Annals of outrage BP's emergency "plan" for the Gulf discusses impact on "seals, sea otters and walruses"

Published 18 May 2010

BP’s 582-page emergency-response never anticipated an oil spill as large as the one now gushing on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico; a closer reading shows the document was not much than a boilerplate, cut-and-paste job used by BP from region to region; in a section titled “Sensitive Biological & Human-Use Resources,” the emergency plan lists “seals, sea otters and walruses” as animals that could be impacted by a Gulf of Mexico spill — even though no such animals live in the Gulf; the plan was approved in July by the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS), a toothless agency accused by lawmakers of being in the pocket of the oil industry

An emergency response plan prepared by BP shows the British energy giant never anticipated an oil spill as large as the one seeping through the Gulf of Mexico. USA Today ’s Rick Jervis writes that the 582-page document, titled “Regional Oil Spill Response Plan — Gulf of Mexico,” was approved in July by the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS). It offers technical details on how to use chemical dispersants and provides instructions on what to say to the news media, but it does not mention how to react if a deep-water well spews oil uncontrollably.

BP was criticized by several lawmakers last week for inventing solutions on the go to stop the flow of oil ever since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank last month, killing eleven crewmembers and sparking an ecological emergency.

Most of the techniques recently attempted by BP to contain the spewing well — from a 100-ton containment device that didn’t work to a mile-long tube aimed at piping out the spewing oil — are not mentioned in the plan.

“These oil spill response plans suffer from what I would consider a ‘failure of imagination,’ ” said Representative Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, which is investigating federal oversight of oil spills. “It seems to me that there should be a Plan B, C and D in place before the accident occurs, not created in haste while millions of gallons of oil are spewing into the Gulf.”

David Dismukes, associate executive director of the Center for Energy Studies at Louisiana State University, said that an oil spill response plan must be filed with the MMS, the agency that regulates oil companies, and details how a company will deal with potential spills.

Jervis quotes BP spokesman Steve Rinehart to say that the plan provided the company a blueprint for response during the current disaster, but BP officials had to improvise due to the “unforeseen circumstances” of the event — a renegade well 5,000 feet under water. “Nobody foresaw an incident in which something like this occurred,” Rinehart said.

Parts of the document read like boilerplate used by BP from region to region and underscore the energy company’s inability to adequately prepare for a major spill in deep water, said Rick Steiner, a former University of Alaska marine scientist and oil spill response consultant who has reviewed the plan.

In a section titled “Sensitive Biological & Human-Use Resources,” the plan lists “seals, sea otters and walruses” as animals that could be impacted by a Gulf of Mexico spill — even though no such animals live in the Gulf.

The plan also promises that BP can respond to a “worst case discharge” of around one million gallons a day, even though engineers have struggled for nearly a month to control a well spewing one-fifth of that, Steiner said.