Tossing Mullet

No need to fear, it’s oil in a day’s work

The pressure to develop domestic sources of oil is getting more and more intense even while gas prices are beginning to drift downwards a bit. There is little doubt the American public is paying attention. It’s quite a statement when I say I think we’d be content to see gas get close to $3!

One of the most amazing things I’ve seen was during a recent trip to southern California – fountainhead of the automobile and diehard commuter. Traffic was noticeably lighter and they drove under the speed limit. Armageddon is surely approaching.

Republicans are screaming to end all moratoria and drill anywhere and everywhere there is the least hint of oil and the $4 gas has even given all but the most ardent tree-huggers pause for thought. Those truly and thoughtfully concerned about energy and environmental policy are having some fitful sleepless nights. Obama may have to really “change” something this time, and we all may have to make some compromises.

Another “inconvenient truth,” besides that of Al Gore, is the fact the procedures for drilling for natural gas and oil have indeed “come a long way, baby.” The days of the “gusher” spewing crude oil all over Oklahoma are gone forever (For God’s sake, it’s worth too much to waste that way).

Uncharacteristically, Alabama led the way in changing the industry’s approach to drilling practices 30 years ago when the Mobile Bay natural gas field was opening up. Inspired by the opposing spirit of then Audubon Society chair, Myrt Jones, the state had balked at granting permits to Mobil Oil to drill in the mouth of the Bay – although they had eagerly sold the rights to drill several years before for some serious cash.

The opposition at the time had been fueled by the dramatic oil spill off the coast of California near Santa Barbara. The moratoria off the west coasts of California and Florida can all be traced back to that incident in 1969.

Mobil had predictably become tired of the state’s stalling and had simply said – “Give us the permits to drill or our money back” – a fair position in almost everyone’s mind at the time. A legal settlement was brokered by the scientists at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, which would provide a highly technical environmental monitoring program of a “zero discharge” agreement for drilling activities in state waters.

This was a landmark achievement that had even further reaching impacts than originally envisioned. The companies were granted permits to drill only after they signed an agreement to capture absolutely everything, including rainwater, from the drilling rigs and transport it by barge to treatment facilities at the head of the Bay. Hindsight has made us question the wisdom of this choice, but it seemed logical at the time since treatment was assumed to be effective and the images from Santa Barbara were pretty graphic. Oiled bird treatment volunteers were also being trained in the area in preparation for the inevitable oil spill, even though the targets were natural gas – non-toxic to aquatic organisms.

And oil spill there was, to be sure – but not in the imagined manner! The Attorney General’s office got a report of “oiled flounders” being caught around the Mobil Oil site in the mouth of the Bay and enlisted the help of Sea Lab scientists (me) in obtaining proof of this environmental disaster. Consequently I took off with a (very young) investigator from the AG’s office and a very efficient bottom sampler known as a “Scoopfish.”

Despite my constant repeating of the refrain, “They’re drilling for natural gas, you nincompoop, there is no oil,” you can imagine the look on the Ph.D.’s face (again, me) when the triumphant young criminal justice major pulled up the sampler full of oily sediment! I guess Ph.D.s aren’t everything that they’re cracked up to be.

It turned out that a vigilant fisherman (not the elaborate monitoring system) had reported seeing the crew aboard the Mobil rig discharging waste oil from the generators providing electricity to the platform directly into Bay waters, rather than the barge alongside. To give them credit, Mobil Oil accepted full responsibility for the behavior of their native Louisiana crew. These people had no great background in environmental protection and they suck the heads of crawfish for, God’s sake!

But the whole incident did forever change the relationship between the oil firms and their subcontractors. After paying a $1M fine and cleanup of the site for about another $1M, Mobil required all their subs to sign formal agreements accepting full and direct responsibility for any environmental violations. This event actually shook up the industry throughout the Gulf of Mexico and the rest of the world. Mobil Oil later hosted officials from Kazakhstan who came to inspect the “zero discharge” protocols before granting the company drilling rights in the Caspian Sea.

The point of this anecdote is not to necessarily join the hue and cry to develop our domestic oil resources. As pointed out before in this column, that is SUCH a band-aid on the “shark bite” of hydrocarbon consumption that it shouldn’t be given a lot of credence. Anything that distracts us for more than a month from finding and developing alternative energy sources is a bad thing. Certainly our dependence on Middle East oil is also a bad thing for all kinds of reasons, but Brazil found vast offshore reserves last year and they are our buddies. Maybe they’ll stop destroying rain forests if we buy oil from them.

Assuming that we will shortly be buying ethanol made from sugar cane from them, Brazil will clearly become a major creditor for the U.S. – Brazilian Portuguese is a tough language, but we better get it in the high school curriculum.

Meanwhile, back to our own “inconvenient truth” – drilling for petroleum reserves can and has been carried out in an environmentally responsible manner for a couple of decades now. It is entirely likely that we can develop our domestic reserves safely, depending on the details of the site.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR is a major target of the current Republican campaign and no voters live there. But it offers only an estimated total of three years of domestic consumption. We may indeed be able to extract that reserve without serious damage to the unique ecology of the region, but what does three years mean compared to forever, if we can’t? By contrast, the capability to drill off the west coast of Florida is “off-the-shelf technology” and the only animals living there are highly adaptable, albeit largely aging, humans – drill, baby, drill!

George Crozier is Lagniappe columnist. Contact him at george@lagniappemobile.com.

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