference to money or time savings as they debated methods for closing the well. In each case, they went the cheaper way.

No. 1: Fewer barriers to gas flow

Five days before the accident, BP asked for government permission to change its well design three times in a span of 24 hours. Each request was immediately approved by the U.S. Interior Department, some within minutes.

Independent engineers who have reviewed the design changes say they were baffling. They were questioned at BP, too. An internal company document from mid-April acknowledged a single, long tube running through the center of the 13,000-foot well would leave a side space for hydrocarbons to shoot up, with only one seal to stop a blowout. Computer models raised questions about whether the design would result in a weak seal on the well’s walls.

Typical industry practice for exploration wells, according to numerous engineers, would be to run a short tube to line the bottom 1,500 feet of the hole. That liner would hook onto a bigger tube above it, which would tie back to the top of the well, creating an additional barrier blocking natural gas from flowing into the side space between the tubes. It also involved setting an extra plug in the center of the well.

The gas that eventually blew out of the Macondo well either went up the center of the hole or up through a side space. Either way, the industry-endorsed method would have given the drillers one more barrier to slow or halt the gas’s attack. A BP document shows that was also once the company’s preferred method, though it would have cost as much as $10 million more.

In the operation’s final weeks, those cost concerns took over. On March 30, BP engineer Brian Morel, whose name is on the well design documents, wrote that “not running the tie-back saves a good deal of time/money.”

Then BP got a measure of safety affirmation. Halliburton ran a computer model April 15 that showed a good cement seal on the walls would be possible with the long central tube, as long as BP used 21 devices called centralizers to help the cement set. An internal BP document called it the “best economic case and well integrity case.”

It appears BP was determined to use a long tube in the middle because it would make future oil production operations easier. Often, oil companies drill exploratory wells, strike oil, fill the well with cement and then drill a new well to extract the oil. In this case, BP wanted to be able to plug the exploratory well without filling it in, abandoning it only temporarily so a production crew could tap into the hole Deepwater Horizon had already drilled.

It’s not uncommon to convert an exploration well to a production well, but it wasn’t something workers on this rig were used to. That left many crew members in uncharted territory.

No. 2: Fewer centralizers to keep cement even

Although BP engineers got confirmation from Halliburton that a long center tube could be safe, they weren’t initially keen on spending the extra time and money to install more than six centralizers. The devices help keep the tubes centered in the hole as they telescope downward. If one tube isn’t on center, cement poured there will go to the wider side, leaving a weaker barrier on the other side.

Jesse Gagliano, a Halliburton employee who worked in the same office with the BP engineers, warned his clients April 15 of the possibility. BP’s Morel responded: “Hopefully the pipe stays centralized due to gravity.”

A worried Gagliano caught up to several members of BP’s engineering team at their shared Houston offices. He persuaded Gregg Walz, the engineering team’s new leader, that 21 centralizers were needed based on Halliburton computer models. Walz told John Guide, his counterpart in operations, “We need to honor the modeling.”

Sims, the new manager for several of BP’s Gulf wells, agreed with Walz. The company had 15 additional centralizers sent to the rig the next morning. But then Guide found out the centralizers didn’t have the right collars to keep them in place. Also, he complained in an e-mail message that it would “take 10 hrs to install them.” In the end, the 15 centralizers were not used.

On April 18, Halliburton ran a new model of a cement job using fewer than seven centralizers. It showed a “severe risk of gas flow.” But Gagliano didn’t make a scene this time. He attached the report to an e-mail message to his clients. Three different BP engineers later testified they never saw the warning, which was buried on page 18 of the report. Guide said he didn’t read the report until after the accident.

Even Gagliano never dreamed that two days later, the rig would go up in smoke and flames.

He said he didn’t try to stop the job because uneven cement “doesn’t equal a blowout. My concern was … having to do a remedial cement job.”

But that assumed BP would find out if there was a problem to remedy. After Guide went with the riskier cementing method, engineers Morel and Brett Cocales, who had seen Halliburton’s models, shrugged it off.

“Who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine,” Cocales wrote Morel. Morel responded that they could see if Halliburton’s models were right once they checked data on the actual cement barriers.
That check was never done.

No. 3: No bond log to check cement integrity

BP sent a crew from oil-field services firm Schlumberger to the rig two days before the accident to run various tests on the well. The company was paid about $10,000 to wait until the cement was set. It would get another $100,000 or so if the crew ran a cement bond log, the gold standard for testing cement integrity.

