Betting against nature

After almost 120 years of experience in submerged drilling for oil, starting at depths of barely four metres and progressing to wells 800 times deeper, man has not put in place sufficient backup systems for if and when things go wrong. If you are unsure whether the latest oil disaster will render certain sea life extinct, you may want to consult your bookmaker.

The first submerged oil wells were drilled around 1961 from platforms built on piles in the freshwater lake of Grand Lake St. Marys in Ohio, United States. Five years later, the first submerged oil wells in saltwater would follow in the oilfield known as Summerland under the Santa Barbara Channel in California.

Now, 120 years later, there are in the order of 3 860 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico alone. It is in this gulf where an explosion on British Petroleum's (BP) deepwater Horizon rig occurred on 20 April this year, in which 11 workers were killed and that marked the beginning of the greatest oil disaster in history.

Last week, the United Kingdom online bookmaker Paddy Power, one of the largest in the world, began offering bets on the survival of no less than 10 species as a result of the disaster. The bets are not taken on whether all or some of them will go extinct, but on which one will be the first to go.

Worst odds go to the Kemp’s ridley turtle at 4 to 5, followed by the bluefin tuna at 6 to 4, the Leatherback sea turtle and Brown Pelicans at 8 to 1, the Blue whale and the sperm whale at 16 to 1, and finally the gulf sturgeon, Elkhorn coral and small tooth sawfish at 20 to 1.

Other bookmakers are also offering odds on the hope of success of the various increasingly desperate attempts by BP to plug the leak as the disastrous consequences of the spill grow daily.

It can only be speculated what odds bookmakers would have offered on 18 or 19 April if someone had wanted to bet on the availability of backup systems in case something went wrong in the face of all the expertise and experience supposedly around.

Offshore drilling and exploration has long been a way of dealing with America’s large oil needs – but it comes with great risks, and the recent events have shown how risky offshore drilling can be.

While BP has received much of the blame, the US federal government has also received heat for acting too slowly to avert a large crisis. It is clear, though, that if continued, this method of oil drilling will need to have tougher regulations.

Bill Nelson, US Senator from Florida, has always been against offshore oil exploration, and drilling has raised questions over Mineral Management Service (MMS) regulations regarding reliable backup systems to cap underwater wells. There are indications that regulators did not act on other concerns that oil drilling safety equipment might not function in a deepwater environment.

The fact that existing backup systems are inadequate is well illustrated by the fact that trying to stop the spill to date has turned out to be a mission impossible.

None of the plans deployed to stop the leak, starting with placing dispensers on the cushing, have been very successful to date.

In the latest effort, with a ring of desperation to it, BP has begun injecting junk-like tyres, golf balls and cement into the well in an effort to stop the flow.

”Clearly, were are going to have to require that drilling rigs and production platforms have reliable backup systems. Right now, they are sorely lacking. Why else would BP be scrambling for any solutions to rein in or stop the gushing crude? I wouldn’t call injecting junk into the blowout preventer to be a reliable backup system,” Senator Nelson said.

The federal government and President Barack Obama are increasingly coming under pressure. Gulf Coast residents are upset, saying they understand that only BP can plug the leak. But they want to know why the federal government did not act faster to stop the oil from reaching shore; why BP has not skimmed more oil from the surface; and why a request has not been approved to build new barrier islands to help keep the oil at bay.

The White House, citing a 1990 law that requires oil companies to clean up their oil messes, is offering help and is overseeing the effort, but it is insistent that the cleanup is BP’s responsibility.

Mindful of the frustration, however, the White House is taking a more aggressive approach.

Anyone willing to offer some odds on things changing dramatically for the better once this crisis, and a few species, are behind us? Before you do, you should perhaps be reminded about the Alaskan oil disaster of 1979...