http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/tracking-a-potential-cuba-oi-spill/1213878

By Robert H. Weisberg, Special to the Times
In Print: Sunday, February 5, 2012

Numerous articles continue to be written about oil exploration off the coast of Cuba. Some federal officials, while discussing potential spill mitigation, claim that the swift currents of the Gulf Stream will protect South Florida by carrying most oil away before it could hit the beaches. Is this correct, or might a threat to South Florida’s beaches exist, given a drilling mishap?

The Gulf Stream indeed is swift, but if it isolated Florida from Cuba, then how did so many Cuban rafters reach the shoreline between Miami and Palm Beach over the past 50 years? To address this and the potential for oil to reach the Florida coastline, it is important to consider the Gulf Stream in its entirety.

There are two primary components of flow. The first, driven by the large-scale winds over the Atlantic Ocean, is geostrophic. The second is driven by local winds. Neglecting eddies, the geostrophic part alone would tend to isolate Cuba from Florida because it would be difficult for surface oil picked up on the Cuban side of the Gulf Stream to traverse across the region of maximum speed to the Florida side. However, the local wind-driven part can achieve this.

The geostrophic part is a balance between two forces, the pressure difference across the Gulf Stream and the Coriolis force by the Earth’s rotation. The result is a flow that nearly parallels the coastline. The local wind driven part is also a balance between two forces, the friction of the wind on the sea surface and the Coriolis force by the Earth’s rotation. The result is a net transport of water directed to the right of the wind.

This Ekman transport, named after the discovering scientist, explains why sea level is higher than the normal high tide level on Florida’s East Coast under northerly winds and lower than the normal high tide level under southerly winds. The reason is that water under the influence of northerly winds is driven toward Florida’s East Coast. The converse occurs along Florida’s West Coast. Thus flooding of low-lying areas on the East Coast tends to occur after the passage of strong weather fronts when the winds are northerly, whereas this tends to occur on the West Coast in advance of the front when the winds are southerly.

Given this conceptual discussion, it is possible to simulate the movement of oil that may be spilled on the surface using a computer model that contains these physics (geostrophic and Ekman motions). One particularly suited for the task is run by the Navy along with academic partners.

By downloading the modeled velocity fields and inserting virtual particles indicative of surface oil, my associates and I can track where the oil might go in time and space. For illustrative purposes, we used January 2012. Neutrally buoyant particles were distributed about an exploration site claimed to be 22 miles north of Havana, and new particles were seeded every three hours to mimic a continual release of oil.

Two examples are provided, one for a period of time when virtual particles encountered East Coast beaches about five to seven days after release, the other for a period of time when they did not. The differences are due to the local winds during these week-long simulation intervals.

Recognizing that weather fronts regularly transit the Florida peninsula, with southerlies on the leading side and northerlies on the trailing side, and that the interval between successive fronts is days to a week or so, we can expect that a prolonged spill would likely bring oil to South Florida beaches. Regardless of these simulations, simply recall the tar on South Florida beaches in the 1970s before the Clean Water Act restricted offshore bilge pumping.

Whereas a vibrant economy requires energy, risks are inherent to oil exploration and production. Such risks increase with deepwater drilling in swift currents, and the swift Gulf Stream regularly transits the deepwater region north of Cuba. It is unfortunate that we were unable to surmount the political and diplomatic issues pertaining to the present oil exploration in Cuban waters because once the oil potential was identified years ago, drilling was inevitable. Without readily achievable energy alternatives to hydrocarbons, other than nuclear, it is ever more important for the United States to adopt a sound energy policy.

Robert H. Weisberg, distinguished university professor, is a professor of physical oceanography in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Would the Gulf Stream protect South Florida?

Cuba is exploring for oil off its shores. With that in mind, USF professor Robert H. Weisberg used computer models to track the path of a theoretical spill: Would the fast-moving Gulf Stream protect Florida? His model, using real-life conditions for two weeks last month, plots the trajectories of “virtual particles” from an oil exploration site 22 miles north of Havana. Each dot represents a particle seeded within the surface velocity field of a U.S. Navy global ocean circulation model. The color coding indicates the time in days after the particle was seeded near the exploration site. Thus, on the first map, showing Jan. 10-17, virtual particles would reach the Miami to Palm Beach coastline within five to six days. On the second map, Jan. 15-22, the spill skirts the coast. If a spill were long-lasting, the chances are great it would hit South Florida shores.