Initially, when engineers decided to use the long central tube, they acknowledged a cement bond log would probably be needed.

But because cement didn’t escape when it was poured, BP sent Schlumberger home on April 20 at 11:15 a.m., without having run the test.

Had it been run, the bond log might have found problems with the cement barriers, requiring a new cementing procedure that would have take at least a month, said Tom McFarland, a cementing consultant. Additional cost to BP: at least another $30 million.

Again, by itself the decision was explainable. Cement bond logs aren’t always necessary. But the skipped steps on a troublesome project were adding up.

No. 4: Pressure test misinterpreted

When BP executives toured the rig the afternoon of April 20, they found the drill team gathered in a shack, debating the results of the negative pressure test, which measures upward pressure from the shut-in well. A good test would mean the well was nearly complete.
But 15 barrels of mud had leaked through a valve in the blowout preventer. That was odd. A few weeks earlier, a mechanic, Mike Williams, had reported that chunks of rubber from the valve came up in mud from the hole. He saw computer readings showing the drill pipe was moved while the valve was closed around it, and he believed that had damaged the rubber closure. But a supervisor dismissed it as normal wear and tear.

Three hours before the accident, the drill team tried the pressure test again, this time instructing the worker in charge of the blowout preventer, Chris Pleasant, to mash the rubber valve against the pipe with more force. Little or no fluid escaped.

Better. But still, the drill team observed high pressure readings. That was abnormal. BP executive Sims said the team members sounded “confused” after the second negative test, and he suggested that Transocean’s top rig officer, Jimmy Harrell, help resolve the issue.

Later, at dinner, one of the visitors, BP Vice President Patrick O’Bryan asked Harrell if everything was OK. He gave the thumbs-up. Guide talked to BP’s well site leader, Robert Kaluza, and recalled that Kaluza, too, was “confused” by the pressure.

Rig officials eventually ruled the test a success. But John Smith, an associate professor of petroleum engineering at LSU who was hired by federal investigators as an expert, testified that the rig officials misinterpreted the results.

Smith also said the test itself may have been faulty. BP had paid for two doses of a viscous fluid for the test, and ordered contractors to use both at once. Smith said the abnormal quantity may have distorted the pressure readings.

The mixing may have been yet another cost-cutting move. If the extra dose had gone unused, BP would have had to pay to transport it to shore and dump it as hazardous waste. Once poured in the hole, however, federal rules allowed it to simply be dumped overboard for free.

No. 5: Mud barrier removed early

According to investigators’ notes, Kaluza was confused by his bosses’ directions in the hours before the accident. “They decided we should do displacement (of protective drilling mud with seawater) and the negative test together; I don’t know why,” Kaluza told investigators. “Maybe they were trying to save time. At the end of the well sometimes they think about speeding up.”

Smith, the LSU engineer, said rig workers thought they were all set after the negative test, which may explain why they missed signs of gas kicks starting 50 minutes before the first explosion.

The crew was confident enough to take one more risky step before setting a final cement plug: replacing heavy drilling mud with seawater, which is 40 percent lighter and far less capable of holding down gas.

No. 6: Blowout preventer failed

In spite of all the shortcuts BP took, much of the disaster, particularly the leaking oil, could have been avoided if the blowout preventer had activated when power was lost.

When Harrell, the top Transocean man on the rig, was concerned about the plans for April 20, he grumbled that the BOP’s shear rams might have to save the day: “Well, I guess that’s what we have those pinchers for.”

When two explosions rang out, at about 9:56 p.m., it was time for the pinchers. Pleasant hit a button on a control panel. Lights indicated he had sent a message a mile below the rig and sea, through optics and hydraulic lines, to disconnect the rig from the well. That would cause the blowout preventer to activate its shear rams, cut the drill pipe and seal the well.

None of that happened. The well wasn’t shut and the rig wasn’t able to escape the fuel source for a fire that would rage for two days.

Investigators wonder if two pipes, found side by side just above the blowout preventer, fouled up the works. There is only supposed to be one pipe, and the blowout preventer’s slicing rams are designed to cut only one.

But none of that explains why other parts of the blowout preventer never seemed to function, or why the emergency disconnect never activated. Pleasant testified that when he tried to intervene manually, he “had no hydraulics.” The loss of three things — power, hydraulics and communications — is supposed to trip a “dead-man” switch and close in the well. It didn’t.

