How Bad is the Spill?
Not as bad as it could be, according to the NY Times, The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher co...
CONTINUE READINGEverything You Ever Wanted to Know About Biofuels — And More!
Click here for videos of a conference at the University of Illinois Law School on the current state of play in the biofuels world....
CONTINUE READINGWill the BP Oil Spill Change Public Policy?
The oil spill catastrophe now engulfing the Gulf Coast brings home in incredibly vivid detail the ways in which human activity can damage the earth. This is in stark contrast to climate change, for example, where the changes caused by accumulating greenhouse gas emissions are hard to see and where actions today will only affect the climate many decades from now (Eric has previously blogged about the political difficulties raised by the fact that even with serious regu...
CONTINUE READINGDeepwater Horizon and the Dark Side of the Stevens Legacy
A few weeks ago, Dan wrote a nice post suggesting that retiring Justice John Paul Stevens has been a principal architect of modern environmental law doctrine. The Deepwater Horizon disaster shows another example of this pattern -- although probably not in ways that Stevens' environmentalist admirers (of whom I am one) are very proud of. How much will British Petroleum have to pay out in damages for the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Perhaps a lot, but in no small part...
CONTINUE READINGA Brief History of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout
2001. Manufacture of the BOP (Blowout Preventer), a huge block of steel and valves that that holds the well pipe.The BOP has the ability to slice through the pipe and seal the well. The BOP used by the Deepwater Horizon remains with the rig for the next nine years. April 19, 2010. Halliburton completes pumping slurry down the borehole to seal in the pipe, approximately 19 hours before the accident. It is unknown whether this might have any connection with the later ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Looming Political Battle Over AB 32 & California’s Environmental & Economic Future
Today, proponents of an initiative measure designed to "suspend" California's landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) are scheduled to submit signatures to state election officials designed to qualify the measure for the November 2010 ballot. Bankrolled by two Texas-based oil companies, Tesoro Corporation and Valero Energy Corporation, the initiative measure would preclude California environmental regulators from implementing AB 32 until state unemployment ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Odds of Failure
A couple of key observations about the oil rig blowout, based on my work on disaster issues. First, "human error" is a cop-out when you're dealing with major technology. It's not like human fallibility is a surprise. Training, good management, and smart design should be the responses, not whining after the fact that the workers weren't perfect. Or, if human error is unavoidable and the outcome would be catastrophic, you'd better rethink the project. Second, it's ...
CONTINUE READINGA great case for worst case analysis
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is the nation's look-before-you-leap environmental law, intended to make sure that we understand what environmental problems we might result before we act. To that end, federal agencies must prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) before they take, authorize, or provide funding for actions that may have significant adverse environmental impacts. Useful as NEPA analysis is, the Deepwater Horizo...
CONTINUE READINGMoby Slick
Knowing that the area of the Gulf of Mexico covered by the BP oil slick is important habitat for sperm whales, I'd been wondering about effects of the oil spill on those whales and on marine mammals generally. Sperm whales were long hunted (Moby Dick is the most famous specimen) and are listed as endangered under ESA throughout their range. One of my former colleagues, Michael Jasny of NRDC, has a good post on the issue here. Turns out (unsurprisingly) that short-...
CONTINUE READINGEnergy Conservation, Southern Style
A new report finds lots of room for energy efficiency in the American South. Here are the main findings. Energy efficiency improvements could: 1. Prevent energy consumption from growing over the next 20 years. In the absence of such initiatives, energy consumption in these three sectors is forecast to grow by approximately 16 percent between 2010 and 2030. 2. Generate new jobs, cut utility bills and sustain economic growth. Overall utility bills would be reduced by ...
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