DEEP HORIZONS

EXPOSED

by David Lincoln
 Deep Horizons
Exposed
The Untold Story of How BP
and the Oil Industry
Have Poisoned Water
Resources in North America

by David Lincoln
 Table of Contents
Table of Contents..............................................................................................................3
Foreword............................................................................................................................4
Introduction.....................................................................................................................16
Grown in California........................................................................................................22
CASE HISTORY: COALINGA OIL FIELD – UNOCAL.............29
Shaky Business ............................................................................... 31
The Gulf...........................................................................................................................37
CASE HISTORY: GARDEN ISLAND BAY – TEXACO..............38
Texas – Slipping Away................................................................................................... 45
CASE STUDY: DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL BLOWOUT - BP
...............................................................................................................52
Dispersants – 2BE or not 2BE?..........................................................62
Dead Zones...........................................................................................68
Mexico.............................................................................................................................. 81
Gulf of Mexico Déjà vu Two ............................................................. 88
Canada—Stripped to the Bone......................................................................................97
Alaska – Wasteland or Wonderland? ........................................................................117
CASE HISTORY: KUPARUK RIVER FIELD ....................133
CASE HISTORY - ALASKA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE -
ANWR................................................................................................137
Conclusion: Global Perspective..................................................................................141
Appendix 1 – Components and Environmental Impacts of Produced Water.........150
Appendix 2 – Enhanced Oil Recovery ....................................................................... 160
Appendix 3 – List of Figures........................................................................................160
Foreword
This book is an insider’s view of how the oil industry has betrayed our trust and misused the land
and water resources of North America. The untold story is revealed by a geologist with over 25
years experience in the oil and gas industry. He was a witness to the Santa Barbara oil well
blowout and spill in 1969. He was also drilling wells in South Texas in 1979 when the IXTOC 1
Mexican blowout, (the second largest in history), gushed oil onto Texas beaches. His
investigations provide new insights into the causes of these disasters and he highlights the
uncanny similarities between these wells and BP’s latest catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

Born in the shadow of the oil derricks in Los Angeles, Mr. Lincoln was recruited by UNOCAL
(at the age of only 17) to shore up the image of the most hated company in the U.S. after they
fouled the beaches of Santa Barbara. Part of his hometown eventually became a superfund site of
toxic oily waste. His first job site became a toxic waste no-man’s-land where farmers are
prohibited by law from planting food crops. He felt the earthquakes that were most likely
triggered by rapid subsidence due to the withdrawal of oil gas and water from those same oil
fields.

By the time he was 20, he found himself alone on an offshore platform operating 35 producing
wells in 150 feet of water while trying to keep oil off the coast of Huntington Beach, California.
Later, He worked the oilfields at the mouth of the Mississippi River and watched as the oil
companies turned the wetlands into Swiss cheese for their dredged, drilling canals. He spent 12
years as a well-site geologist and manager in the Gulf Coast giving him a unique perspective on
the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Join him in a personal journey traveling from one oiled landscape and seascape to the next
leading inevitably to the biggest U.S. environmental disaster of our time. He asks the tough
questions and provides some surprising solutions based on his knowledge of how the oil industry
actually operates behind the scenes. Along the way, he reveals the truth about BP’s other
disasters in Texas and Alaska and shows how BP operated like a teenager with their first car. He
argues that both take too many chances and then try to blame everyone else when they get in an
accident; so they both deserve to lose their operator’s license.

