Gulf Disaster
CATASTROPHE IN THE gulf of Mexico:
devastation persists
It’s been five years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig blew up  in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and unleashing the worst environmental  disaster in U.S.  history. More than 200 million gallons of oil fouled the ocean and Gulf  coastlines, while the Center for Biological Diversity began decisive  action to expose illegal activities and lax offshore drilling regulation.
A Center       study shows that more than 82,000 birds; about 6,000 sea turtles;       nearly 26,000 marine mammals, including dolphins; and an unknown, massive       number of fish and invertebrates may have been harmed by the spill and its       aftermath.
The spill oiled more than       1,000 miles of shoreline.
More than 2 million gallons       of toxic dispersants were sprayed into the Gulf, which may be making       waters more toxic for species.
Offshore drilling projects       are still moving forward — without the implementation of at least 10       regulatory reforms identified by the Center as critical for       avoiding another oil-spill catastrophe.
Since our action in the early days of the  spill, the Center remains on the front lines of this still-unfolding  catastrophe because — despite the massive scope of the Gulf disaster — many of  the fundamental dangers associated with offshore drilling remain unaddressed.
We’ve launched 12 lawsuits and ratcheted up the pressure on politicians to  reform offshore oversight, halt dangerous drilling, save imperiled species and  hold the federal government and BP accountable.
Beyond the Gulf, the Center continues to fight to the dangers of offshore  drilling, especially in the Arctic ,  where an oil spill would be disastrous. We’re pushing for a permanent ban on  offshore projects in Alaska  and opposing the Obama administration’s new  offshore drilling plan , the largest offshore expansion in 30 years.
Meanwhile,  scientists say it could be years before the full extent of  the BP spill's damage to the Gulf region’s complex and sensitive ecosystems will be known.
Marine ecosystems continue to face the threat of more spills as oil companies  and their friends in Congress look to gloss over the mistakes that led to the  Gulf disaster and ramp up industrial offshore drilling.
Thousands of you have contributed to the Center’s success  against offshore drilling so far — but the job is far from done. We still need  your support and action to help us protect species in the Gulf, the Arctic  and beyond to make sure a disaster like the one sparked by the explosion at Deepwater  Horizon never happens again.
 
What   can I do?
HOW MUCH OIL WAS SPILLED?
The BP disaster was by far the worst oil disaster in U.S. history.  It spewed as much oil in just days as the entire Exxon Valdez spill  and eclipsed the notorious Ixtoc blowout in the Gulf of   Mexico in 1979, which leaked 138 million gallons of crude.  Astoundingly, BP flatly refused to help scientists gather the information  necessary to determine just how much oil was really spewing into the Gulf  ecosystem. But government estimates of up to 2.6 million gallons per day put  the total as high as 205.8 million.
WHAT AREAS HAVE BEEN AFFECTED?
Surface oil slicks and sheens believed to be associated with the BP spill  affected thousands of square miles, with oil and tar reaching the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
In a desperate attempt to keep the visible surface slick in check, BP  flooded the ocean’s surface and depths with nearly 2 million gallons of  chemical “dispersants.” These chemicals can actually make oil more toxic to  ocean life. Corexit, the brand used by BP, was even banned in the United Kingdom.  These chemicals bind with oil droplets so that they become “dispersed” by  currents. Scientists believe that BP’s excessive use of dispersants caused  enormous underwater oil plumes in the Gulf, one of which was 22 miles long and  six miles wide.
Read  more about dispersants and see the  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s oil-impact assessment maps.
WHAT SPECIES HAVE BEEN  HARMED?
The BP oil spill is still affecting some of the most productive and fragile  marine ecosystems in the United    States. About 25 percent of the nation’s  wetlands lie in the Mississippi River Delta, providing habitat for nesting  seabirds and resting migratory birds. The Gulf itself is home to dozens of  threatened and endangered species, as well as commercially important fish, crab  and shrimp that provide much of the basis of the Gulf Coast  economy.
