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A convoy of small boats head out along the Mississippi River towards South Pass on May 4, in Venice, Louisiana. The BP oil spill continues to gush some 210,000 gallons of oil a day (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
The BP oil spill threatening the U.S. Gulf Coast is proof that the major multinational energy conglomerates learned little following the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
The BP spill, gushing some 210,000 gallons of oil each day—five times more than the company projected—occurred on April 20 when there was an underwater explosion 50 miles offshore and 5,000 feet below the surface.
So what happened?
Rather than just a leak, as was originally reported by the company, it was actually a gusher from a pipe, releasing a hot column of oil and gas that spurted into black, freezing waters. The pressure from the blast—close to a ton per inch—triggered the continuous, unstoppable disaster. This is a far cry from a tanker leaking oil, which takes hours or days to empty.
Oil-leakage accidents have happened before, but the BP disaster is rare because it’s so deep and it can’t be stopped.
As gusty winds and rough waters hamper cleanup efforts, the spill makes its way into Louisiana’s fragile coastal wetlands. The oil will likely hit Mississippi and Alabama shores today.
It Could Never Happen
BP had minimized the likelihood of a catastrophic accident taking place
Unsurprisingly, BP had minimized the likelihood of a catastrophic accident taking place on one of its offshore rigs. How the giant energy conglomerate will now explain away an incident that triggered one of the worst U.S. spills in decades is anyone’s guess.
The company’s 52-page exploration plan and environmental analysis for the Deepwater Horizon well said it was highly unlikely for an accident resulting in an uncontrollable crude oil spill, causing irreparable damage to beaches, fish, and mammals, could happen. The BP report, dated February 2009 and filed with the U.S. federal Mineral Management Service, in fact repeatedly said that it was “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities.”
However, BP did say that a spill could harm beaches, wildlife refuges, and wilderness tracts, but insisted that “due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected.”
Damage Numbers Jump
But as every day goes by, the damage numbers jump. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that more than six million gallons of oil have spilled so far. And if the remaining drill equipment erodes further, that number could catapult much higher.
A BP spokesperson said that the Deepwater Horizon disaster is “clearly unprecedented” and that a “blowout at this depth” was “something that we have not experienced before.”
BP’s shallow, ill-thought-out response triggers an obvious question: “Why not?” After the Exxon Valdez accident, it stands to reason that elaborate crisis management plans would be in place to deal with both known and unknown worst-case disasters.
Exxon Oil Spill Redux
Putting the BP event in historic perspective, and to illustrate how history has an uncanny, almost ironic knack for rewriting itself, here is a fast recap of the Exxon incident in 1989.
On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground, dumping 250,000 barrels of oil—an amount reportedly exceeding 10 million gallons—into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
The cleanup effort cost the company $2.5 billion, and Exxon was forced to pay out $1.1 billion in settlements. That’s for starters. About 250,000 animals died immediately, including seabirds, sea otters, seals, and bald eagles, and billions of salmon and herring eggs were destroyed as well.
Two decades after the oil spill, University of North Carolina scientists reported that the effects of the accident will last longer than originally forecast. The university’s researchers projected that some shoreline arctic habitats may take up to 30 years to fully recover.
If the polluting of local waters wasn’t bad enough, emergency procedures following the event bordered on pathetic. Exxon’s response was delayed, slow and hesitant. Every second wasted resulted in more damage that would haunt the global company for decades.
But it didn’t take long for news of the massive oil spill to spread around the world. In a matter of days, the Exxon name was blighted. The giant energy provider had lost credibility.
Every Mistake in the Book
The obvious question that immediately crossed everyone’s mind was, “Could the disaster have been prevented?” And not reporting it and not owning up to the mistake immediately only made the company look worse.
Edward S. Devlin, author of “Crisis Management Planning and Execution,” said that Exxon’s “mishandling of the oil spill in Alaska is an example of how NOT to manage a crisis.” He went on to say that it is a “perfect case of a company doing everything wrong, from not being prepared for a spill of such mammoth proportions to the media’s portrayal of Exxon’s chief executive, sitting passively in his New York home waiting by the telephone for reports of the situation.”
With all the newest and most advanced technology of the day available to safely navigate large commercial vessels through any waters, it was simply human error that caused the devastating crisis on that ill-fated evening of March 24.
If the above weren’t bad enough, management bungling worsened the effects of the disaster. Exxon made the following mistakes:
• Poor response. Crisis management 101 says that the faster the response to an emergency, the greater the chances of addressing and solving the problem before more damage is done. It took Exxon almost 10 hours to deploy booms to contain the oil spill.
• Failure to inform the public. Heeding the bad advice of the company’s legal counsel, the company refused to acknowledge the extent of the problem. Worse still, Exxon’s decision-makers refused to comment about the spill for nearly a week.
• Bad decisions by top management. Compounding the problem, CEO Lawrence Rawl put his foot in his mouth when he told the media that he didn’t visit the accident scene until almost three weeks after the spill.
It’s amazing to think that within the space of a few weeks, the giant conglomerate, headed by experienced, seasoned managers, could make every mistake in the book and come off looking like the proverbial gangster who couldn’t shoot straight.
Naturally, both the media and the public concluded that Exxon didn’t take the accident seriously.
Yet, despite all the backslapping chatter about undoing past wrongs, the damage done by Exxon will never be righted. A great deal of oil has yet to be cleaned up, and wildlife has suffered the effects of the incident for at least two decades. It’s estimated that only 8 percent of the oil was recovered.
BP faces a crisis of gargantuan proportions.
What’s next in the BP oil spill crisis? The big questions have yet to be answered, such as: Why did the accident happen? Why didn’t the company respond immediately—even if the initial leak seemed insignificant? And how could the company allow the accelerating spill to mushroom into a disaster that could affect the entire world?
Copyright Troy Media Corporation