Through case histories and personal experiences he goes behind the facade of the optimistic
projections to reveal the actual risks that the oil companies are taking with your health and your
heritage. The three-ring circus that BP ran for the media’s attention and the public’s
entertainment is exposed as a sham to divert people from the real dangers below. The author
probes beneath the surface of the decision to use dispersants. He details not only the financial
ties, but the real risks of using these two poisons indiscriminately; likely producing even larger
dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

This book allows people for the first time to see close-up, satellite images of the devastation that
the oil industry leaves in its wake. It offers groundtruthing and encourages average citizens to
punch up the coordinates on Google Earth and explore for themselves their true legacy. It puts an
end to industry propaganda and exposes the lies for all to see.
The book unveils the toxic effects of oil and Produced Water, the dirty little secret of the oil and
gas industry and their single largest waste stream. In the U.S. alone, this generates at least 30
million barrels of oily Produced Water waste per day from nearly 1 million wells or roughly 500
times more pollution than the BP Blowout (est. 60,000 barrels of oil per day.)
The Canadian Tar Sands as viewed from satellites clearly could pollute even more water. While
the Alaskan wilderness targeted by the oil industry is the next water pollution disaster waiting to
happen. The author concludes that what the oil companies don’t value, the people eventually
lose. So, if we learn our lessons from the Gulf we will know that the environment is one asset we
can never afford to lose.

In the summer of 2010, there are still many unanswered questions about the BP Deepwater
Horizon oilwell blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. It seems appropriate therefore to begin with a
discussion of what we know with certainty from the information already released and to keep
speculation to a minimum. This is an attempt to bring together as much of the basic data as
possible so that informed readers can draw some of their own conclusions.

This disaster will almost certainly go down in history as the world’s largest unintentional release
of hydrocarbons, the largest blowout ever and the second largest discharge of oil for any reason
except the Persian Gulf War. The current estimate for the rate of oil discharged into the Gulf of
Mexico made by the government’s Flow Rate Technical Group is in the range of 35,000 to
60,000 barrels of oil per day. How many barrels of oil were actually released, in total, will
ultimately depend on the final estimates of rate of flow over time and the amount of oil which
escapes between the time the top hat was secured and the ultimate plugging by the relief wells.
The first relief well was suspended at 17864 feet due to Tropical Storm Bonnie at a point less
than 100 ft above the planned interception point and only 5 ft from the Macondo well. BP has
removed the temporary plug in the relief well and cemented the casing.

BP successfully initiated the “static kill” which forced mud through the blowout preventers
(BOP) via the choke and kill lines used in the failed top kill procedure. Enough heavy mud was
pushed into the casing or the annular space between the casing and the formation, that the well
was essentially controlled. At that point a decision was made to risk forcing cement down
behind the mud to seal the well. Then United Command ordered BP to simply follow through
with the relief well plan in the next couple of weeks.

Weeks before the blowout, the bottom thousand feet of the original well was evaluated by
electric logs run on a wireline at a total depth of 18360 feet. According to testimony by
Schlumberger, (the world’s largest wireline logging contractor) the company personnel arrived at
the Deepwater Horizon location on April 8, 2010, twelve days before the explosion and fire on
the rig. They performed pressure tests and openhole wireline logging evaluation for BP from
April 10 until they departed on April 15.

The electric logs presented to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce by BP1 consist of
the usual suite of logs run on wells in the Gulf of Mexico. The gamma ray log shown in the left
column is used primarily for interpreting lithology (rock type). Because shale has a natural
gamma ray radioactivity, it is easy to distinguish from sands which usually are not radioactive. I
have highlighted the zones in yellow which I have interpreted as sands.
Figure 1: Macondo Reservoir Well Log

In addition, since crude oil does not conduct electricity it is said to have a high resistivity. In
clean, porous sands it is easy to delineate the primary reservoir or pay zones on the resistivity log
in the right column which I have highlighted in green. The remainder of the logged interval
consists of mostly shale with perhaps a few thin coal seams delineated by narrow spikes on
gamma ray and resistivity. In the case of the Macondo well, the pay zone is only about 50 ft
thick at a depth of about 18,100 ft. This is a relatively thin reservoir to pay for a well which was
originally projected to cost around $100 million. Much of the potentially productive reservoir
may turn out to contain mostly natural gas. However, the ultimate size of the reservoir would
need to be determined by seismic techniques and subsequent producing wells.

