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Gulf Oil Spill: Preventing Another Disaster
Oil Spill Commission Recommendations
Fact Sheet from the Southern Environmental Law Center
April 14, 2011
Oil Spill Investigation Commission Recommendations Ignored by Congress and the Department of the Interior
One year after the deadly BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill, Congress and the Administration still have not acted on the following eleven key recommendations by the independent, non-partisan Oil Spill Investigation Commission to guard against and improve recovery from damage caused by risky offshore drilling.
1. Congress should significantly increase the liability cap and financial responsibility requirements for offshore facilities. (p. 284)
Liability under the Oil Pollution Act remains at $75 million despite the potential for billions of dollars in environmental and economic costs as evidenced by the BP disaster. This liability limit means that taxpayers may have to foot the bill for future calamities on the scale of Deepwater Horizon.
2. Congress should increase the limit on per-incident payouts from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. (p. 286)
The limit on payouts from oil companies remains at $1 billion for any single oil spill incident, an amount that is inadequate to address widespread damage from oil spills like the BP Deepwater Horizon.
3. Congress should enact legislation creating a mechanism for offshore oil and gas operators to provide ongoing and regular funding of the agencies regulating offshore oil and gas development. (p. 256, 290)
Not only has Congress failed to require that multinational oil companies provide regular funding of agencies regulating their high risk operations, it has also failed to repeal the Royalty Relief program that provides a public subsidy to oil companies for deepwater drilling. The deeper and, therefore, riskier the drilling, the larger the subsidy is.
4. Congress should dedicate 80 percent of the Clean Water Act penalties to long-term restoration of the Gulf of Mexico. (p. 280)
Penalties assessed for the damage to the Gulf should be used to restore the damaged communities and ecosystems in the region.
5. Congress should create an independent agency within the Department of the Interior with enforcement authority to oversee all aspects of offshore drilling safety. (p. 256)
6. Congress should amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to extend the 30-day deadline for approving exploration plans to 60 days. (p. 262)
Congress has not amended the Act as recommended to provide adequate time for review of exploration plans.
7. The Department of the Interior should revise and strengthen the NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] policies, practices, and procedures to improve the level of environmental analysis. (p. 261)
The commission concluded “in the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon, it is difficult to argue that deepwater drilling is an activity that does not present at least some potentially significant risk of harm to the environment of the Gulf.” (p. 261) As a result, a more comprehensive examination of the environmental impacts and the methods to minimize those impacts should be undertaken before additional drilling moves forward.
8. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement should not consider exploration plans officially “submitted” until all of the required content, necessary environmental reviews, and other analyses are complete and adequate. (p. 262)
BOEMRE accepts deepwater exploration as “submitted,” triggering the inadequate 30 day review period, prior to completion of environmental reviews mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act.
9. The Department of the Interior should reduce risk to the environment from OCS oil and gas activities by strengthening science and interagency consultations in the OCS oil and gas decision-making process. (p. 263)
Despite widespread impacts of the BP oil spill on life in the Gulf, DOI did not reinitiate formal consultation with relevant agencies on the potential impacts of new deepwater drilling on endangered and threatened wildlife prior to allowing drilling to resume. This consultation should provide answers to some of the key questions about the ecological impacts of blowouts like the one at Deepwater Horizon.
10. The Department of the Interior should create a rigorous, transparent, and meaningful oil spill risk analysis and planning process for the development and implementation of better oil spill response. (p. 266)
Despite the fact that “neither BP nor the federal government was prepared to deal with a spill of the magnitude and complexity of the Deepwater Horizon disaster,” DOI continues to approve new drilling without first approving drilling companies’ oil spill response plans – instead relying on their certifications that they would be able to respond.
11. The Environmental Protection Agency should update and periodically review its dispersant testing protocols for product listing or pre-approval, and modify the pre-approval process to include temporal duration, spatial reach, and volume of the spill. (p. 271)
Despite the unprecedented use of almost two million gallons of toxic dispersants in the aftermath of the BP spill, EPA has not updated its testing protocols or modified its pre-approval process to address public health and environmental concerns.