[Last modified: Feb 04, 2012 03:31 AM]

Special thanks to Frank Jackalone and Richard Charter

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/31/us-usa-cuba-oil-idUSTRE80U01520120131

By Jane Sutton
MIAMI | Mon Jan 30, 2012 7:19pm EST

(Reuters) – Since the United States couldn’t stop Repsol from drilling for oil off Cuba’s coast, it should make the Spanish oil giant pay dearly for damages from any spill that threatens neighboring Florida, a congressional Republican said on Monday.

“We need to figure out what we can do to inflict maximum pain, maximum punishment, to bleed Repsol of whatever resources they may have if there’s a potential for a spill that would affect the U.S. coast,” Representative David Rivera, a Florida Republican, told a congressional subcommittee that oversees the U.S. Coast Guard.

The House of Representatives subcommittee met at a Florida hotel with a panoramic view of the waves breaking over an Atlantic beach dotted with sunbathers, to conduct a hearing on the potential impact on Florida’s 800-mile (1,290-km) coastline from the first major oil exploration in Cuban waters.

Repsol is working on the project in partnership with Norway’s Statoil and ONGC Videsh, a unit of India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. The oil rig leased for the project, the Scarabeo 9, arrived off Cuban waters earlier this month and is expected to begin drilling any day now.
The rig is 60 miles from the Cuban coast and 80 miles from Florida, in a spot where the Gulfstream and other powerful ocean currents could rush any spilled oil to Florida beaches within five to 10 days.

“The significance of these strong currents is that they can move oil very quickly, potentially up to 70 to 80 nautical miles in a 24-hour period,” said oceanographer Debbie Payton, who heads the emergency response division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A spill would have catastrophic effects on Florida tourism, which accounts for a third of the state’s economy, and on its fisheries, panelists said. Such an accident would devastate the state much as BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 devastated other coastal areas.

Those powerful currents would make it harder to contain and burn or scoop up any oil on the water’s surface, but they would make oil dispersants more effective by mixing them up with the water, panelists said. Booms and the anchors needed to hold them in place would likely do more harm to Florida’s fragile coral reefs than the oil itself, they said.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with Cuba, which is considers a state sponsor of terrorism, and no oversight over companies that operate in its waters.

Repsol has said it will voluntarily adhere to U.S. safety and environmental regulations and international industry standards. It allowed U.S. authorities to inspect the rig off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago last month, including an examination of its construction, drilling equipment, blow-out preventer and other safety systems.

Based on the inspection and on information Repsol provided, the inspectors concluded that “the well could be safely capped using existing methods,” said Lars Herbst, Gulf of Mexico regional director for the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement, or BSEE.

BSEE has no authority to endorse or certify the rig but it “found the vessel and the drilling safety equipment including the (blow-out preventer) to be entirely consistent with existing international and U.S. standards by which Repsol has pledged to abide,” Herbst said.

UNSAFE WELDING

He said the inspectors found unsafe welding and incomplete wiring of safety systems, which Repsol pledged to repair. Asked if the agency could certify the rig had it been in U.S. waters, Herbst said it could not without confirming those repairs had been made.

Rear Admiral William Baumgartner, commander of the Coast Guard district that includes Florida, said there was a low probability of a spill, “but if it does happen, especially a complete well blowout, there would be high consequences.”

“There are multiple safety provisions in any drilling operation. I’m not promoting, you know, business in helping Cuba develop oil, but this is a brand-new oil drilling rig, Norwegian designed, much of it is very much state-of-the art as I understand, so it should be capable,” he told Reuters after the hearing.

The Norwegian-designed, Chinese-made rig is owned by an Italian company and flagged in the Bahamas, Baumgartner said.

Repsol and its partners are subcontractors, Herbst said, and the United States would have no way to hold them responsible for any oil spill damage, Herbst said.

“The Cuban government must have the full responsibility for any oil spill,” Herbst said. “In this case it is Cuba that’s doing the contracting and we have no control over that.”

Rivera, a Cuban American from Miami, has sponsored a bill that would make foreign oil companies responsible for clean-up costs if a spill from their operations reaches U.S. shores.