It should be noted that the reservoir pressure as indicated by the equivalent mud weight (12.5
pounds per gallon) necessary to control the flow is actually less in the pay zones than in parts of
the overlying strata. This makes the well more difficult to drill and is probably responsible for
the loss of mud circulation reported somewhere below the 9 7/8” casing set at 17,168 feet. Also
note that as far as known, BP has never submitted to Congress any additional wireline logs or
logs over intervals shallower than 17,100. These logs covering more than two miles of additional
section uphole were required under MMS regulations and could go a long way to explain the
anomalies encountered with the well control procedures. At the very least, Congress should
request access to all information which the MMS has in their files on this well and any data gaps
should be requested directly from BP.
On June 14, 2010, BP presented a Schlumberger timeline
(http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100614/Schlumberger.MC.252.Timeline.pdf)
as requested by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The timeline shows
that Schlumberger personnel returned to the rig on April 18 at the request of BP in order to be
available to run a Cement Bond Log (CBL), a plug to bridge the well, or a cement retainer if
required. The CBL is a sonic tool that produces an acoustic signal which bounces off of the
cemented casing and can sometimes reveal where there are holes or channels in the cement. It
works something like hitting a pipe with a hammer and listening for the return sound to know
where the pipe might be stuck in the ground. The timeline records specifically show:

“At approximately 7:00 a.m. [April 20th, the day of the blowout], BP informs Schlumberger crew
that no wireline cased hole services will be requested and BP sends Schlumberger crew home.

At approximately 11:15 a.m., Schlumberger crew departs Transocean Deepwater Horizon

on regularly scheduled BP helicopter flight.”

April 20th, the day of the explosion, was also the day when BP conducted the negative pressure
test on the cement job. Leo Lindner, a Mud specialist with the contractor SWACO, testified on
July 19th that he was instructed by BP to combine two very viscous fluids to form spacers in the
mud for the test. He was instructed to use 400 barrels of this new mixture (more than twice the
usual volume.) because BP did not want to return any of this hazardous waste by ship. Other
witnesses described a slippery fluid that looked like “snot” coating the rig after the blowout. It is
unknown whether this chemical mixture could have impacted the operation of the BOP or the
interpretation of the pressure tests.

Fortuitously, all Schlumberger personnel were off the rig at least 10 hours before the well
exploded. By noon, according to the Marine Board Panel which released a list of anomalies, 15
barrels of mud was flowing out of the well which should have indicated to the entire rig crew
that there was a problem with the well. Rumors continue to circulate that Schlumberger
personnel demanded to be taken off the rig. They almost certainly had access to all mulogging,
pressure and gas data as they would have needed full access to prepare for their planned wireline
procedures.

Halliburton has presented to Congress the drillers log of the final two hours before the explosion2
which provides clues about what was happening in the well, but offers little insight about what
was going through the minds of the drill crew. The log begins at the top at 8 pm on April 20,
2010 and continues until transmission ends at 9:49 pm. The most revealing curves are the two
blue curves which show the mud flow in and out of pits and the red curve on the right which
indicates the pipe pressure. All of these curves indicate the mud and probably the hydrocarbons
were flowing upward in the well. A lockdown sleeve which could have prevented gas in the pipe
from rising to the surface was available, but not installed reportedly because (contrary to normal
practice) it was going to be inserted after the mud was fully displaced with seawater.
Figure 2: Macondo Drillers Log
As the details of the log presented in the BP draft report3 for May 24th show, about an hour
before the explosion more mud was flowing out than was flowing in. Yet the operator continued
to displace the mud with lighter seawater after 9:14 pm which could have allowed more
hydrocarbons to enter the wellbore. The fact that the drillpipe pressure was increasing after the
pumps were shut down could have alerted the crew to imminent danger and the BOP’s should
have been activated at that time. Apparently there was no attempt to activate the rams until
nearly an hour later which suggests that the crew was not aware of the readings or perhaps
misinterpreted their significance. The rams which act as giant cutters to close off the well might
have been able to shut off the gas coming in at this time, but failed to operate after the initial
explosion.

