A2
Nation
September 9 – 15, 2010
The Epoch Times
Chaos Versus Contingency in Gulf Oil Rig Accidents
Commentary
By JAMES OTTAR GRUNDVIG
Timing is everything. In the case of
the Gulf offshore oil rig accidents
this summer, the fire that burned
the Vermilion 380-A platform was
eerily reminiscent of not only Deepwater Horizon’s blowout, but also
a plane crash that followed two
months after 9/11.
In November 2001, American
Airlines Flight 587 fell out of the
sky shortly after takeoff from JFK
Airport. It crashed into a residential block on Rockaway. With more
than 250 deaths on board the Airbus and more on the ground, New
Yorkers—myself included—were
spooked for hours. That was until
the plane’s tail section was lifted out
of the water with not a scratch, scar,
or scorch mark on it.
Flight 587 flew into the wake vortices—an invisible pressure wave—of
another jet that had taken off before
it. When the crash was attributed to
wind shear, skeptical New Yorkers
exhaled a sigh of relief, mixed with
sorrow for the victims.
Nine years later, the offshore oil
industry has experienced a similar
fate: A major catastrophe in Transocean’s semi-submersible oil rig,
unleashing the worst oil spill in
U.S. history, followed by a smaller
accident.
Still it was a shock. It occurred on
the same day that 5,000 offshore
professionals in Houston protested
against the White House’s sixmonth moratorium on deep water
drilling.
Mariner Energy’s Vermilion production platform is a 30-year-old
relic that sits in 340 feet of water
south of Louisiana’s Vermilion Bay
and far west of Deepwater’s sunken
platform. A map of the continental
shelf is littered with dots showing
the locations of the 15,000 active oil
rigs operating in the Gulf today.
The Mariner rig’s fire sparked
from members of Congress and
environmental groups the incentive to extend the moratorium for
RIG EXPLOSION: Boats spray water on an oil platform after it exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Sept. 2 off the coast of Louisiana. The 13 crew members were rescued
and some were being treated in a Louisiana hospital. mario tama/getty images
shallow-water installations, or the
remaining 80 percent of the oil rigs
in the Gulf of Mexico.
evacuation
There are stark differences between
BP’s blowout and the rig fire, just as
there were between the 9/11 terrorists who crashed planes into buildings and the Airbus that crashed
due to wind shear.
On the Vermilion rig, which is a
production platform, the oil wells
had been drilled—the last in 2009.
The fire took place during maintenance operations, when all seven
wells were sealed shut by safety
valves.
When the fire erupted, the 13
Mariner Energy workers calmly
put on bright orange “Gumby Suits,”
which have inflatable pockets and
reflective stripes, and leaped into
the sea. Once in the water, the workers locked arms and held onto one
another until a supply vessel rescued them.
At first, a mile-long sheen was reported floating on the surface. But
when U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) helicopters went to investigate, they
found nothing. That’s because no
oil had been spilled. The liquid was
diesel fuel, which fed the fire and
created the short-lived slick seen
on the surface that the sun and sea
quickly dissipated.
Mariner Energy’s Patrick Cassidy,
director of investor relations, did not
return phone calls for comment.
dispersing the truth
contain an oil spill and keep it from
Perhaps the most troubling aspect
reaching the coast. So why would
of the Vermilion accident was what U.S. agencies choose dispersants,
didn’t happen. The USCG proudly which created the massive underannounced to the media that they
sea black plume near the Macondo
were ready to use dispersants to sink well, over dispatching some of the
the oil spill, had one been found.
“armada of 750 oil skimmers” they
Why would the USCG deploy
assembled for the cleanup near
dispersants, the controversial toxic Deepwater Horizon?
chemicals that were grossly overUntil the United States develops
used during the BP Oil Spill? Why
and implements a program that
are dispersants the first choice in
puts dispersants at the bottom of
the U.S. arsenal to attack a slick? oil-spill options and elevates meDid the USCG and the Miner- chanical recovery to the top, our
als Management Services (MMS) waters and coasts will be in peril
not learn anything from the BP from the dumping and spraying of
disaster?
toxic chemicals.
In Norway’s offshore industry,
dispersants are a necessary evil. But chaos on deepwater horizon
they are a third or fourth option to When the double explosion ripped
across Transocean’s rig, the blast
was so powerful that it hurled bodies into the sea, crushed the “pit
room” below deck where the mud
engineers mixed the drilling fluid,
and sheared off one of six turbines
from its engine block at the rear of
the platform.
The blowout cut off the main
power to the dynamic positioned
oil rig, making it susceptible to pulling free and drifting across the Gulf.
When workers couldn’t manually
turn on the backup generators, it
was every man for himself.
Of the 115 survivors, the only
woman on board was 23-year-old dynamic position (DP) officer Andrea
Fleytas. On the bridge with the captain and BP’s Pat O’Bryan, vice president of drilling and completions
who was on a VIP tour on the day of
the blowout, Fleytas took command
when no one else did. She placed
the first distress call to shore.
Amid the chaos, Captain Curt
Kuchta reprimanded his DP officer for breaking the chain of command. One would think the captain
would have thanked her. On Aug.
27, BP’s Executive Vice President
Kent Wells testified at the jointagencies hearing that no one was
in charge on Deepwater when the
blowout occurred.
When the captain gave his only order—to abandon ship—he and Pat
O’Bryan and other managers ran to
the lifeboats and were launched to
safety. One of the last to abandon
the rig, Fleytas went below deck and
saw the remaining lifeboats on fire.
So she leapt into the flaming sea
60 feet below, swimming out from
under the inferno.
