Sniping between BP and the governments affected by the oil giant’s Gulf of Mexico 2010 oil spill is reaching a fever pitch as the five-year anniversary of the largest spill in U.S. history approaches.
The latest episode in the fallout from the April 2010 incident revolves around a report BP released this week that said the data that has been collected “do not indicate a significant long-term impact to the population of any Gulf species.”
Trustees for the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, a body established by a 1990 law to investigate the damage to natural resources from oil spills, slammed the report as being premature and disingenuous.
“Citing scientific studies conducted by experts from around the Gulf, as well as this council, BP misinterprets and misapplies data while ignoring published literature that doesn’t support its claims and attempts to obscure our role as caretakers of the critical resources damaged by the spill,” said the trustees, which include federal agencies and the states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Potentially billions of dollars are at stake through the National Resource Damage Assessment for the Deepwater Horizon disaster that left 11 dead and spewed at least 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. The process was established through the Oil Pollution Act following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which sent 257,000 barrels of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
“Critics of the five-year report have the same incentives to paint the Gulf in a poor light as they claim BP does to credit its recovery. Contrary to their assertions, however, the report is neither premature nor selective in the information it provides. The report relies on five years’ worth of data — both positive and negative, and much of it collected by the government — so that readers can have a better sense of the true state of the Gulf,” BP spokesman Geoff Morrell told the Washington Examiner.
But the BP report is not peer-reviewed, meaning it hasn’t been subjected to an analysis of whether it followed sound methodology. That’s a stark contrast from the myriad studies already completed or underway — many of which BP is underwriting — through the Natural Resources Damage Assessment.
Many of the peer-reviewed studies paint a grim picture of the Gulf’s recovery. Dolphins are dying at an unusual rate, possibly due to the presence of oil; chemicals from the Macondo well that BP failed to plug are hurting tuna, grouper and mahi mahi; oil likely settled on floor deep in the Gulf, potentially upsetting the ecosystem.
“Beyond the criticisms of the [Natural Resources] Trustees that the report is cherry-picked and premature, I think that most scientists who have worked on the effects of this blowout would not regard the BP report as a credible scientific assessment based on the full evidence and logic,” Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland professor of marine science who President Obama appointed to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, told the Examiner.
The BP report wasn’t necessarily tasked with being the equal of peer-reviewed studies. A spokesman said it was designed as a “resource” and to get its word out in anticipation of the media blitz that is sure to surround the spill’s five-year anniversary.
The spill has cost BP nearly $43 billion in civil and criminal penalties, Gulf restoration and other expenses. The company’s fight took a nasty public turn in recent years as it fought a spill claim payout plan that it said benefited businesses that didn’t suffer economic losses from the disaster. It dropped a push to oust the claims administrator earlier this month after adjustments were made to reduce fraud.
How much more BP may have to shell out is uncertain. That’s because the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process has been seldom used since its inception and, when it has, it’s been for relatively small spills. Fleet Management Ltd., for example, in 2011 paid $32.2 million in natural resource damages as a result of its Cosco Busan container ship striking the Bay Bridge in 2007 and sending about 54,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay.
“There’s no precedent. In terms for how these sorts of proceedings go we’ve never confronted an oil spill of this magnitude in the Gulf of Mexico, so the application of the [Natural Resources Damage Assessment] process is in uncharted territory from that perspective,” Jason Hutt, a partner in the environmental strategy group at lobbying firm Bracewell & Giuliani, told the Examiner. “You can talk about the Exxon Valdez, but that was heavy oil in cold water so it was much easier to scoop it up and address it.”
Some lawmakers, at least anecdotally, said that what they’re hearing backs up BP’s claim that the Gulf ecosystem is improving.
“I followed it closely, obviously, it affected parts of my district. We’ve had a substantial recovery in the Gulf,” Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., told the Examiner. “Fishing seems to be coming back, the shrimping industry is getting better. Things seem to be coming along in a pretty good way.”
Others are less convinced.
“You speak to shrimpers who say their volume of shrimp is still not there and that they are finding some shrimp that are not native to the Gulf. What that reflects, we’re not sure. There are some academic articles that show some embryos of some basic part of the food chain are not normal. Now, if it’s pretty low on the food chain, it’s eventually going to affect what’s high on the food chain,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told the Examiner. “A shrimper just told me this past week that they found them cleaning up 20,000 pounds of oil globs.”
More litigation — and perhaps more payments — is something BP doesn’t want hanging over its head. Hutt said what the company has paid out in civil and criminal penalties won’t be a factor if affected states file claims through the Natural Resources Damages Assessment.
But it could take years for the evaluation period to close and for any litigation to begin, noted Ben Sherman, a spokesman with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That’s partially because it could take generations for the full impact of the spill to be known.
“The Exxon Valdez still hasn’t closed,” Sherman told the Examiner, noting the process re-opened when the Prince William Sound’s herring population began to crash. “The environment is a very complex area to make an immediate determination.”