He urged the panel to look into whether a Repsol subsidiary that operates off the U.S. continental shelf could be made to pay or stripped of its license if there was a spill from the Cuban well. Herbst said afterward that it could not.

The United States has maintained an economic embargo against Cuba for five decades in order to put pressure on its communist government. But the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments have already issued licenses to U.S. companies that would work under Coast Guard direction to contain and clean up any spill in Cuban waters, Baumgartner said.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American Republican from Florida, said the United States should impose sanctions against nations that help Cuba develop its oilfields.
She and other Republicans on the panel suggested that by failing to halt the project, the Obama administration was helping make oil tycoons of Cuban President Raul Castro and his brother, former President Fidel Castro.

Subcommittee Chairman John Mica said he was “a little bit shocked” that President Barack Obama had rejected the Keystone XL pipeline project from Canada while “doing everything we can to help the Cuban regime and we’re going to get stuck with both the damage and also the clean-up cost.”

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20120131/cuba-offshore-drilling-oil-spill-preparations-120131/

Tuesday Jan. 31, 2012

The Associated Press
Date: Tuesday Jan. 31, 2012 9:51 AM ET

MIAMI – The U.S. is not ready to handle an oil spill if drilling off the Cuban coast should go awry but can be better prepared with monitoring systems and other basic steps, experts told government officials Monday.

The comments at a congressional subcommittee hearing in the Miami Beach suburb of Sunny Isles come more than a week after a huge oil rig leased by Spanish energy giant Repsol YPF arrived in Cuban waters to begin drilling a deep water exploratory well.

Similar development is expected off the Bahamas next year, but decades of tense relations between the U.S. and Cuba makes co-operation in protecting the Florida Straits particularly tricky. With memories of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico still fresh, state and federal officials fear even the perception of any oil flowing toward Florida beaches could devastate an economy that claims about $57 billion from tourism.

Florida International University Professor John Proni told officials to be proactive. He is leading a consortium of researchers on U.S. readiness to handle any spill.

“For the last few years, my colleagues and I have been visiting Washington to say the best time to start preparing for an oil spill is before it happens,” Proni told leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

U.S. officials have turned attention to preventing future spills since the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by the energy company BP exploded in April 2010, causing the well to blow out and unleashing millions of gallons (litres) of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Crude washed up on pristine shoreline, soiled wildlife and left a region dependent on tourist dollars scrambling to rebuild its image.

Coast Guard officials said Monday they didn’t know if drilling off Cuba had begun.

Experts testified current estimates have surface oil — in event of any spill off Cuba — moving up to 3 mph (5 kph) due to the Gulfstream, but that the fast-moving current would make it difficult for any crude quickly crossing the Florida Straits.

Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, commander of the Coast Guard region that covers the Florida Straits, said a likely scenario would have oil spreading and reaching U.S. waters in six to 10 days.
Proni said he wants a system that can monitor changes in underwater sounds to immediately alert U.S. officials to a spill or other unusual activity. He also wants the U.S. to invest in developing better computer models to predict oil movement and to assess the existing ecosystem and the type of oil Cuba possesses. That way, experts can better pinpoint any possible damage and find out if it came from Cuban wells.

Proni said the fast-moving water would make it difficult to burn the oil or strain it, as was done to halt the spread of the Deepwater Horizon spill. He added that more research is needed on the risks of using chemicals that break down the oil into tiny droplets.

Baumgartner said his agency has been working on a response plan. The Coast Guard and private response teams have been granted the required visas under the U.S. embargo to work with the Cuban government and its partners should a problem arise. Since March 2011, the agency has been working with Repsol, and U.S. officials inspected the rig earlier this month.

The rig was given a good bill of health.

Jackie Savitz a senior scientist with the non-profit Oceana, who attended the hearing, said she was glad lawmakers were so concerned but hoped they would express similar interest in offshore drilling in areas such as the Gulf of Mexico, where many rigs are already drilling for oil.

U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, one of three South Florida Cuban-American lawmakers who attended the hearing, said the concerns over Cuba’s oil exploration were particularly pressing because of the political context and hopes the Obama administration would quickly respond to the consortium’s concerns. But he agreed Proni’s proposals could be applied to the Gulf of Mexico too.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has authored a bill that would sanction those who help Cuba develop its oil reserves.