While the response to the oil spill largely focused on stopping oil from  reaching shore, the offshore ecosystem — from plankton to dolphins —suffered  devastating impacts. Endangered sperm whales and dolphins were spotted  passing through the oil slick — which has spoiled critical habitat for the  federally protected piping  plover on the Chandeleur   Islands. Oiled gannets  and brown pelicans were the first victims discovered by response teams; the goo  permeated mangroves and has soaked birds and their eggs. Heavy oil also soaked  the Queen Bess  Island pelican rookery, a nesting site  that has been essential to the recovery of the brown pelican population, and experts worry that the spill could set back the Louisiana state bird’s recovery from  near-extinction. The timing of the spill could not have been worse.
Imperiled species including the Atlantic bluefin tuna, Kemp’s ridley sea  turtles, loggerhead sea turtles, piping plovers and sperm whales were flocking  to the Gulf to spawn, migrate and feed just as the spill happened. For many of  them, there was nowhere else to go. And in a disturbing development, large  numbers of sharks, fish and other marine animals were seen gathered in shallow  inshore waters, believed to be seeking areas where oxygen hasn’t been depleted  by oil and the microbes that eat it. Marine animals can die when oxygen levels  in the water drop below two parts per million — which was observed even in some  inshore areas. Moreover, creatures congregating near the shore risked getting  trapped between shore and the oil and depleting oxygen levels in even these  refuge areas.
During spill-response  efforts, concern arose that sea turtles were in oiled sargassum mats that were  lit afire to burn off the oil. During June 2010, the Center initiated  litigation on multiple fronts to prevent the injury and death of sea turtles  during controlled burn operations, which resulted in requirements for observers  to rescue sea turtles from this unnecessary and brutal threat. Read more.
Read more about  threatened species and see our July 23, 2010 map  of the spill and nearby critical habitat .
WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?
1. The Bush administration. The oil-drilling lease was sold to BP  by the George W. Bush administration in 2007 under its 2007–2012 Five-Year  Offshore Oil-drilling Plan.
2. The Obama administration. The actual exploratory drilling was  approved by the Obama administration on April 6, 2009.
Within days of the 2009 approval, the Center and our allies won a court  order vacating the Bush Five-Year Offshore Oil-drilling Plan. Rather than use  the court order as a timeout on new offshore oil drilling to develop a new  plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar filed a special motion with the court to  exempt approved oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  He specifically identified BP’s operation as one that should be released from  the vacatur.
In July 2009, the court agreed to Salazar’s request, releasing all approved  offshore oil drilling — including the BP operation — from the vacatur.
3. BP. BP has the worst environmental and safety record of any oil  company operating in America.  Even after the 2005 Texas City Refinery blast that killed 15 people, BP has  continued to rack up safety violations. Despite the dangerous nature of all  offshore oil drilling and BP’s own egregious safety record, the company’s  exploration plan downplayed the possibility of a spill, repeatedly asserting  that it was unlikely or virtually impossible. Amazingly, Secretary Salazar’s  Minerals and Management Service approved BP’s exploration plan without any  consideration of the environmental consequences of an oil spill.
4. The oil industry and its political backers. The Gulf crisis  shows that the glib safety claims of the oil industry cannot be trusted.
There’s no way to guarantee that a massive oil rupture will not occur. And  if one does occur, there’s no way to contain it quickly and fully enough to  avert unacceptable environmental damage.
Ultimately, it’s the inherently  dangerous nature of offshore oil drilling that led to this disaster. That’s why  the Center is calling on the Obama administration to 1) revoke its 2010  decision to open up Alaska, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast  to offshore oil drilling; 2) revoke all leases to drill off Alaska, including  those held by Shell Oil; 3) not permit any new offshore drilling anywhere; and  3) transition the nation away from fossil fuel so the pressure to continue  offshore oil drilling dissipates.
WHAT IF A SPILL   OCCURS IN THE ARCTIC?