Figure 3: Macondo Mudlog

One witness, Dr John Smith, testified on July 21st that the crew may have tried to close the BP at
9:30 pm, nearly 20 minutes before the explosion occurred at 9:49pm. The Subsea Supervisor
attempted to activate the Emergency Disconnect System (EDS) at 9:56 pm, but it failed to
separate the riser from the top of the BOP. Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician,
testified on July 19th that much of the critical alarm system had been deactivated or “set to
bypass” for more than a year to prevent false alarms. So, presumably, the only alert for the over
120 people on board the Deepwater Horizon would have been the sounds of the explosions and
the heat of the fires.

On July 10, 2010, BP positioned a containment cap (consisting of three new blowout preventer
rams) over the well and began shutting the valves to stop the oil flow and test the well integrity.
After fixing a leak in a hose, BP announced on July 15 that the well flow had been halted and the
initial pressure was climbing slowly from 6700 pounds per square inch. (See the green curve in
the pressure chart below4.) At that time, a pressure of 8000 psi was considered necessary to
ensure that there were no leaks in the well below. The well has still not reached that pressure and
in fact the last reliable pressure reading after the delay caused by tropical storm Bonnie in the
Caribbean was only about 6900 psi. United Command has now redefined well integrity at this
level although there were at least four small leaks in the new cap.
Figure 4: Kill Line Pressure Buildup Integrity Test

Given the complexity of the well configuration (shown below) together with the casing program
(which consists of a total of eight casing strings cemented in place), perhaps it is no surprise that
some leaks occur and the pressure does not build to the theoretical maximum. The details of the
casing configuration5 are found at the Dept of Energy website which shows casing depths, sizes,
mud weights and temperatures.
Figure 5: Macondo Casing Diagram

This complex casing program has been mirrored in both of the relief wells as shown by the
seismic line below. This seismic line6 also shows that the stucture in this direction is not gigantic
as many in the media have claimed. Some bloggers even suggested that the well could flow for
years filling up the gulf and spreading to all corners of the globe which is total nonsense.
Figure 6: Macondo Seismic Line with Relief Wells

As a geologist, I’ve always been fascinated by doomsday scenarios. I’ve imagined the earth
being destroyed by meteorite impact, by nuclear winter and by shifts in the earth and moon’s
magnetic fields. As a sci-fi fanatic, I’ve watched every 2012, left behind, destroyed by monsters,
aliens and volcanoes, end-of-the-world, cheesy. B-movie you can name. But, until recently, I
never gave any thought to the crazy notion that an out of control oil well would be our planet’s
undoing.

There must be quite a few people fanatics who fear this will spell the end of life on earth because
a Google search now turns up about a million references to BP Armageddon. So after spending
nearly 30 years in the oil business, let me tell you why this particular environmental catastrophe
in the Gulf of Mexico is not going to bring it all to an end.

First, blowouts are not nearly as uncommon as people would like to think. The oil companies,
(BP in particular) would like you to believe that these events are very rare and every action to
control them is unprecedented. This is not the case.

In fact, Red Adair, the greatest wildwell fighter that ever lived, used to say that somewhere in the
world there was always a well which needed to be tamed. He proved it by not only charging
more than a million dollars (in the 1970’s) for his company to look at a blowout, but he
sometimes had as many as 5 wells working at the same time in different regions. When Saddam
Hussein invaded the Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991, the Iraqis set fire to more than 700 oil wells. Red
and his team extinguished and capped over 100 of these wells in 9 months while the other 24
teams controlled the rest. When Red Adair died in 2004, at the ripe old age of 89, it is estimated
that he had fought over 1000 blowouts in his lifetime. None of these blowouts or the pollution
that followed brought the world to an end.

