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And prevention is vital, because oil companies acknowledge that the oil spill genie is difficult to put back in the bottle once released.
In 2005 filings with the C-NLOPB, Chevon acknowledged that a blowout was the “main concern” from a safety, environmental and economic perspective in the Orphan Basin. “Physical recovery of spilled oil off the coast of Newfoundland will be extremely difficult and inefficient for large blowout spills,” the Chevron report notes. “There are two main reasons for this. First, the generally rough sea conditions mean that containment and recovery techniques are frequently not effective. Second, the wide slicks that result from subsea blowouts mean that only a portion of the slick can be intercepted.”
Chevron did assure that none of 14,600 slicks modeled for two locations in the area reached the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador.
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Further complicating matters is the importance of oil to the province’s newly-minted “have” status. The sudden prosperity is almost entirely thanks to the burgeoning offshore. The three producing projects are expected to pump 30 cents of every loonie going into the provincial treasury this year.
Environmental concerns aside, any talk of halting exploration would almost certainly send shivers down the spine of any provincial politician looking at the public ledger book. Oil resources are finite; the potential for new discoveries is the lifeblood that will keep the industry going.
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As the calendar page turned from May to June, the desperation in the Gulf of Mexico became more palpable, the search for solutions more desperate. The Hollywood director James Cameron, of Titanic fame, offered his technical expertise, and reportedly called BP “morons” after being rebuffed. A criminal investigation was launched into the spill. Finally, BP found some measure of success with a type of containment cap that helped vacuum up large volumes of oil.
Meanwhile, keen sets of eyes continue to watch the Gulf experience. “Safety is paramount,” the C-NLOPB’s Ruelokke says of Newfoundland’s regulatory set-up. The Deepwater Horizon is the epic example of what happens when it is not.
