My print column this week examines the tough job facing scientists and federal investigators who will want to know — for purposes of recovery, penalties and litigation — how much oil is spilling out of BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Prior spills that weren’t taking place thousands of feet below the sea surface have uncertain numbers. For instance, as reported recently in the Anchorage Daily News and “On the Media,” some Alaskan environmental activists and scientists put the true figure for the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 at two times the official estimate, or higher. An ExxonMobil spokeswoman declined to comment on the claims.
Marine biologist Riki Ott, in her 2005 book “Sound Truth and Corporate Myths,” wrote that about 30 million gallons of oil spilled from the Valdez. She based the figure on numbers that emerged later from the state’s investigation of the spill, showing the proportion of offloaded liquid that was water. But by then, 10.8 million gallons had taken hold as the accepted total, and has been repeated frequently in coverage of the BP spill. “The oil industry captured the dialogue about that number,” Ott said.
Figures for the cumulative spills over a half century in the Niger Delta also are difficult to pin down. “Nigerian government oil spill figures are basically based on what he oil companies tell them,” said Clive Wicks, a consultant for the environmental group WWF UK who co-wrote a study estimating the scope of these spills. “Until recent years the government did not have the means to really check the oil companies’ figures.”
The exact numbers don’t necessarily matter in that case. “It’s the order of magnitude of that release that’s relevant,” said co-author Richard Steiner, an Anchorage-based conservation consultant.
“If you’re talking about a blowout from a well, there is very little you can do in terms of measurement,” said Jan Erik Vinnem, who studies risk management at the University of Stavanger in Norway. The wide range of figures for some spills “illustrates that there is a lot of uncertainty about such [numbers],” Vinnem said.
Part of the uncertainty stems from the different units used — gallons or barrels (42 gallons) or cubic meters (about 264 gallons) or metric tons (about 300 gallons, depending on the type of oil). “I can see clearly that’s a source of confusion,” Vinnem said.
In BP’s case, exact numbers matter, because federal penalties could be assessed per gallon barrel spilled. “I suspect it will be hotly disputed,” Steiner said of the final number.
Total potential penalties amount to “a number in the billions [of dollars] already, even if you use the low end of the estimate,” said David Pettit, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The most likely scenario, he said, is that the potential penalties will be used in the government’s negotiation with BP for a global settlement.
“There’s usually a settlement of these cases,” said Jody Freeman, professor of law at Harvard. “A lot of factors go into the ultimate dollar figure.”
States make their own assessments for local spills. Washington State, for instance, fines companies between $1 and $100 per gallon spilled. The exact amount is determined by a complex formula that is based on the state’s experience of how much damage is caused per gallon spilled, said Curt Hart, spokesman for the state department of ecology’s spills program.
When such fines are a possibility, “It is in the best interest of the responsible party to have a lower number out there,” said Roy Robertson, who manages the preparedness monitoring project for the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council, a nonprofit group.
A BP spokesman referred questions about potential fines to the government, saying the company is focused on recovery efforts.