"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
--Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities
We are often reminded that history repeats itself when people refuse to learn the lessons of the past. Return with me to January of 1969.
Gasoline was 35 cents a gallon. No one was talking about an energy crisis, peak oil, or climate change. Union Oil had just discovered a significant oil field off the coast of California near Santa Barbara. Four platforms quickly sprang up off the coast between September and December of 1968 and drilling operations were well underway by January. The fifth and final platform to be completed was nicknamed Alpha. Drilling operations on Alpha began on January 14 and there was trouble in paradise two weeks later.
Blow Out, Baby, Blow Out
Keith Clarke and Jeffrey Hemphill of the Department of Geology at the University of California Santa Barbara describe the events leading up to the "oil spill that was heard around the world" as follows:
The problems began on an offshore drilling rig operated by Union Oil called platform Alpha, where pipe was being extracted from a 3,500 foot deep well. The pressure difference created by the extraction of the pipe was not sufficiently compensated for by the pumping of drilling mud back down the well, which caused a disastrous pressure increase. As the pressure built up and started to strain the casing on the upper part of the well, an emergency attempt was made to cap it, but this action only succeeded in further increasing the pressure inside the well. The consequence was that under extreme pressure a burst of natural gas blew out all of the drilling mud, split the casing and caused cracks to form in the sea floor surrounding the well. A simple solution to the problem was now impossible; due to the immense pressure involved and the large volume of oil and natural gas being released a “blowout” occurred and the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill was under way.
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California Screaming
Estimates of how much oil was spilled from the well west of Summerland vary from 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil. Since a barrel of oil is 42 gallons, it means somewhere between 3 and 4 million gallons of goop spilled into bay. At the peak of the spill, the slick covered an 800-square mile area. Because of the oil, local residents described the sea as silent because of the dampening effects the oil had on wave action.
The oil coated 35 miles of coastline. Here is a glimpse of the mess from Life Magazine (Photo: Vernon Merritt III).
More aerial photographs of the spill can be found here.
The oil also had a devastating impact on wildlife.
Animals that depended on the sea were hard hit. Incoming tides brought the corpses of dead seals and dolphins. Oil had clogged the blowholes of the dolphins, causing massive lung hemorrhages. Animals that ingested the oil were poisoned. In the months that followed, gray whales migrating to their calving and breeding grounds in Baja California avoided the channel —their main route south.
The oil took its toll on the seabird population. Shorebirds like plovers, godwits and willets which feed on sand creatures fled the area. But diving birds which must get their nourishment from the waters themselves became soaked with tar.
Since you will be seeing many images of oiled and dead seabirds from the Deepwater Horizon spill as the oil invades the Gulf Coast wetlands, I urge you to better understand why the oil poses unique risks to threatened and endangered avian species in the area. Here is one resource. The oil coats the bird's feathers, making it impossible to fly. When coated, the natural instinct of the bird is to preen, causing them to ingest the toxic oil and die.
The Santa Barbara spill brought volunteers by the thousands to rescue seabirds and clean the beaches. It was an effort that galvanized the community.
The clean-up effort began almost immediately, with significant active participation from the local community. The damage was so intense and extensive that people of all age groups and political persuasions felt compelled to help in every way they could. On the beaches, piles of straw were used to absorb oil that washed on shore, contaminated beach sand was bulldozed into piles and trucked away. Skimmer ships gathered oil from the ocean surface, and volunteers rescued and cleaned tarred seabirds at a series of hastily set-up animal rescue stations, one of which was located at the Santa Barbara zoo.
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How the unthinkable happened
Human error was a big part of the Santa Barbara disaster. The error was in deliberately ignoring safety guidelines rather than any glaring operational mistakes. Union Oil asked for and was granted a waiver for the casings used on the well head that blew.
Union Oil requested the U.S. Geological Survey to waive various well casing requirements. Well casing prevents oil and gas from escaping the well bore and migrating into the surrounding geological formation. Donald Solanas of the U.S. Geological Survey approved the waiver.
On wells as deep as A-21, federal regulations called for a standard minimum of 300 feet of conductor casing -- the first string of protective casing normally set beneath the ocean floor -- and a blowout-prevention device atop it. Similarly, these regulations called for approximately 870 feet of surface casing -- a secondary string set to greater depth and generally installed when exploratory operations suggest the presence of a high-pressure gas-zone. Yet Solanas -- exercising his legitimate statutory discretion -- had authorized Union to drill A-21 without installing any surface casing at all. Moreover, he had permitted Union to run its conductor casing down to only 238 feet beneath the ocean floor.