Rig officials knew all along the blowout preventer had some leaks, notably in the yellow control pod that receives messages from the rig. But they didn’t think it mattered. BP and Transocean officials said they were familiar with a federal regulation stating that if “a BOP control station or pod … does not function properly” the rig must “suspend further drilling operations” until it’s fixed, but they didn’t think the regulation applied in this case.

BP’s man in charge on the rig until April 16, Ronnie Sepulvado, said he reported the pod’s problems to Guide and assumed Guide would tell the feds.

He didn’t. And another federal regulation requiring the blowout preventer to be recertified every five years was ignored. Deepwater Horizon’s BOP had been in use for nearly 10 years and was never recertified. Getting it recertified would have required Transocean to take the rig out of use for months while the four-story stack was disassembled.

It was one more corporate cost avoided. And a final precaution that could have erased a string of other missteps and spared an infinitely larger cost later.

David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3322.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

September 6, 2010

Is BP Blackmailing the Feds?

By Kate Sheppard
| Fri Sep. 3, 2010 7:35 AM PDT.

When the details on the deal between the federal government and BP to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate spill victims were released last month, I reported on concerns that the design of the fund might compromise its long-term viability and create a conflict of interest in cracking down on BP’s misdeeds. The fund was designed in such a way that it basically hinges on keeping BP’s Gulf-drilling subsidiary in production and turning a profit.

In an interview with New York Times published today, BP executives confirmed as muchif the government cracks down on the company by cutting it off from obtaining new leases or permits, the fund could go belly-up:

But as state and federal officials, individuals and businesses continue to seek additional funds beyond the minimum fines and compensation that BP must pay under the law, the company has signaled its reluctance to cooperate unless it can continue to operate in the Gulf of Mexico. The gulf accounts for 11 percent of its global production.

“If we are unable to keep those fields going, that is going to have a substantial impact on our cash flow,” said David Nagle, BP’s executive vice president for BP America, in an interview. That, he added, “makes it harder for us to fund things, fund these programs.”
This, of course, is the problem with making the fund contingent upon keeping BP Exploration & Production Inc., a subsidiary of BP America Production that deals primarily with Gulf of Mexico production, profitable. The House-passed spill bill includes a provision that would bar companies with bad safety and environmental records from obtaining new leases in US waters; while the provision doesn’t specifically name BP, it’s clear that’s who the measure is gunning for. But now BP is using the spill fund to pressure the federal government into backing off actual penalties for their transgressions in the Gulf.

BP is also pointing to other actions they’ve taken, like providing $89.5 million to states for the promotion of tourism, as reasons why the government shouldn’t crack down on them:

Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said that BP had shown good will by going beyond its legal obligations to clean up the spill and compensate those affected.

“We have committed to do a number of things that are not part of the formal agreement with the White House,” he said. “We are not making a direct statement about anything we are committed to do. We are just expressing frustration that our commitments of good will have at least in some quarters been met with this kind of response.”
I can imagine the threats will only get worse when (or perhaps, if) the federal government starts announcing the fines for legal violations and costs for damage to natural resources that BP will be expected to pay. The company could owe up to $17.6 billion for Clean Water Act violations alone. But if the price of making sure BP pays up is keeping the company drilling in the Gulf, the government has certainly cut a bad deal here.

Kate Sheppard covers energy and environmental politics in Mother Jones’ Washington bureau.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

September 4, 2010

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-dispersants-20100905,0,6506539.story

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times
September 5, 2010

In the wake of the BP oil spill, gaping questions remain about a key tool used during cleanup: the nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants sprayed over the water or onto the gushing wellhead on the seafloor. Do the chemicals help recovery, hinder it or neither?

Just as dishwashing detergent breaks grease on dirty plates into bits, dispersants help turn a slick of oil into droplets a hair’s breadth in size. In droplet form, oil is more easily pulled under by currents, away from birds, otters, seaweed and other marine life near the surface. And because droplets present a greater surface area of oil to water, dispersants should, in theory, permit microbes to chew up oil far faster.

Yet despite more than half a century of dispersant use in oil spill cleanups, the long-term effects that dispersants or dispersant-treated oil have on marine life remain as opaque as a layer of crude.

Scientists say they still don’t know whether dispersants truly enable bacteria to digest spilled oil more quickly or whether dispersed oil is safer for marine life than untreated slicks.

