The offshore drilling industry in the Gulf of Mexico is an equal opportunity death merchant, even when operating normally, meeting "industry standards."
Mercury levels around some rigs are so high as to
qualify for the National Priorities List, a roll call of the nation's most hazardous contaminated sites.
[snip]
. . .[and] eventually lead to a federal "Superfund" clean-up effort, like those at Love Canal in New York. Mobile Press Register
Only they won't because the danger doesn't pose an immediate threat to humans. And because the rigs are sources of Federally permitted pollution. But there's the rub -- it does and is posing an immediate danger to marine animals. Fish. Big time commercial and sports fishing industries target the rigs; some estimate as much as 75% of all fishing trips out of Louisiana do. That's only one of the Gulf States.
Shocked? Here's the BIG shocker.
The Mobile Press Register article was written April 14, 2002. Things have only got worse, and that's without the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The newspaper conducted its own investigation for the report and was met with refusal when it attempted to hire environmental consulting firms to run the samples they'd collected from sediments surrounding some rigs to assay them for heavy metal contaminants and other pollutants.
Every firm they contacted to perform the tests used to determine potential Superfund status -- the Hazard Ranking System -- refused, including several state environmental agencies, citing "potential conflicts of interest with oil industry clients."
So, the paper performed its own Hazard Ranking System tests and the results of the tests on some of the sediments from the rigs sampled reached the maximum value for "observed releases of hazardous pollutants."
Mercury concentrations in many fish and shellfish sampled around at least one of the rigs were high enough to qualify the area as a contaminated fishery.
Flash forward to May 27, 2010. 80% of the Gulf of Mexico remains open to fishing following the BP oil gush there. Snapper season starts June 1st. Fishing is at its absolute best for all types of catch in June. Seafood festivals designed to entice increased tourism abound at this time of year in many Gulf Coast communities, Mobile's Jubilee probably being the most renowned.
Over the years, inshore and offshore artificial reefs have been created to attract fish and they have enjoyed enormous success. None more successful than the "casual" artificial reefs provided by the oil rigs.
For example:
The Marine Resources Division (MRD) of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has created 13-inshore artificial reefs to concentrate the speckled trout, the redfish and the flounder. Also the riprap around all the oil and the gas rigs in Mobile Bay helps to attract speckled trout and redfish and makes finding and catching these species of fish much easier. Alabama Fishing Report
Alabama has been deploying offshore artificial reefs in the state's 1200 square miles of offshore water for 50 years. The 1200 square miles where underwater drilling takes place. Today Alabama is home
to one of the largest populations of red snapper found anywhere along the Gulf Coast. . .those big 20- and 30-pound snappers, that are so much a part of Alabama Gulf Coast’s fishing legacy, will come to the docks with anglers every day of snapper season.
But let's go back to 2002 and visit Alabama -- and its oil rig "artificial reefs" -- then. While we're there, keep in mind that 75% of Louisiana's commercial and recreational seafood harvests comes from rig waters, accounting for 90% of the Gulf's harvest.
MMS data also showed that average mercury levels in shrimp around the most contaminated rig were 25 times higher than average mercury levels found in shrimp from Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound, according to data from the MMS and EPA. The rig with the most sediment contamination also produced fish and shrimp samples that were up to five times higher than samples from the least contaminated rig, an indication that the mercury could be working its way up the Gulf's food chain. Press Register
How bad is bad? Worse than farmed fish. Talk about "going up the food chain."
Farmed fish are fed concentrated fish food made up of ground up wild fish exposed to "wild" mercury and the fish farms are themselves regarded by some as polluting industries from the waste products of the farming processes and the fish themselves. Open ocean aquaculture, especially in the Gulf, may have the potential of becoming its own killer industry.
Two years ago, Save Our Wetlands (SOWL) was claiming
Wild fish that feed and are caught around oil rigs may have more contaminants than those used in the farm. Mercury levels around oil and gas platforms have been found to be higher than normal, as have mercury levels in fish caught around those platforms and around fish farms. More studies are needed on whether the fish grown in farms near or on oil rigs have higher levels of mercury.
And oil rigs can continue to be killers long after their own "useful lives" have expired.
Another issue with oil rigs is that allowing fish farming on them might give oil companies an excuse to keep the rigs in place, when they were originally to be removed after they were finished extracting oil. It can cost up to $5 million to remove a rig, and only about $800k to convert it to another use, so of course oil companies prefer not to remove the rigs. This means we could have many old oil rigs remaining in the Gulf after they are done extracting oil.
The MMS likes to characterize offshore rigs as "oases for marine life in the Gulf" in its own press releases. Well, they're certainly concentrators of marine life, besides being concentrators of mercury.
the MMS Web site document the fish-attracting powers of the rigs. Each rig supports colonies of up to 30,000 fish, according to those reports, and the dominant species at the rigs are some of the Gulf's glamour species, including snapper, grouper, amberjack and triggerfish.
Data from annual National Marine Fisheries Service trawl surveys indicates that the rig fields off Louisiana and Texas are the richest waters in the western Gulf for reef fish such as red snapper.
The MMS studies show that fish densities around the rigs are up to 1,000 times higher than in the surrounding Gulf waters. That means the fish are concentrated where MMS sediment samples indicate mercury levels may be highest. Press Register
Still. . .remember that LA accounts for 90% of the fish taken out of the Gulf, consumed locally, sold and consumed across the USA and the world [the US exports 71% of its domestic fish production.]
Around the world, even without the mortality to marine life resulting from Deepwater Horizon, offshore oil and its concomitant Gulf of Mexico fishing industries are poisoning the environment and people with mercury. At the very least.
What are the chances the rigs will ever become Superfund sights and be cleaned up? Nil.
EPA officials said the Superfund rules cannot be applied to the rigs because the oil industry has EPA permits that allow them to discharge the contaminated drilling muds, as long as mercury levels in the discharge remain below certain levels.
"We may not have authority because they are permitted releases," said the EPA's Cook. "While they are still active, permitted releases, we are not able to address them under CERCLA," which are the federal rules governing Superfund designations.
Adding insult to injury,
Scientists have tested only a handful of Gulf rigs, but it's apparent that the processes that caused contamination at those rigs are standard within the industry.
The oil industry dumps over a billion pounds of mercury-contaminated drilling mud wastes into the Gulf each year.
More now, as top kill efforts delivering millions of pounds of appropriately titled, "kill mud," continue at what was the Deepwater Horizon platform.
UPDATE In response to several comments along the lines of "this is valuable information that should be widely available," I am re-posting. Thanks to everyone who's already read it.
Please make it a mission in times like these to keep up with the many excellent e-KOS diaries. [Slight modifications made to tags.]