Well I have to give old Tony just a smidgen of credit. After the Deepwater Horizon explosion and its fallout, he put on hold a deepwater drilling project near the Shetland islands that was viewed as risky. But now BP could be drilling in the North Uist area west of Shetland as early as January. The potential for this well, the first deepwater that BP has drilled in this area, would be a gusher of 75,000 barrels per day (the max estimated in the Gulf was 62,000). The area is also a sanctuary for seabirds and many marine mammals.
Internal company documents seen by The Independent show that the worst-case scenario for a spill from its North Uist exploratory well, to be sunk next year, would involve a leak of 75,000 barrels a day for 140 days – a total of 10.5 million barrels of oil, comfortably the world's biggest pollution disaster.
This would be more than double the amount of oil spilled from its Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico last year, which had a maximum leak rate of 62,000 barrels a day in an incident lasting 88 days.
The exploratory well is set to be drilled in January, if it receives a license from the Energy Sectretary, Chris Huhne. The area is north west of Shetland. (Be sure to click for the great graphic.) BP has 3 other wells in the general area, but all are less than 1500 feet. This well will be approximately 4,000 feet.
The difficulty of capping a gushing well at such depths, vividly illustrated by the three months it took for Deepwater Horizon to be staunched, is greatly concerning British environmentalists who point out that the waters which might be affected by a North Uist spill are among the most wildlife-rich in all the UK.
Seabirds including many rare species are found in enormous concentrations on Shetland, the nearest landmass to any spill, and in the surrounding waters, which also contain large numbers of whales, dolphins and seals, as well as substantial fish stocks.
A major destination for wildlife tourism, Shetland has already been badly affected by a previous oil spill, that of the tanker MV Braer, which ran aground on Shetland in January 1993. BP documents referring to the North Uist project themselves list more than 20 vulnerable Shetland nature sites, including eight Special Protection Areas, two Special Conservation Areas and 12 Sites of Special Scientific Interest, which involve the breeding grounds of otters and rare birds such as the great skua, the red-throated diver and Leach's petrel.
Just guess what the BP spokesman has to say...can you guess?
A spokesman for BP said that the company was legally obliged to model the worst-case scenario, "but the reality is, the chances of a spill are very unlikely". Since Deepwater Horizon, he added, BP had invested "a huge amount of time and resources strengthening procedures, investing in additional safety equipment and further improving our oil spill response capability".
In particular, a major new well-capping device, designed for use at depths of up to 10,000ft, has been constructed, tested and made available, and could quickly be deployed, and any leak from North Uist is likely to be at a much lower pressure than that in the Gulf.
"We are confident that the improvements that have been made provide the level of assurance necessary against the risks," the BP spokesman said.
And here we thought all their resources were going toward cover up and trying to elude responsibility.
BP has held a public consultation about the project, which ended last week. However, it was not widely advertised, had virtually no publicity, and a BP spokesman said there had been "no responses" from the public.
No publicity...with their tweet machine and You Tube channel...I thought they were the experts! Let's hope the British are a little smarter than us.
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U.S. Wildcat Culture Risks Macondo Oil Spill Repeat, Graham Says Bob Graham, co chair of the Deepwater Horizon Commission, believes it it our "wildcat" culture that caused the disaster in the Gulf and he points to the North Sea as better regulated. Which makes it even more interesting to see if the above license is granted.
“U.S. oil and gas culture is the culture of the wildcat that’s been transferred offshore,” Bob Graham said today in an interview at an oil conference in Abu Dhabi. “The Gulf of Mexico had a culture of complacency. For every one fatality in the North Sea, there were four in the Gulf of Mexico.”
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The North Sea is better regulated, said Graham, a former Democratic U.S. senator and Florida governor. The U.S. should follow the North Sea’s “safety case” approach, which asks operators to identify all the risks associated with drilling in a specific area, rather than the prescriptive approach taken in the U.S.
Norway has some of the best regulations after spills in the North Sea, including Ekofisk in 1977, according to Liane Smith, director at well integrity company Intetech Ltd. The Cullen report, produced after the 1988 explosion at the Piper Alpha platform in the U.K. North Sea in which 167 people died, strengthened the power of the U.K. Health and Safety Executive, a government body staffed from the oil and gas industry that is respected by local operators, Smith said.
“In the North Sea, anyone can stop an operation,” Smith said in an interview at the same conference. “You can’t have a situation where operators have to do things they don’t feel are safe. It costs money to stop but it’s worth it.”
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