They can’t say whether it was a help or hindrance that BP decided to spray much of the dispersant not onto the water surface, as is more common, but over oil pouring out of the leaking wellhead 5,000 feet under the sea. Both the high pressure (151 times greater than at the surface) and the oil’s temperature (100 degrees Celsius, or 212 degrees Fahrenheit) could have affected dispersant action, either for better or worse.

The size of this spill also made it a standout. An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil were released, about 19 times the amount in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska and significantly more than the 1979 Ixtoc spill off the Mexican coast, in which about 3.5 million barrels of crude spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

“On a scale of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, we don’t know for a whole variety of reasons how well dispersants have worked,” said Neal Langerman, founder of consulting firm Advanced Chemical Safety.

Bacteria do seem to be digesting the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an Aug. 25 report, but data are mixed on whether dispersants help bacteria along. Mervin Fingas, a retired scientist with the Canadian government, said that of roughly 40 biodegradability studies he surveyed between 1997 and 2008, about 60% said dispersant retarded growth of oil-eating microbes and 15% reported no effect. The remaining 25% noted a positive effect.

But positive findings are open to interpretation. At a 1999 oil spill conference, researchers reported that microbial populations dining on oil treated with the dispersant Corexit 9500 (used by BP in the gulf) grew more than seven times as large as those eating oil dispersed physically, suggesting the bacteria were helping.

Yet a comprehensive 2005 review of dispersants by the National Research Council concluded that the healthy bacterial growth in such studies could easily be due to microbes feeding on dispersant, not oil. “There is no conclusive evidence demonstrating either the enhancement or the inhibition of microbial biodegradation when dispersants are used,” the 12 authors wrote.

Some confusion comes from the diversity of dispersant formulas, Fingas said. Some contain chemicals that bacteria prefer to digest. Others block the ability of some microbes to attach to oil droplets and start feeding on the hydrocarbons.

The primary purpose of dispersants is to move oil away from surface-dwelling marine life. In the case of the BP well blowout, because the application was deep under the sea, much of the oil never rose to the surface which means it went somewhere else, said Robert Diaz, a marine scientist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

“The dispersants definitely don’t make oil disappear. They take it from one area in an ecosystem and put it in another,” Diaz said.

The types of dispersants used today are far less noxious than the industrial-strength degreasers used in the past, said Beth McGee, a senior water quality scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group in Annapolis, Md., and a coauthor of the 2005 review. Most studies find them nowhere near as harmful as oil, she said.

But the concern is that dispersed oil may do more harm to marine life than oil left alone. And on this point, findings vary widely, in part because lab tests have limitations, said Andrew Nyman, a Louisiana State University professor. In small containers, dispersed oil can’t dilute. Studies look at large, quick effects, such as death or deformity. Results depend on the oil type, whether it’s fresh, the dispersant, the animal being studied and its life stage.

Studies show that zooplankton, oysters and crustaceans may eat dispersed oil droplets, which can match the size of their food. Dispersed oil can cause premature hatching in Pacific herring, block barnacles’ ability to react to light and worsen oil’s harmful effects under sunlight. Larval stages are particularly sensitive, as are gills of fish, squid, crabs and oysters, said environmental biochemist Arne Jernelov of the Swedish Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm, who led a United Nations team examining the 1979 Ixtoc spill.

Yet many studies find dispersed oil is no worse, or worse only under certain conditions. A 2001 study by researchers at ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences found that oil dispersed with Corexit 9527, also used on the BP spill, was twice as toxic to the inland silverside, an estuarine fish but not if that crude had been exposed to the elements. Such weathered oil, when dispersed, was 10 times less harmful than undispersed oil.

And on Aug. 2, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that its lab tests had uncovered relatively little difference in toxicity to the inland silverside and crustaceans called mysid shrimp of several different oil-dispersant mixtures compared with oil alone. EPA scientist Paul Anastas said dispersant use “seems to be a wise decision” and that “the oil itself Š is enemy No. 1.”

This jumble of findings has led to disagreement among experts that might be resolved by careful analysis of real-life cleanups, which hardly ever happens, said Larry McKinney, executive director of Texas A&M University’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Funding for such studies “waxes and wanes with oil spills, but never seems to follow through,” McKinney said. Many investigations were launched after the Ixtoc spill to explore the effects of dispersed oil, he added.

