Last week, the Trump Administration proposed to open up nearly all Federal waters for oil and gas drilling, reversing decades-long protection of areas in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
On December 23rd, the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 1 satellite collected an image of the Heater Plf platform which appears to be leaking oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The Heater Plf is located approximately 13 kilometers north of the Delta National Wildlife Refuge in the Mississippi Delta. Based on our conservative analysis, the slick detected on this image holds at least 220 gallons of oil.
The image above reveals a small slick indicating a minor spill. But it’s the latest illustration of a much larger problem that doesn’t get much attention: the steady drumbeat of leaks and spills that accompany offshore drilling. For more examples illustrating this stealthy issue, see our analysis calculating the volume of the ongoing Taylor leak, our map of 10,000 spills since the BP spill and our work with the Gulf Monitoring Consortium.
This proposal to open Federal waters comes hand-in-hand with an announcement made last week, in which the Administration proposed reducing safety regulations on oil and gas drilling in the outer continental shelf. Currently, only the coastal waters of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in the Gulf of Mexico can be leased for drilling. These proposed reductions nullify safety rules which were put in place after the fatal and costly BP / Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010.
The Heater Plf platform is owned by New Century Exploration LLC, and according to information provided by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) the platform is no longer producing oil but has not been removed. In this 2014 legal brief, New Century and Champion Exploration LLC state that the new requirements under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act made it “infeasible” for them to prove their financial capability to handle oil spill preparedness. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, drilling companies were required to estimate the cost to clean up a “worst-case” scenario. New Century could not demonstrate they had the $1.8 billion required to clean up a worst-case spill, so they ceased activity at this site.
With the administration pushing to open new areas to drilling, it seems reckless to be walking back the safety rules put in place to help prevent the next catastrophic oil spill. More than seven years later, the Gulf is still feeling the effects of the largest accidental oil spill in history, while the drilling industry argues these regulations are burdensome to stakeholders and unnecessary. Can we afford to relax our safety standards regarding oil and gas drilling? Can the Gulf of Mexico survive another worst-case scenario like the Deepwater Horizon spill? Can we risk these disasters in the Gulf and elsewhere? Do we want the onus of recovery from these incidents to be shouldered by the taxpayers?
It’s an essential part of our democracy to voice your opinion about decisions that jeopardize public safety and the health of our public lands and waters. Submit your comment on the proposed rollback of the offshore drilling safety rules to the Federal Register by January 29, 2018.