Statistics mean little when it comes to well blowouts, because once you delete the shallow wells
and the development wells in known fields, you are only left with a few hundred critical
operations due to high pressures, great depth or near impossible conditions. It’s a good bet that at
least some of those will get out of control.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) studied offshore blowouts in the U.S. Outer
Continental Shelf (OCS) between 1992 and 2006. They found 39 blowouts out of over 15,000
wells drilled. They used that statistic to justify excluding BP and other operators from an
Environmental Impact Assessment requirement for deepwater wells drilled in the Gulf.
However, only about a third were exploration wildcats, so that is about 1 blowout in 100
wildcats. Those are not good odds for the risk of an environmental catastrophe of this magnitude.
Additionally, World Oil published a database of 1200 blowouts in the Gulf between 1960 and
1996. That is equal to 33 blowouts per year in the Gulf Coast and we’re still here.
I know some are probably thinking, “What about all the horrendous stories I’ve been hearing
about the BP Deepwater Horizon well in particular?” Most of them are sheer nonsense and I’ll
try to prove it to you by addressing some of the most common and irrational fears.

First, although BP’s well is drilled in deepwater, it is not the deepest The record water depth for
the deepest oil well was set by Shell at 9356 feet at the Perdido development in the Gulf in 2008.
As for total depth, the well is only about 18,300 feet and I have drilled a couple wells to that
depth myself without major problems. The deepest hole ever drilled went to 40,230 feet and was
drilled by the Russians for scientific purposes. The deepest oil well was 35,055 feet (nearly twice
as deep as the current BP blowout); drilled, ironically, by BP using the Deepwater Horizon rig in
2009.
 “So what happens if the pressure builds and the blowout preventer (BOP) blows apart?”
This already happened in 1979 with the Mexican well Ixtoc 1 and they were still able to
control it with two relief wells. In Australia, last year a well blew out with no BOP and
they still controlled it with a relief well after 5 attempts. As for reservoir pressure, the
scare-mongers throw out terms like 40,000 – 70,000 psi. If that were true then the well
would have blown out when the reservoir was first penetrated months ago and it is
doubtful that the overburden of sediments could have contained it for millions of years.
In reality, they drilled into the formation with 14 pounds per gallon mud weight (about
twice the density of seawater) corresponding to about 11,000 psi and this is the reservoir
pressure that BP testified to under oath. I have been on numerous overpressured wells
which required 18 pounds per gallon mud weight and I have heard that it is possible to
add the mineral galena (mostly lead) to bring the mud weight even higher.

 “I heard the casing could collapse and this well could blow for 10 years.” Well, not
really! The casing collapsed in the Ixtoc 1 well and they brought it under control in 9
months. Casing frequently collapses during a blowout, so it is assumed to be a problem
and is planned for in most cases. It is possible that part of the casing has already
 collapsed in the BP well, but as long as the relief wells intersect the hole near the
reservoir they should still be able to permanently plug the hole. As for billions of barrels
of oil flowing up into the Gulf for decades, it is helpful to know that the producing
interval is only about 50 feet thick. The subsurface seismic imaging in this area does not
show a world class structure, so the entire reservoir is likely only capable of producing
about 50 million barrels of oil.

 “The earth could crack open and sea water could rush in and turn to steam and blow the
planet apart.” This one is so far-fetched they couldn’t even use it for the plot of a B-
movie. If you believe this insanity I’ve got some beachfront property in Arizona I could
sell you. The earth is already cracked open. It’s called the Mid-Atlantic ridge and similar
plate tectonic boundaries cover the entire globe. Magma comes up and pushes the plates
apart, but seawater definitely doesn’t rush into the cracks. By the way, there is no active
plate boundary in the Gulf of Mexico and there is certainly no danger of magma welling
up beneath 50,000 + feet of sediments.”

 “What if an underground blowout occurs and oil starts gushing up from dozens of places
miles from the well.” This is certainly a possibility and that is what happened with the
Union Oil of California Santa Barbara blowout in 1969. While I was working for
UNOCAL, reports varied about how far away the faults were which broke through to the
seafloor causing months of oil leaks. The Ixtoc 1 well also leaked around the wellhead.
The point is that both of these blowouts were controlled by pumping heavy mud at a high
enough rate to counter the reservoir pressure. The multiple leaks rumor is mainly fed by
Matt Simmons, (author of numerous works dealing with Peak Oil). He is now in a
situation where he profits the more the value of BP stock falls. As always, there is the
mysterious Russian underground (discredited) source, who claims they have seen these
other leaks up close and personal.