I have searched extensively for an explanation of why Donald Solanas granted the waiver and have yet to come up with anything. The only plausible scenario is that the company assured Solanas that the casings were not necessary given what they encountered in drilling the first wells. In one of those priceless ironies of life, Solanas is a partner in Arrowhead Energy Exploration based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You will find him listed in this 2007 newsletter of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. (I urge you to read the legislative objectives of the organization as many have bearing to the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.)
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Giving birth to a movement
The Santa Barbara spill is credited with being an important catalyst to the modern environmental movement. It also created legislative and regulative initiatives that limited offshore drilling. Here is a list of innovations that can be traced, at least in part, to the spill.
• A broad environmental grassroots movement was founded leading to the first, Earth Day in November of 1969. (http://earthday.envirolink.org/...)
• Get Oil Out (GOO) collected 100,000 signatures for a petition to ban offshore drilling
• The Environmental Defense Center was founded (http://www.rain.org/) and the first Environmental Studies program was started at UC Santa Barbara
(Environmental Studies UCSB).
• The California Coastal Commission was created from a statewide initiative. (Coastal Commission). This commission today has powerful control over human activities that impact California’s coastal areas.
• The State Land Commission banned offshore drilling for 16 years, until the Reagan Administration took office.
• President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (http://es.epa.gov/...). Leading the way to the July 1970 establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.
• California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) became law (http://ceres.ca.gov/...).
• Federal and state regulations governing oil drilling were strengthened.
• A CIA owned U-2 Spy Plane took the first ever air photo reconnaissance images of Santa Barbara for peaceful purposes other than mapping of denied territory (Marx, 1984).
• Federal Government founded the Civil Applications Committee, aimed at coordinating intelligence and military systems for national emergencies.
The tone deaf comments by Fred Hartley, the head of Union Oil, helped further galvanize public opinion against the company and offshore drilling.
“I don't like to call it a disaster, because there has been no loss of human life. I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.”
"This is just Mother Earth letting the oil come out."
--Fred Hartley, President and CEO of Union OIl
The close association between the oil companies and Interior Secretary Walter Hickel (a former governor of Alaska), his defense of Union Oil, and his flip-flops on a moratorium on offshore drilling added further fuel to the fire.
This video documents the aftermath of the spill and the observations of people in the community who became politically active as a result of their experiences.
Despite the public support for change, the impetus generated by the Santa Barbara spill has lost potency with the passage of time. Here is an obvious example. Two days before the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, this opinion piece appeared in the Sacramento Bee advocating that California relax restrictions on offshore drilling. What makes it remarkable is that it was written by a professor affiliated with the University of California Santa Barbara school of environmental sciences. Here are a few choice snippets.
In the four decades since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, the world has changed. Offshore oil drilling is far safer than it used to be, and global warming has been recognized as a deadly threat. Yet when we discuss offshore oil, people bring up the Santa Barbara oil spill and speak of it as if it happened yesterday. That is a mistake.
. . . .
The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill did a lot of damage, but ironically, it did good as well by helping us to recognize and do something about environmental problems. Unfortunately, the idea that offshore oil drilling is bad has stuck with us too long. Forty years ago, that may have been true.
Today, global warming poses a far greater threat than offshore oil drilling. Our fear of offshore oil drilling is contributing to global warming. It is time to forget about the Santa Barbara oil spill.
I suspect Eric Smith, the author of this gibberish, wishes he could take back those horribly ill-timed words. However, the real embarrassment should be the ignorance on display. In making the case that offshore drilling is safer than it used to be, he deliberately ignored evidence that major spills still happen (such as this one off the coast of Australia last September), the greater technological demands of drilling now that much of the readily accessible oil has been recovered, and the lack of a plan by oil companies to handle a major spill. He also puts forth the blisteringly ignorant idea that oil and global warming are unconnected. The logic is so forced that it borders on the absurd. Perhaps he has forgotten that transportation sector is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change.
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Déjà vu redux
Here are the some of the obvious parallels between the Santa Barbara spill by Union Oil and the Gulf of Mexico spill by BP.