While Mariner Energy’s oil-rig
fire is being investigated, their
workers should be congratulated
for executing an evacuation plan.
BP and Transocean need to learn
from the Vermilion fire to prepare
better contingency plans for future
accidents.
As a young man, James Ottar
Grundvig worked on Norway’s offshore
oil platforms. Today he is a writer living in New York City.
FROM THE COVER
Gulf Shellfish and Soil Contaminated, Researchers Find
Similar concerns have been expressed by fishermen. “As state and
federal officials continue to open
Gulf waters to fishing, we have to
again point to evidence that the
‘all clear’ is being sounded way too
early,” said Stuart Smith, who represents the United Commercial
Fishermen’s Association, in a press
release.
The findings of Subra and her
team are being released publicly on
the Boston Chemical Data website,
complete with maps of where the
contaminants were found.
Similar studies done by Subra in
the past have spurred agency investigations. Following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, she tested soil from
Alabama to Texas and found that
the hurricanes had scooped up contaminant-filled sediment and coated
the ground with it.
With the current studies being
done in the Gulf of Mexico, Subra
said the next step is to measure
the long-term effects, and how
contamination levels change over
time. She will be returning to the
sites with Orr and others to continue sampling.
For information, visit: http://bostonchemicaldata.com/LEAN/
TO EAT OR NOT TO EAT? A man eats oysters on the half shell at the Washington Seafood Market. Researchers found large
quantities of contaminants in shellfish and soil in the Gulf of Mexico and along the shoreline. jim watson/afp/getty images
New Yorkers Called Upon to Turn Out Lights for Birds
90,000
migrating birds
die in New York
City every fall
By JACK PHILLIPS
Epoch Times Staff
NEW YORK—Thousands of migrating birds are killed every fall
in New York City. To combat this,
the New York office of the National
Audubon Society is calling on New
Yorkers to turn their lights out at
night in the coming months.
The initiative, known as “Lights
Out New York,” aims to get all New
Yorkers and especially skyscraper
owners to turn their lights out between Sept. 1 and Nov. 1, from midnight until dawn.
An estimated 90,000 birds are
killed each year in New York City
because they fly into the glass of
the buildings while attempting
to migrate to and from breeding
grounds.
Bright light in buildings at night
can be disorienting for the birds, as
it “overrides their navigational cues,”
said the Audubon Society, which
started the initiative five years ago
to protect the migrating animals.
Protecting birds is not the only
boon for building owners when
they turn their lights out, the organization said, as following the initiative will also save people money
by reducing their electricity costs.
For example, a building with 2.5
million square feet of floor space
can save more than $120,000 this
fall if the owners turn the lights
off at night.
Notable skyscrapers with lights
being shut off at night include the
Time Warner Center, Rockefeller
Center, the Chrysler Building, Con
Edison Clock Tower, The New York
Times Building, and 601 Lexington
Avenue.
Forest City Ratner Companies,
Durst Properties, Silverstein Properties, and JP Morgan Chase Properties have also promised to turn
residences or businesses may be.
The organization says to turn off all
lights on unoccupied floors and unused space, close blinds if possible,
and turn off ceiling lights between
midnight and dawn.
Other major North American
cities have also initiated similar
“Lights Out” programs. Chicago was
the first city to initiate the program,
and field researchers told the Audubon Society that more than 10,000
birds have been saved as a result.
The initiative is sponsored by
the Audubon Society, the New
their buildings’ lights out.
York City Department of Parks and
According to the Audubon Soci- Recreation, the Building Owners
ety, just about anyone can partici- and Managers Association of New
pate in the initiative, and it does York, and the Real Estate Board of
not matter how big or small their New York.
Just about anyone
can participate in the
initiative, and it does
not matter how big or
small their residences
or businesses may be.
ment on Aug. 2, saying, “We are
confident all appropriate steps have
been taken to ensure that seafood
harvested from the waters being
opened today is safe and that Gulf
seafood lovers everywhere can be
confident eating and enjoying the
fish and shrimp that will be coming
out of this area.”
Subra said she is concerned that,
based on her latest findings, there
could still be problems. “They are
apparently not testing nearly as
many organisms as we would like,
and apparently they are not testing
in all the areas where we are finding
the visual residual oil,” she said.
In some areas, plants were still
covered in oil, and a sheen could
be seen on the soil. She shared her
hope that the findings will lead to
further studies into whether the
seafood in the Gulf is safe. Other
sites have been horrific. Among
them was a small island where the
ground was littered with dead and
dying birds.
“What we are hoping is that the
regulatory organizations will go
into these locations and do additional samplings to determine the
extent of the contamination,” Subra
said.
SHELLFISH CONTINUED FROM A1
“We did find it in large quantities
in the soil sediment, as well as in
vegetation and organisms—oysters
and some in the crabs,” said Wilma
Subra, a MacArthur Award-winning
chemist who conducted the tests.
Subra said that other contaminants were found along with the
PAHs, and “we’re not talking partsper-million or parts-per-billion.” “It
was there in substantial concentrations. If you had to test it to determine whether or not that area would
be applicable to being harvested,
those concentrations were way over
the concentration you would ever
even consider.”
The team is waiting for results
from fish and shrimp samples.
Among the team are members
of the Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery,
Water Keeper Alliance, and the
Louisiana Environmental Action
Network.
Many of the locations were investigated following tips from local
fishermen who said they could see
or smell oil in the areas.
Some Mississippi state waters
were reopened to commercial fishing last month. FDA Commissioner
Margaret Hamburg released a state-
solution on a6