All of these outrageous rumors lead to the inevitable conclusion that we should Nuke this well
and this is where the fun stops. A nuclear detonation even a “controlled” bomb could have so
many unforeseen consequences that it should not even be considered. For one thing, the
sediments are unconsolidated down to at least a thousand feet, so it would be like tossing a
boulder into a mud puddle. Not only would it splatter everywhere, but it would be impossible to
contain the radioactive materials. These radioisotopes could contaminate the submarine region
and expose marine life to harmful and possibly fatal radiation. Nothing would be closed
(certainly not the casing) and a crater would be opened which could trigger landslides and
sediment flows along the slope.

Finally, there are the serious issues of the level of methane gas coming from the well and the
amount of dispersants (more than 1.8 million gallon so far) which BP is using to mask the oil.
This was not so much of a problem with the Ixtoc well because they just let the gas burn off at
the surface. BP chose to flare about 30 million cubic feet of gas per day recovered in their
containment system, but an unknown amount of gas was being dissolved in the water column.
The methane gas, the dispersants and the oil all can deplete oxygen in parts of the Gulf. This is
likely to be the real disaster scenario for the Gulf over the coming years, for the other doomsday
scenarios you will have to keep looking towards the skies. The Truth is out there: finding it is the
challenge for all of us.
Introduction
Oil drilling is a messy business. Most people now know the damage crude oil spills cause
because of such well publicized accidents as the grounding of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez or
the blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico. What is less understood and less publicized is the damage
caused by choice, not accident.
\
Wherever oil wells are extracting crude oil, they are also bringing water out of the same
reservoirs. This water, known in the trade as “Produced Water,” is polluted with oil and a
variety of dangerous contaminants that may include everything from chemicals, heavy metals
and radionuclides to high concentrations of just plain salt, depending on the unique signatures
of each field. For almost a century, the oil companies have recognized it as hazardous waste and
it was frequently sent to ponds in the futile hope that it would simply evaporate.

When oil rose to the surface of these ponds, the oil companies could not simply skim the ponds
and recover the oil because it was contaminated with heavy metals that could damage catalytic
converters used in refining. Instead, this toxic waste was disposed of either by being sprayed on
roads as so-called “dust control” or it was periodically set on fire. Such uncontrolled
combustion produced dioxins and released them, along with other toxins, into the air.

In burning, spraying, and simply pouring heavy metal and chemically laden waste oils into the
environment, the companies poisoned wildlife and livestock at their watering holes. People
sometimes ate contaminated fish, drank and bathed in contaminated waters, and breathed in
dioxin laden black rains—all to save the cost of re-injecting the Produced Water. The pollution
was a conscious calculation.

H2O, as every schoolchild knows, is the chemical formula for water. H2O is a universal
language and is universally recognized as second only to air as one of our most basic needs.
Water is also the most precious commodity in the universe, more valuable than oil or diamonds,
for without it there can be no life. Less than 3 percent of the water on earth is fresh water. Most
of it has been bound up in ice at the poles, leaving less than 1 percent of the planet’s entire
water supply available for use.

H2Oil, on the other hand, is a term coined for what you get when water (freshwater or saltwater)
comes into contact with oil or other hydrocarbons. You can’t drink it and it is toxic to many
aquatic organisms. It doesn’t matter if you pump it out of the ground with the oil or pump water
into the ground and produce it with the oil; once it reaches the hydrocarbons it is contaminated.

Therefore we must do everything possible to protect our water, this irreplaceable resource, from
coming in contact with oil and must never take this gift for granted. Even in the pursuit of ever
more oil we must never forget that while there are energy alternatives, there are no substitutes
for simple, clean, healthy water.