- The oil company cut corners on safety measures - the well casing requirements by Union OIl and emergency shut-off equipment, including acoustic switches, by BP.
- Both accidents happened in the early stages of operation of the rigs.
- Both rigs were state-of-the-art in technology. Here is a nauseating eulogy for the Deepwater Horizon rig that showcases its purported prowess.
- The companies were granted permission by government regulators to operate without appropriate safety measures.
- The companies downplayed the significance and severity of the accident until the environmental consequences were catastrophic. The constant revision upward of spill magnitude indicate a mixture of public relations damage control, incompetence, and unwarranted faith in technology.
- Emergency contingency plans by industry and the federal government to handle a major leak once it occurred were inadequate. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I guess we will get fooled again.
- Both disasters have focused public attention on the realities of offshore drilling, providing an opportunity to serve as a catalyst for change.
There is one important difference between the two disasters - what is happening in the Gulf will be worse, much worse.
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What did the proponents of drilling learn from Santa Barbara?
The importance of safety and emergency systems? No. The importance of a well formulated contingency plan to handle a blowout and spill? No.
The biggest lesson learned by drilling proponents is illustrated in this 2002 study by the Minerals Management Service. The study was produced by the Bush administration to look at how to encourage more offshore drilling in California. Here is the major conclusion:
At a time of rising demand (reflected in higher prices) and the breakdown of technological barriers, the opposition of local and state interests, expressed in the existing regulatory regime, prevents the maximum development of the region’s offshore oil and gas reserves. These interests perceive that oil activity, and the industrial development that accompanies it, is incompatible with community values and environmental protection. Thus with respect to offshore resource development, political factors remain more determinative of the level of activity than economic and technological ones.
In other words, our voice is the only real firewall against exploitation and lax enforcement of regulations. It is true for offshore drilling. It is true for drilling in environmentally sensitive areas on land.
The oil companies and their largely Republican allies set their sights on moving the Overton Window to unrestricted exploitation. To break down political opposition among conservatives, they made drilling part of the party purity pledge and beat the "drill, baby, drill" drum at every opportunity. And the "drill, baby, drill" campaign succeeded to the point that President Obama and Senate Democrats felt compelled to open up offshore drilling as a concession to gain Republican support for the clean energy and climate bill.
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Time for a new narrative
In 1969, the slogan popularized by the Santa Barbara spill was "Get Oil Out" (GOO). It was in many ways a not-in-my-backyard appeal, but it reflected the reality of the times. In those days there were no practical alternatives to oil for transportation or industry. The best we could hope to do was dictate where oil was drilled. The efforts succeeded in stemming the growth of offshore drilling on the east and west coasts.
Times have changed. Our mantra in the face of the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico must change with it. The new GOO should be Get Off Oil. We need clean energy and have the technology to rapidly transition away from internal combustion engines.
Some will suggest that it is not practical to get off oil. On the contrary, it is not necessary or practical to stay on oil for any extended period of time. We can cut consumption for transportation by aggressive improvements in fuel efficiency. Electric cars and better public transportation systems can all but eliminate oil in the transportation sector within a few decades with sufficient public support. President Obama promised to push for a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 and automakers are gearing up for the challenge. Advances are also being made in using biomass instead of petroleum as feedstock for plastics and other products. And projections the demand for oil will soon outpace production mean the costs of inaction will be far too great.
We have the means and motivation to get off oil. What seems to be lacking is leadership and political will.
The Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 happened a days after the inauguration of Richard Nixon as President. Here is what Nixon said about the spill:
“It is sad that it was necessary that Santa Barbara should be the example that had to bring it to the attention of the American people. What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and of the land in a more effective way and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future. The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”
The Santa Barbara spill served as an important catalyst for wide ranging environmental protections. Now we are faced with the most destructive oil spill in our history, one that will have lasting impacts on the Gulf of Mexico for many years to come, and need to move to clean energy. In this context, statements like this one from President Obama are profoundly disappointing.
I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security, but I've always said it must be done responsibly, for the safety of our workers and our environment.
In this statement, Obama goes on to highlight the potential for job creation from clean energy, but the messaging comes up short. If the President truly believes in the potential of a clean energy economy, now is the time to rally the American people to Get Off Oil. Enough of this:
We can get off oil. Future generations will thank us. History will not be kind if we drag our feet.