(NEW YORK) MintPress — Hurricane Isaac has already left people on the Gulf Coast struggling with flooding, wind damage and power failures, but it may also be dredging up trouble from disasters past, namely oil from the April 20, 2010 BP oil spill.
After a Greenpeace research team said it had taken samples from beaches along the Alabama coast on
Sept. 2, including from an area with hundreds of tar balls in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that oiled pelicans and other wildlife have also been found in marshes in Louisiana.
Both states were hit hard by the massive offshore oil spill, and experts had expected hurricane waves would stir up oil buried along the Gulf Coast.
Now, new lab tests show that globs of oil found on two Louisiana beaches did in fact come from the BP disaster.
The tests, run by Louisiana State University for state wildlife officials, revealed that oil found on Elmer’s Island and Grand Isle matched the hundreds of millions of gallons of signature oil that spewed from BP’s Macondo Well.
The results come more than two years after the disaster that struck when a surge of methane gas sparked an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig as it was drilling the mile-deep Macondo 252 well off Louisiana’s coast. The rig sank two days later.
“This is another disaster on top of the hurricane that we’re going to have to deal with,” said Garret Graves, chairman of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. “The threat is not insignificant.”
The Macondo well spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 87 days, surpassing the severity of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
BP may have to hold off on some of those TV ads touting Gulf Coast tourism and urging people to “come on down.”
DOJ slams BP
The latest discovery of protracted damage comes just as the U.S. Justice Department is upping the ante in its condemnation of the British oil company for its role in the spill.
The U.S. government and BP are still locked in talks to settle civil and possible criminal liability.
In a new court filing in federal court in New Orleans, the DOJ said it had found “gross negligence and wilful misconduct” on the part of BP, the harshest stance it has yet taken.
It pointed to errors made by BP and Swiss-based Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon platform, in analyzing a critical pressure test of the Macondo well.
“That such a simple, yet fundamental and safety-critical test could have been so stunningly, blindingly botched in so many ways, by so many people, demonstrates gross negligence,” charged the government in the 39-page filing.
Gross negligence is in fact key to the case, which is set to go to trial in New Orleans in January 2013.
“The behavior, words and actions of these BP executives would not be tolerated in a middling size company manufacturing dry goods for sale in a suburban mall,” wrote government lawyers in the filing.
“BP believes it was not grossly negligent and looks forward to presenting evidence on this issue at trial in January,” the company said in a statement.
It also urged U.S. district judge Carl Barbier to approve a settlement it reached in March to pay an estimated $7.8 billion to resolve private plaintiffs’ claims for economic loss, property damage and injuries. Under the 1972 Clean Water Act, a finding of gross negligence could quadruple the amount of civil damages owed by BP to some $21 million.
BP has already paid $14 billion in cleanup costs and $6.3 billion in damages to individuals and businesses.
Pointing fingers
Meanwhile, there has been little response to the latest findings by a seven-member National Oil Spill Commissions (OSC) appointed by President Obama to analyze the BP spill’s causes and effects and propose steps to minimize such risks in the future.
The Commission issued its final report, Deep Water, in January 2011, with recommendations for changes in company behavior, reform of government oversight, and investment in research and technology.
Earlier this year, the Commission decided to follow up and assess what, if any, progress was made. In a new report, it concluded that offshore drilling safety and oversight is still lacking, and that Congress is the biggest culprit.
It harshly criticized lawmakers for failing to pass legislation needed to ensure regulators have the resources to properly monitor offshore drilling, guarantee there are sufficient resources for spill response and lift the $75 million liability cap for oil firms — BP, at least, ignored the cap.
“The risks will only increase as drilling moves into deeper waters with harsher, less familiar environmental conditions,” it warned.
Legislators for their part are calling on federal agencies to explain how they will address lingering oil contamination in the Gulf.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) wants the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to provide an update on their oil spill cleanup efforts in the wake of Isaac.
In letters sent last week, Markey said that the latest hurricane makes tackling the ongoing problem in the Gulf of Mexico even more imperative.
Clearly time for less talk and more action all around.