But funding, and science, dried up when the well did.

amina.khan@latimes.com
Los Angeles Times
September 4, 2010

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-dispersants-20100905,0,6506539.story

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Video at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6836255n

Print version below and at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/04/eveningnews/main6835996.shtml

It’s come to close the Halliburton loophole and allow federal regulators to stem the watershed pollution that is now occurring as a result of increased gas exploration in America. I support the legislation sponsored by Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., called the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act. DV

Sept. 4, 2010.
A Burning Debate Over Natural Gas Drilling
Chemicals That Energy Companies Secretly Use in a Process Dubbed “Fracking” Are Fueling Concerns About Our Water Supplies

By Armen Keteyian
Play CBS Video
(CBS) The natural gas-producing shale that lies under 34 states is now being seen as a game-changer in helping meet the nation’s energy needs for decades to come. But the process of extracting that natural gas, dubbed “fracking,” is fueling environmental fears.

CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian has more:

“You can’t live like this – it’s so stressful every single day.”

Homeowner Stephanie Hallowich is like many in western Pennsylvania who have watched their once-pristine neighborhood become an industrial site. Sprawling plants with flares that reach high into the night, noxious smells, trucks, and containment ponds with unknown chemicals are among the complaints of people who live in areas where natural gas companies have descended.

Hallowich believes three natural gas-drilling operations bordering her property turned her well-water black, forcing her to purchase a tank of fresh water every month.

The air? Uncertain.

“I’m very afraid, health-wise, for the kids, just because of the exposure to the water and the constant not-knowing what we’re breathing in outside,” she said.

The Hallowich home sits near the center of the Marcellus Shale, an energy-rich geological formation stretching from New York to Tennessee.

Three-quarters of Pennsylvania contain vast energy riches buried deep underground in shale formations, representing hundreds of billions of dollars in untold wealth locked up in rock – a potential goldmine for natural gas companies.

“The development of shale gas in the Marcellus and across the country is a very important part of the nation’s energy strategy,” said Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a natural gas industry group

Big players are rushing in. Exxon has invested $30 billion in the Marcellus in recent months. Foreign investors are also swooping in. India’s largest company, Reliance, has purchased a large stake. China, Korea, and Britain are investing in gas drilling in the Marcellus shale.

As gas companies rush in to make deals with landowners for the right to drill, the money on the table – signing fees and royalties – is substantial, and hard to argue with in a recession . . . hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases.

In Pennsylvania, 60 gas companies hold 4,504 permits to drill, almost half (1,195) granted this year alone.

What’s driving the drilling rush here, and across the country, are advances in hydraulic fracturing, or “hydro-fracking,” a process whereby millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are blasted deep underground – about 5,000 feet – forcing cracks in the shale and freeing natural gas for collection.

It is at the surface where problems have been reported, like blowouts and spills into ground water . . .

. . . And – as depicted in the HBO documentary “Gasland” – ignition at the kitchen sink.

“Gasland”: Is “Fracking” Polluting America?

At public meetings, environmental groups and pro-drilling landowners who receive royalties (“It’s my house, it’s my land, my property, I deserve to be able to frack if that’s what I want to do,” says one) have squared off over potential health risks and safety.

“There’s no such thing as zero-impact drilling,” says John Hanger, head of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection. Since 2008 he’s doubled the number of state regulators (100 to 205) and inspectors (21 to 45) to oversee the gas industry.

Hanger told Keteyian that there is evidence of chemical contaminants in water. “Spills and surface leaks have, in fact, contaminated people’s drinking water,” he said.

Yet nationwide the industry is not required to disclose what potentially toxic chemicals – like hydrochloric acid – are used in the drilling process.

A provision of a law proposed by the Bush administration and passed by Congress in 2005 (dubbed by opponents the “Halliburton loophole”) stripped the EPA of its ability to regulate “fracking” – leaving the job of regulatory enforcement in the hands of cash-strapped, undermanned state agencies.

Since then, drilling companies have been allowed to put millions of gallons of unknown chemicals into the ground without reporting it, making it difficult to link pollution claims to drilling.

What environmentalists fear most is widespread contamination to the watershed, on which millions of people depend.

“I think the industry’s way out of bounds for not disclosing the list of chemicals,” Hanger said. “I think the industry is close to insane to allow that issue to become a source of suspicion.”

