OIL CONTINUED FLOWING AT THE RATE OF about 5,000 barrels per day into the Gulf of Mexico on May 3, following the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig south of the Mississippi Delta that caused it to sink and left its well leaking oil.
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This is a major spill that shows no sign of abating. Attempts to use new methods to contain just one of three leakage sites have met with little success, and the process of drilling a relief well will take two or three months. At the current pace, in five days the amount of oil spilled will surpass the 75,000 barrels spilled when a Union Oil well blew out off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. In 40 days the spill will surpass the 260,000 barrels spilled by ExxonMobil when the Valdez tanker hit a reef off the Alaska coast in 1989.
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Both the Santa Barbara and the Valdez spills were significant political events in the United States, leading to a rise in environmentalism and stricter regulation on energy companies and offshore drilling. The Deepwater Horizon incident appears destined to have a similar or even greater impact. It has already prompted California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to abandon his push to expand regional offshore drilling, and caused pressure for U.S. President Barack Obama to suspend his recently announced plans to expand federal offshore drilling. Schwarzenegger’s plan was designed to bring in oil revenues that would help patch California’s large budget deficits, while Obama’s plan was designed to help attract political support for his proposed energy reform bill and to mitigate (at least somewhat) U.S. dependence on foreign oil. These are not trivial policies, and the full political consequences have yet to play out.
That brings us to our primary question, which is not so much about the mechanics of the spill and the cleanup, but rather how deep an impression the cumulative effect will make on the American psyche — and how it will affect the nation’s behavior. Popular revulsion to all offshore oil drilling raises the problem of finding alternatives for the United States’ insatiable demand for oil. Onshore drilling is not palatable either. Of course, the country is gradually pursuing ways of diversifying its energy mix, but these efforts are only beginning, and it will take many years before alternative sources make an appreciable dent in the United States’ consumption of oil. The only other option is seeking more oil from foreign states that have very different interests, are often at odds with American foreign policy, and are sometimes outright hostile. The political aftermath of Deepwater Horizon will necessarily be painful, and will constrain Obama’s ability to address energy strategy for at least the near term, but it is not yet clear whether the pain will cross a threshold. Our question is whether this incident will become influential enough to cause the United States to perceive — whether justifiably or not — offshore energy production to be unsafe and unreliable, and what the reaction to such a perception might be.
