BP OIL DISASTER

While not directly relevant to Sherborn, as a former resident of New Orleans, I am very interested in this issue. In graduate school, I was heavily involved in studying impacts of offshore oil and gas production. The title of my master's thesis was "The Fiscal Impacts of Outer Continental Oil and Gas Production on State and Local Governments in Lafourche Parish, LA." I also worked on a couple of other studies of the industry as a graduate research assistant.

The most interesting project I was involved with was commissioned by the Conservation Foundation (since merged with the World Wildlife Fund) through a contract with the Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Department of Interior. I co-authored the report with a professor. The report is called "Environmental Planning for Offshore Oil and Gas, VolumeV: Regional Status Reports. Part 3:Gulf Coast Region." As the name implies, this was a national report on offshore oil and gas and we covered the Gulf Coast, which, of course, is the site of almost all offshore oil and gas activity. The President of the Conservation Foundation at the time was William Reilly, who later served as EPA Administrator and was just appointed by President Obama as Co-Chair of the commission investigating the BP disaster.

Among other things, the report covered some of the challenges involved in deepwater drilling, which was then in its infancy. In discussing technologies involving accident response, the report cites four main problems as  "reestablishing control over wells that have blown out, containing and cleaning up oil on water, salvaging marine life and birds, and cleaning up beaches." Not that these are not obvious issues! The report also discusses the impacts of offshore oils and gas activity on living things and the socioeconomic impacts.