Much like the quality of air and water now surrounding thousands of home sites like Stephanie Hallowich’s.
Legislation is being proposed in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., called the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Institute-for-Energy-Research-statement-on-latest-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-platform-accident-102183849.html

By: MARK TAPSCOTT
Editorial Page Editor
09/04/10 11:25 AM EDT

A second Gulf of Mexico oil platform accident has produced some interesting reactions. Compare, for example, the respective statements issued by the Institute for Energy Research, an industry backed think tank, and Sierra Club, one of the most vocal and aggressive advocates of radical environmentalism.
First, the IER statement:
“IER congratulates the U.S. Coast Guard, the employees of Mariner Energy and all those involved in the successful response to the fire and evacuation on the Vermilion Production Platform in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday.

“Their training and quick response resulted in no loss of life and very little release of hydrocarbons into the water. At IER, we recognize the outcome of this industrial accident is the norm, rather than the exception that marked the Macondo well in April.

“Although the opponents of domestic energy production were quick to try to use this accident as an indictment of all offshore energy production, the heroic actions of all concerned proved what all the experts and reports from the National Academy of Science have been telling us for decades – producing oil in our own waters is safer than importing it on tankers from foreign nations.

“Less domestic oil production means increased foreign imports, more job and dollar exports and the higher probability of a spill. The government’s self-imposed ban on production at home is even more reprehensible when you consider that the resulting need to increase our imports also increases the chances that the blood of young American soldiers will be spilled in areas where the flow of oil, so vital to the world’s economy, emanates.

“It is instructive that the same leaders in Washington, so quick to indict an industrial accident like that which occurred yesterday, refuse to investigate industrial accidents in their own districts, whether it be New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arizona or Hollywood. If it is fatalities they are focused upon, we at IER suggest these salons investigate why more people died this week due to environmental extremism than from domestic offshore energy production.

“With that in mind, and with an eye towards the celebration of Labor Day, IER calls upon President Obama to overrule his Energy Czar Carol Browner and lift the moratoria on offshore drilling. Not only the official and illegal moratorium on the deepwater, but also the unofficial one being imposed by bureaucratic inaction which has led to less than ten percent of the normal permits being issued for new wells in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

“With 9.6% unemployment and a cratering economy, it is time to celebrate the Labor of those men and women who would otherwise be working hard to provide the secure energy our economy demands were it not for the Obama administration’s ongoing war on the production of the plentiful domestic oil, coal, and natural gas resources that power our lives and run our businesses.”

Now, compare the above with this statement from the Sierra Club:
“Our hearts go out to the workers involved in this disaster and their families. This is the second incident in recent months that has sent oil workers into the water, and some of them have never returned.

“The oil industry continues to rail against regulation but it’s become all too clear that the current approach to offshore drilling is simply too dangerous. We don’t need to put American workers and waters in harm’s way just so multinational oil companies can break more profit records.

“Instead of pursuing more dangerous, dirty, outdated offshore drilling, we could be investing in clean energy and a 21st century transportation system that would create good, safe jobs and infuse new life into our economy.
“How many disasters will it take until our leaders decide to act? We don’t want to see one more oil disaster. The BP disaster was supposed to be the wake up call, but we hit the snooze button. Today the alarm went off again.

“Oil is just too dangerous and dirty. It’s time to move America off of oil and onto clean, safe energy.”

Aside from the obvious differences in terms of emphasis, detail and tone, take particular note of the profound gulf between these two advocacy groups regarding the practical realities of America’s energy needs and future.

The IER statement focuses on the immediate need to restore domestic energy production and the reality that producing more oil and natural gas at home is ultimately safer and environmentally more sensitive than increasing America’s dependence upon foreign sources.

Then there is the Sierra Club vision of “investing in clean energy and a 21st century transportation system.” Sounds nice, but here’s what Sierra doesn’t say:
First, even the U.S. Department of Energy under President Obama estimates that it will be 2030 before those “clean energy” sources – wind, solar, biomass – will be able to produce anywhere near the amount of power, especially electricity, required by the American economy.

Second, do you ever wonder what that “21st century transportation system” might look like? Well, just take a look at the inside of a bus or subway car because urban mass transit is what Sierra Clubbers have in mind for all Americans. Of course, for mass transit to work even minimally well for the public, we all have to move back into the city. It will also be decades before anybody will be able to afford electric or fuel cell powered passenger cars able to serve the needs of a typical family of four.

In other words, IER is dealing with and has practical solutions for the real world. The Sierra Club has an abstract vision that has about as much chance of becoming reality as the Jamaican bobsled team has of winning a gold medal.

Special thanks to Richard Charter