April 20, 2020, is the tenth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, the largest oil spill in the history of our country. Eleven crew members died, many more were injured, and over four million barrels of oil continued to flow into the Gulf of Mexico for many weeks, killing wildlife, polluting waters and shorelines. Like the coronavirus, thousands upon thousands of people had their lives disrupted and suffered loss through no fault of their own.  Like the coronavirus and other pandemics, oil spill disasters like the Deepwater Horizon blowout are not once-only events. They will repeat. Will we be better prepared next time? That is up to us. We have opportunities to learn from what went wrong and adopt practices that will reduce future damage. These opportunities should not be wasted by denial, delay, inaction and lack of will.

As one of the seven people appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Commission, I saw and heard about it from the perspective of many people, both those impacted and those who were trying to piece together an understanding of what had gone wrong. We listened to oil industry engineers and CEOs, regulators and scientists, rig workers and risk management experts. The testimony and analysis could be summarized simply as this: drilling for oil in mile-deep water is a high-risk activity that needs a high degree of preparation and coordination, with constant attention to safety systems designed to prevent and reduce the chance of blowouts. 

Unfortunately, in this case, insufficient attention to preparation, risk management and monitoring of events on the rig resulted in disaster.  Human error and systems failures were the cause, not just by BP, Halliburton and Transocean but also by the regulatory regime that could have helped to prevent a tragedy. Both the industry and government regulators felt so sure major spills were unlikely that they had not developed or enforced the most effective measures to prevent, contain or clean up such spills.

The commission’s assignment was to recommend ways to reduce the risk of similar incidents and improve response capacity in the future. After several months of analyzing the facts surrounding the incident and reviewing the legislative and administrative systems that regulate the industry, we offered numerous safety reforms for the industry, the regulators and Congress. Some of the recommendations were adopted by the industry and by the Obama administration. However, Congress did not adopt any of the permanent changes that could have helped to reduce risk from offshore oil and gas development. The only recommendation Congress enacted was our suggestion to send funds from the spill penalties to the Gulf States for ecosystem restoration, regional economic assistance and related science and monitoring. This decision was a good one, for many reasons, but the things that could have improved safety were ignored.

Compare this response by Congress to their action after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill of 1989. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was adopted unanimously one year after the spill. That legislation imposed new requirements on the industry to improve the safety of shipping oil, requiring double-hulled tankers, increasing penalties and setting liability standards for oil spill accidents, among others. In that situation, Congress was not afraid to legislate needed reforms. As an Alaskan who lived through those terrible days during and after the spill, I was proud of the U.S. government for using the lessons learned from the tragedy and adopted the necessary changes. However, in 2010 and 2011, Congress was more concerned about the temporary moratorium on drilling imposed by the Obama administration than on improving protections for people and the environment.

Fortunately, many of our recommendations for changes to the Department of Interior were adopted administratively after 2010; for example, restructuring the Minerals Management Service into separate bureaus to assure better focus on safety and environmental enforcement, adopting stiffer requirements for monitoring offshore well operations, and requiring independent inspections of safety equipment like blow-out preventers (one of the failed structures causing this blowout), were adopted. 

Unfortunately, some of the safety enhancements incorporated in regulations adopted after the spill have been weakened recently, due to the current administration’s push for energy dominance and reduced regulatory controls. Like many other tragedies, the Deepwater Horizon blowout and resulting damages have faded quickly from our memories, and we assume history will not repeat itself, even though there is much evidence to the contrary. 

Celebrating Earth Day April 22, 2020, during a time of forced isolation means that group clean-up projects, tree plantings and other public gatherings to honor the day will have to wait; we must find other ways to recommit ourselves to doing a better job in preventing more ecological disasters. One way we might do that is to remind our elected officials, at all levels, that preparation and prevention are the most humane, rational and cost-effective ways to avoid heartbreaking and expensive tragedies. The last thing we should be doing is using the coronavirus as an excuse to roll back what little regulatory oversight currently exists to protect our health and environment.   

We all have a job to do. We must adopt, enforce and fund the necessary risk reduction strategies and systems to keep people and our precious lands and waters on which many economies rely, as safe as possible. We should stop pretending that the oil and gas industry will do this all by itself and recognize that the government should set high standards and enforce them. Citizens must demand their elected officials do so and voters need to remind those who do not. 

Fran Ulmer is a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at the Belfer Center and the former mayor of Juneau, Alaska. Ulmer is a former member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling and a former member of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Committee.

Image: Reuters