“We can’t stop Repsol from drilling now, but we can act to deter future leaders to avoid the Castro brothers becoming the oil tycoons of the Caribbean,” she told the committee.

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20120131/cuba-offshore-drilling-oil-spill-preparations-120131/#ixzz1l3SELMVx

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Did Cuba’s Plan to Drill Near Florida Prompt President’s Pivot on Offshore Oil and Gas?

by JACKIE MOREAU on JANUARY 31, 2012

While Republican Party candidates face a political drilling in the Florida primaries, Florida prepares for the offshore drilling by a Spanish company just miles away from its coastline, courtesy of our embargoed neighbor to the South. Cuba has signed lease agreements for offshore drilling blocks with six nations in the North Cuba Basin, a body of water within the Cuban Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that is believed to harbor at least 4.6 billion barrels of crude oil. Five of the six companies are owned by foreign countries: India, Venezuela, Malaysia, Vietnam and Angola. Spanish-based Repsol, the single private company, will drill one exploratory well in the North Cuba Basin, called the Jaguey Prospect, lying about 55 to 60 miles south of Key West, FL. It owns a 40% share in the newest exploratory well, while India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Norway’s Statoil each hold a 30% stake. Repsol has contracted the Italian-owned Scarabeo-9, a mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU), to drill the Jaguey well.

In March 2010, President Obama introduced a plan for drilling to take place 125 miles from Florida’s Gulf coastline. Only weeks later, the President’s offshore drilling proposal was shelved due to the Deepwater Horizon spill. Since then, the administration has been largely hostile to existing deep water drilling offshore in American waters-first, it imposed a de jure moratorium, and, after that, it imposed a de facto moratorium via bureaucratic foot dragging.

In a surprise move, the President seemed to pivot on offshore drilling policy in last Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. Specifically, he announced a plan to open 75 % of potential offshore oil and gas reserves. Details of the plan are still scarce, so we still don’t know what it entails exactly. One must wonder if the President’s wind of change was prompted by the fact that companies from five nations are drilling for oil and gas in such close proximity to Florida.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Posted on Thursday, 01.26.12

With Scarabeo 9, a Spanish company’s leased oil rig, in place for exploratory drilling off the Cuban coast, response plans are being firmed up in case a spill reaches the United States.

BY MIMI WHITEFIELD
MWHITEFIELD@MIAMIHERALD.COM
The Scarabeo 9 is a state-of the-art oil rig leased by a Spanish company, built in China and Singapore, owned by an Italian company and flagged in the Bahamas. But there’s one part of its international pedigree that has some Floridians up in arms: it will be exploring for oil in Cuban waters.

After traveling half-way around the world, the rig has moved into place some 22 miles north of Havana and about 70 miles south of the Florida Keys. Repsol, the Spanish company that is leasing the rig for $511,000 day, said drilling begins this week.

But already, without finding a drop of oil, the hulking Scarabeo 9 has become one of the most analyzed, discussed and vilified rigs to ever sink an exploratory well.

Not only has its location raised fears that a blowout could dump oil on Florida’s beaches, damaging sensitive mangroves, sea grass, coral reefs and marine life but the U.S. embargo against Cuba has made preparedness and recovery from a possible oil spill particularly tricky.

While efforts by Cuban-American members of Congress to prevent Repsol from drilling altogether have been unsuccessful, there are still several bills pending that could complicate the company’s efforts.

“The political pressure on [Repsol] is unbelievable,” said Jorge Piñon, a former Amoco executive and now an oil consultant and visiting research fellow at Florida International University.

But with the rig now in place, the question has become how prepared are the United States, Cuba and Repsol to respond if disaster strikes?

Much of any U.S. response effort would be centered in South Florida.

Not only would the Miami-based 7th Coast Guard District be responsible for coordinating efforts to protect U.S. waters and shoreline, but the first private response to a major spill would likely come from Clean Caribbean & Americas, a Broward County oil spill response cooperative whose members include most of the major oil companies in the region.

The cooperative and Oil Spill Response, its sister organization in the United Kingdom, did much of the work on Repsol’s Cuban contingency response plan. “I think it’s in line with what they have elsewhere in the world,” said Paul Schuler, the cooperative’s president.

Although the United States has no regulatory control over Repsol’s drilling in Cuba, the Spanish company has voluntarily provided information on its drilling plans and allowed U.S. agencies to board and review the rig’s construction and safety systems when it was off the coast of Trinidad & Tobago earlier this month.

