To drill, or not to drill … that’s the question

One of the supreme ironies of this disaster is that many of those hurt most by the spill find themselves having to defend the industry that caused it.

While acknowledging that we are only slightly better prepared to handle a big spill now than we were five months ago, Gulf state officials have joined oil interests in fighting a federal moratorium on deepwater drilling. A government report released Thursday says the ban may have temporarily cost 8,000 to 12,000 jobs on oil rigs and elsewhere.

The current ban on new deep-sea drilling is set to expire on Nov. 30. But there is little doubt the oil and gas industry will face even tougher regulations afterward.

Immediately after the explosion, it became apparent that BP, the industry and the government were woefully unprepared. There was no ready plan for capping a leak so deep underwater, and the cleanup and containment equipment had to be cobbled together on the fly.

The situation was unprecedented, industry and government officials told the public.

Gary Rook, technical director of Edison Chouest Offshore, whose vessels played a key role in the containment effort, says the industry needs to develop higher storage capacity for recovered oil, design and deploy more effective skimming boats and create a game plan that allows critical response assets to be deployed immediately after a disaster.

But Rook said some federal regulations – such as the ones that limit the size of offshore response vessels – also need to be revised.

“We need to get equal to the rest of the world,” he says.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point man on the BP spill response, says there also needs to be a re-evaluation of existing contingency plans. That should include a look at what people think about the role that responsible parties should have in the cleanup effort, and how much autonomy and flexibility state and local governments should have to act outside the national command structure. For instance, federal officials clashed with their counterparts in Louisiana over plans to build artificial barrier islands off the coast to block incoming oil.

Four oil industry giants have pledged to spend $1 billion developing equipment and procedures to better address spills in the future. But that effort is not expected to bear fruit anytime soon.

“I think we’re getting there,” says Michael Bromwich, director of the newly formed Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, successor to the disgraced regulatory agency, the Minerals Management Service.

“The progress is visible, but we need to make sure and ensure the public that the bar has in fact been raised.”

Meanwhile, BP executives and owners of independent U.S. gas stations that carry its name plan to gather next month to craft a new marketing strategy and try to revive the BP brand.