San Francisco Chronicle

Feds ignore risk of huge oil spills in Gulf of Mexico

- By Janet McConnaugh­ey Janet McConnaugh­ey is an Associated Press writer.

NEW ORLEANS — Environmen­tal groups asked a federal court Wednesday to throw out the Trump administra­tion’s assessment of oil and gas activity’s likely effects on endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico, saying it dismisses the chance of another disastrous blowout like the BP spill of 2010.

The National Marine Fisheries Service’s 700page analysis greatly underestim­ates both the likely number and size of oil spills, according to the suit filed by Earthjusti­ce for the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Turtle Island Restoratio­n Network.

Even though the study was prompted by the 2010 spill, it “essentiall­y pretends the Deepwater Horizon spill never happened — that there was nothing to learn from that disaster,” Earthjusti­ce attorney Chris Eaton said Tuesday.

The federal agency said it left the possibilit­y of an extremely large spill like BP’s out of its calculatio­ns of likely effects because a Bureau of Offshore Energy Management analysis found little chance of another during the next 50 years.

The previous analysis, in 2007, also estimated that “such a large spill was extremely unlikely,” the lawsuit noted. That analysis had estimated that “the largest spill possible would be at most 15,000 barrels,” or 630,000 gallons.

The 2010 spill, which started with a blowout that killed 11 men, was hundreds of times bigger than that. Estimates of the amount of oil spewed into the Gulf for 87 days varied from nearly 176 million gallons to less than 103 million gallons. A federal judge calculated damages based on 134 million gallons in the Gulf.

The chance of such a spill is even higher now, the lawsuit said, because “Gulf drilling is moving into deeper waters, which increases the possibilit­y of a catastroph­ic well blowout and extremely large oil spill.”

The study also failed to consider the increased frequency, due to climate change, of hurricanes that can severely damage oil and gas facilities, nor did it take into account recent research about the danger of underwater landslides that can cause extremely large oil spills, the lawsuit said.

In addition, it said, the analysis left out the BP spill’s effects on the corals and other animals and their habitats, using population estimates and other informatio­n from before the spill.

The groups asked a federal court in Maryland to make the National Oceanic and Atmospheri­c Administra­tion’s fisheries service write a new report, called a biological opinion.

 ?? Gerald Herbert / Associated Press 2010 ?? An oil spill is seen near the coast of Louisiana in 2010 after an explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig a week earlier. As much as 176 million gallons of oil was spilled.
Gerald Herbert / Associated Press 2010 An oil spill is seen near the coast of Louisiana in 2010 after an explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig a week earlier. As much as 176 million gallons of oil was spilled.

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