The Coast Guard and Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said they found the rig “to generally comply with existing international and U.S. standards.”

Meanwhile, Clean Caribbean & Americas’ warehouse is loaded with containment booms, skimming devices, an aerial system designed to spray dispersants from a C-130 Hercules aircraft, and other cleanup supplies to respond to a spill anywhere in the region.

Unlike many U.S. companies that are barred by the embargo from doing business with Cuba, the cooperative already has a license from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control that would allow it to respond to a Cuban oil spill. It got the license in 2003 when Repsol drilled its first exploratory well in Cuba, said Schuler.

Repsol found oil but said at the time it wasn’t commercially viable. Now, the Spanish oil company is back with partners from Norway (Statoil) and India (ONGC Videsh) in a slightly different location and its rig has been specially built so that fewer than 10 percent of its components are made by U.S. manufacturers.

“They are betting big money on this. When a company of Repsol’s caliber goes through the expense of having a rig tailor-made to bypass the embargo, it tells me the probability of a successful find is very high,” said Piñon.

That prospect isn’t pleasing to Cuban-American members of Congress, including Republican representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, David Rivera and Mario Diaz-Balart, who have fought tooth-and-nail to stop any drilling in Cuban waters and blasted the Obama administration for not doing more to prevent it. Florida’s senators, Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio, support a bill that would make a foreign oil company directly responsible for a spill that impacts the U.S.

The U.S. Geographical Survey estimates that Cuba’s offshore oil fields may contain around 5 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Cuban geologists estimate there is even more.

Efforts are underway to issue more licenses to companies whose expertise is expected to be needed to protect U.S. shores.

“I’m concerned there is not enough manpower and capacity to respond if there were a need to do so in the near future,” said Dan Whittle, Cuba program director at the Environmental Defense Fund.

There also has been talk of a quick turnaround time for issuing more licenses at the time of a spill.

But Whittle, who just returned from a trip to Cuba last week, said that may not be quick enough. “Forty-eight hours is a lot of hours to waste in those currents. Common sense dictates that you need to have your ducks in a row well in advance,” he said.

“The more resources, we have the better we can respond,” said Schuler, who plans to visit Scarabeo 9 next week. Because of the embargo, he said, “We are now making plans on the equipment we can get – not what we would like to have.”

The embargo and political considerations also make talking directly with Cuba about its emergency response plan more complicated.

Instead, the United States has taken a multilateral approach involving all the countries in the region contemplating Caribbean drilling or that could be affected by a spill.

Officials from the Bahamas, Cuba, Mexico, Jamaica and the United States met in Nassau in December to discuss their well control and oil spill response plans. Another meeting has been proposed next week in Curacao.

Some who attended the meeting said despite the other nations present, the main dialogue was between Cuba and the United States.

Rear Adm. Bill Baumgartner, commander of the 7th Coast Guard district, said the Coast Guard has been planning for well over a year how it would handle any impact from drilling in Cuba and the Bahamas, which also may start offshore oil exploration this year.

The Coast Guard has revised its coastal contingency plans, analyzed reports and investigations from the Deepwater Horizon spill to see what lessons could be learned, and held training exercises.

In November, the Coast Guard hosted some 80 federal, state and local officials, industry representatives, including Repsol, and environmentalists for a tabletop exercise that looked at various scenarios for the flow of oil.

On Monday, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Marine Transportation will hold a field hearing in Sunny Isles Beach to look at the Coast Guard’s oil spill readiness and response planning.

If there is a spill, Baumgartner said, “It’s unlikely the Florida coastline would be inundated with oil slicks.”

Fast-moving currents could sweep oil past the Florida coast and out to the North Atlantic, Baumgartner said. But eddy currents could peel off and bring oil ashore, he said. That could also happen if wind conditions are just right.

And there are scenarios that could take oil to Cuba’s north coast – the center of its growing tourism industry. Last year, Cuba had 2.7 million visitors and tourism has become a major part of its economy.

“I think they are taking this very seriously,” Whittle said. “The Cubans are fully aware of the environmental challenges and risks.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/26/v-fullstory/2610343/is-oil-drilling-in-cuban-waters.html#storylink=cpy

Special thanks to Richard Charter