(The actual anniversary of The Hell’s beginning is Wednesday. I thought to post something like this then, but realized the site might be busy with other issues for the next couple of days. So I’ll just leave this here.)
Earlier this month, BP executives heaved a sigh of relief as US District Court Judge Carl Barbier finalized the package of $20 billion in fines and settlements against the company for the damage done by the 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform and subsequent oiling of the Gulf of Mexico.
The settlement “closes the book” on the disaster legally and, more importantly, psychologically. As CNBC declared announcing the judgment, it’s “time to move on.”
On we apparently shall move. Despite falling prices and a glutted market, production in the Gulf is back up to the peak numbers seen just before the disaster, about 1.7 million barrels a day. In 2010, there were 14 deep water rigs working in the Gulf; now there are more than 60. Drilling companies boast of new submersibles capable of tripping blowout peventers at 7,000 feet. As the wells drop to Macondo depths of 10,000 feet and deeper.
The states involved in the settlement are moving on pretty rapidly as well. The settlement announcement wasn’t hours old when the Louisiana legislature put a $200 million thumb on its share, scrambling to fill the billion-dollar hole left in the state’s budget by Jindal and company. Biloxi built a baseball stadium and Alabama’s governor has a new beachfront mansion.
BP’s doing reasonably well, having sold under-performing assets to raise capital for their total estimated $54 billion liability for the disaster. And as only $5.5 billion of the federal settlement announced this month represents direct fines, the company will be able to write the remaining $15.3 billion off their taxes. Moving on, indeed.
Lots have others have moved on. Over 1400 dolphins, with more every year. Cat Island’s moved on, along with a lot of estuarial habitat where the oil smothered mangrove roots, letting more fragile wetlands melt into the sea. Shrimp and crabs and oysters are moving on, with catches sharply down.
Another thing moving on, on-shore, at least, is the oil. As BP released a fifth-year environmental report claiming no significant damage remained from the spill, workers struggled to remove a 25,000 pound tar mat from Grande Terre Island. Each year, thousands more pounds of toxic, radioactive, chock-full-of-flesh-eating-bacteria mats and tarballs wash ashore from the “bathtub ring” created when the company dissolved millions of barrels of oil with Corexit to make their problem disappear.
The oil moved on, down, and having writ…
Will keep writing. Year after year, season after season. If the impacts of the Exxon Valdez are any indication, the Gulf’s first post-spill die-off is far from finished and “recovering” stocks will show increased damage and defects.
There’s no closing this book.
And no moving on.
As always, try to drive a little less if you can.