The Gulf of Mexico has by far the largest,  best-equipped, most experienced oil spill-containment system in the nation. It  has hundreds of experienced volunteer fishing boats at its disposal. The water  is warm year round and relatively calm except in hurricane season. Wildlife  rehab and cleanup crews have access to a road system in close proximity to much  of the shoreline. Yet with all these advantages, the government and the oil  industry were unable to contain the spill.
Imagine what would happen if a similar spill occurred in the Arctic — 140  miles from land. In subzero temperatures. With miles of sea ice to hack  through, ship-killing icebergs in all directions, and darkness for 20 hours a  day in the winter.
It would be a disaster many magnitudes worse than what we’re suffering in  the Gulf of Mexico.
There’s no way to clean up a massive oil spill in the broken-ice conditions  that prevail in these Arctic areas for much of the year. In fact, the ice-free  drilling season is so short in the Arctic —  July to early October — that leaking oil from a similar accident there could  continue to gush for an entire winter while efforts to drill a relief well were  necessarily postponed.
The Arctic and its   wildlife got an important reprieve in early 2011 when Royal Dutch Shell announced   it would not go forward with plans to drill in the summer of 2011 in polar bear   critical habitat in Alaska. The plans to drill in the Beaufort Sea had long been opposed by the Center and other conservation groups. But in 2012, Shell started enacting its drilling plans. The Center is calling on the   Department of the Interior to permanently take that area out of consideration   for future drilling.
Meanwhile, BP has   suspended its controversial and dangerous “Liberty” project that was exposed The  New York Times . The oil company, relying on untested technologies,   was planning to drill the world’s largest horizontal well off the Alaska coast. The project   is now on hold and the Center is urging that it be taken off the table   permanently.
It’s imperative that drilling never go forward if we’re to prevent an  Arctic oil-spill catastrophe that could be even worse than the Gulf disaster,  threatening the polar  bear , Pacific  walrus ; ringed,  spotted, bearded , and ribbon  seals ; cetaceans like the North  Pacific right whale , bowhead  whale and Cook  Inlet beluga ; migratory birds; and many other species.
ARE OIL   SPILLS INEVITABLE?
Yes — as long as offshore oil drilling exists. We can and should improve  spill-prevention technology, but no technology will ever be 100-percent  effective. The oil industry, Department of the Interior, and oil-state  politicians told us for years that oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was  completely safe. BP refused to even consider the effects of a catastrophic leak  in its drilling plan because it said the likelihood was too remote to imagine.  The Department of the Interior agreed, approving the plan without even  conducting an environmental review. They were all wrong.
If we drill for oil offshore, we will suffer oil leaks. Many will  be small, some big, and occasionally, one will be catastrophically large, like  the one in the Gulf.
HOW OFTEN DO   OIL SPILLS OCCUR?
Oil spills happen every single year. Large  spills happen every few years, from the 1969 offshore oil-platform catastrophe  that dumped 3 million gallons of oil into the Santa Barbara Channel to the  April 6, 2010, spilling of 18,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico’s Delta
National Wildlife Refuge — from a ruptured BP pipeline — to the cataclysmic April 20 spill.
Indeed, the U.S. Minerals Management Service has  cavalierly assumed that nine large oil spills and 600 small oil spills will  occur in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of its  2007–2012 program.
Click    here for a timeline of major spills in the Gulf  and other U.S.    waters.
WHAT CAN I   DO?
It’s easy to feel helpless about the impacts of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and all the issues surrounding it, from habitat destruction to dirty fossil fuels leading us toward climate catastrophe.  At the same time, we have an opportunity to stop offshore oil drilling once  and for all. You can get involved to save species, the global  climate, and the oceans and all their inhabitants — get up-to-the-minute info on  climate change issues, dirty fossil fuel disasters and what's happening in the beleaguered Gulf region now on the Center’s Twitter page .
Deepwater Horizon photo courtesy U.S. Coast Guard