Four lessons from BP oil spill
By: Darren Samuelsohn
September 29, 2010 04:34 AM EDT
Lessons abound from the BP oil, which that will go down as the nation’s worst environmental disaster.
The Oil Spill Commission, a bipartisan panel chartered by President Barack Obama, wrapped up hearings Tuesday as it works toward a January release of its assessment of the historic gusher. A National Academy of Sciences review is due in mid-2011.
But the political fallout isn’t waiting for detailed technical reports.
Now that the well is finally sealed, key lawmakers, administration officials and other experts in the energy and environmental field are weighing in with greater hindsight and perspective.
Here are four themes emerging from an analysis of the spill:
1. Legislation does not move immediately in response to a disaster.
Environmentalists held a news conference earlier this summer, using a live video feed of the underwater oil spill, to plead for action on global warming legislation in response to the spill, much as lawmakers had passed the Oil Pollution Reduction Act after the Exxon Valdez disaster, or Congress created the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Instead, the activists found themselves mired in Capitol Hill gridlock.
“People just weren’t talking about it,” White House energy and climate adviser Carol Browner told POLITICO about the need to pass a climate bill in the wake of the oil spill. “The vast majority of people — it really surprised me — they moved on very quickly.”
The Senate has punted on climate legislation and is stuck over how to deal with the spill itself. The House this summer passed a bill removing the $75 million liability cap for companies responsible for an oil spill, as well as authorizing the overhaul of the now-defunct Minerals Management Service.
But additional action on the issue is not expected until next year.
“The problem with Congress is when there’s a disaster or incident, there’s a whole huge rush to have hearings,” said Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.). “And when it leaves the front page of the paper, there’s no more impetus to do that anymore.”
2. The political fallout has been limited to Obama.
Besides BP, Obama emerged as the spill’s biggest political punching bag during the summer.
Rush Limbaugh quickly labeled the disaster “Obama’s Katrina.” The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a two-minute-plus mash-up criticizing the president for playing golf while the spill continued into its fifth week. The viral video featured former Clinton political adviser James Carville ripping the White House for leaving his native region in the lurch.
Obama tried to stay on the case. The president’s first Oval Office address dealt with the spill. His aides issued blow-by-blow timelines explaining the administration’s response.
“The day that the rig collapsed and fell to the bottom of the ocean, I had my team in the Oval Office that first day,” Obama said at a May 27 news conference. “Those who think that we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don’t know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone published Tuesday, Obama defended both his administration’s response and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whom critics have chided for not enacting reforms at MMS quickly enough.
“What Ken would admit, and I would admit, and what we both have to take responsibility for, is that we did not fully change the institutional conflicts that were inherent in that office,” Obama said. “If you ask why did we not get that done, the very simple answer is that this is a big government with a lot of people, and changing bureaucracies and agencies is a time-consuming process. We just didn’t get to it fast enough.”
But the damage has been done. An Associated Press poll in mid-June found that 45 percent approved of the president’s handling of the disaster, while 52 percent disapproved. A mid-August follow-up saw only a slight improvement for Obama, with 50 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving.
“It hurt Obama in Florida, I can tell you that,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). “It wasn’t until after, when everybody got it together, but my Lord, that was after how long? Three and a half months?”
3. Ken Feinberg isn’t a miracle worker.
Obama’s point man for administering damage claims in the Gulf is under fire for the speed with which he’s doing his work.
Ken Feinberg — best known for his work on the Sept. 11 victims-compensation fund — had said individual claims would be answered within 48 hours and business claims wrapped up in seven days. But tens of thousands of claims remain pending for time periods much longer than that.
Justice Department Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli earlier this month urged Feinberg to “devote additional resources or make whatever changes are necessary to speed up the process.”
Feinberg replied Saturday that he’s trying to move things along, with claims grouped by industry now that he has a better grip on the profits and losses for fishermen, shrimpers, tourism and businesses.
He also said that his Gulf Coast Claims Facility has paid out more than $400 million in five weeks and that it took BP four months to pay out about the same amount.
“We have heard, and we understand the criticisms, and we are responding,” Feinberg said. “We will be sending out more generous checks more quickly.”
Lawmakers say they’re willing to give Feinberg the benefit of the doubt. “You can’t grade his performance because he’s just getting started,” Nelson said.
4. Get the number right!
The federal government took a beating from the public and media for its handling of the spill, even as it deferred to BP on key issues involving equipment and expertise.
Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Bob Reilly, co-chairmen of the Oil Spill Commission, said there are several reasons for the lack of public confidence, starting with the poor information on the flow rate that trickled out shortly after the disaster. Officials initially said that only 1,000 barrels to 5,000 barrels a day were leaking from the well, but the flow rate was later appraised at 62,000 barrels.
That error left spill responders ill equipped to deal with everything from construction of the “top hat” dome to how much boom to deploy in the region.
“It’s a little bit like Custer,” Graham told reporters Monday. “He underestimated the number of Indians that’d be on the other side of the hill, and he paid the ultimate price for that.”
All told, the government estimates about 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled, with 804,877 barrels collected at the wellhead.
The public also lost confidence as it heard reports of mismanagement among federal regulators charged with issuing permits for oil wells. In this area, Graham said, there has been about 25 years of deference to industry, including a lack of understanding about potential worst-case scenarios.
“There’s a tendency to forget the fact that this property out in the Gulf of Mexico where all this is happening belongs to all of us. It doesn’t belong to BP or any other oil company. It belongs to the people of the United States of America.” Graham said. “We are the landlord. They are lessees. And we need to start acting like the landlord.”
Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson last week applauded the government for its handling of the spill, saying it had to make many split-second decisions without knowing all the risks. “That’s what we as an industry do all the time,” he said.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, had a different take. “You can go through issue after issue after issue that clearly we learned a lot about in terms of the inadequacy to deal with the magnitude of an environmental catastrophe that dwarfed anything that had ever happened to the industry,” he said.
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