This book is primarily about harms relating to petroleum extraction and the Produced Water
that comes with it. In some ways Produced Water falls into both categories. It contains poisons
that are injuring people who rely on water supplies that have been contaminated. But the sheer
volume of Produced Water also creates incidental effects to the larger ecosystem. Pulling it out
from underground can have such effects as sinking barrier wetlands off New Orleans or
contaminating a significant percentage of the world’s remaining fresh water. But Produced
Water, as I will discuss in much of the rest of this book, is one area where environmental harms
can at least be reduced, if not altogether fixed. It all depends on whether we as a society are
willing to pay the financial costs to protect the environment. Because one thing is certain; we
either pay the additional prices now or we will be left with a much higher environmental cost
later.

As I advanced in my oil industry career I became adept at determining the costs of oil
operations. Yet, some of the societal and environmental costs I recognized as being too great. I
loved everything about my work as a geologist for some of the world’s biggest oil companies
except what it meant for people who were directly affected. Since I left the industry, moreover,
I have come increasingly to the conclusion that all of us are directly affected. Most of what led
me to the personal decision to leave a lucrative and otherwise fulfilling career, as you will see,
had to do with “Produced Water,” a byproduct of oil extraction.

Still, in drilling for oil, there is another big difference from water wells—you get more than you
want. Along with crude oil, most wells bring up contaminants that cannot be refined into useful
products. They are, in fact, toxic wastes known in the trade by a variety of quaint names
including oilfield brine, Produced Water, water of production, formation water, and salt water.
While most of these names make this byproduct sound no more dangerous than seawater, it can
be many times more salty and laden with highly toxic chemicals, heavy metals, aromatic
hydrocarbons (basically, bits of everything that’s in the oil), oil itself, and even radionuclides.

Because Produced Water contains many of the same toxic components found in crude oil, it
should more properly be called “Produced Poisons” or, to use a term I first heard from an
environmental group, “H2Oil.”1

Whenever water comes in contact with oil, it becomes tainted. The old saying that oil and water
do not mix isn’t actually true. Whether it is the Produced Water extracted along with crude oil
or water that is injected to assist in the extraction, once water reaches the hydrocarbons, it is
tainted. Along with the oil droplets you can see in the water, hundreds of other chemicals that
make up the oil also contaminate the water. Now it is H2Oil. Some of these contaminants are
extremely long lasting and some have been shown to affect early stages of life at infinitesimal
concentrations.

The “older” an oil field—meaning the longer oil has been pumped out of it—the higher the
percentage of Produced Water in the mix at the wellhead. The ratio of Produced Water to oil
ranges from about 10 percent to 30 percent when the oilfield begins production and it is not
uncommon for a field to produce more than 90 percent water when it is mature and may exceed
95 percent before being shut in. This means that a giant field which ultimately produces more

1
Because a significant body of scientific and legal work has defined the term, I will reluctantly use the more
accepted “Produced Water” throughout this book, while leaving it capitalized to differentiate from ordinary water.
Also technically, water of formation becomes Produced Water when it is extracted from the oil-bearing formation.
than 100 million barrels (4.2 billion gallons) of oil might have to dispose of 1 billion barrels (42
billion gallons) of Produced Water. That is enough water to create a lake four feet deep
covering 25 square miles.

Table 1: Global Onshore and Offshore Water Production

Source: HSE (Ferro & Smith 2007)

Figure 7 Daily production onshore and offshore of global Produced Water

The volume of global Produced Water (shown in the chart above) totals more than 300 million
barrels per day (nearly 13 billion gallons per day) when on and offshore amounts are added
together, which makes Produced Water the single largest waste stream for the petroleum
industry. It is one of the most serious sources of water pollution on the planet. Argonne
National Laboratory estimated in 2004 that worldwide approximately 70 billion barrels—nearly
3 trillion gallons—of Produced Water are generated each year.7 As the chart shows, the amount
has grown since then and onshore drilling alone is generating 210 million barrels (nearly 9
billion gallons) of Produced Water every day.

Produced Waters vary depending on the age and kind of surrounding rocks and even in the age
of individual fields. They can have varying components in varying concentrations, all of which
make a unique fingerprint. Produced Water most often contains such inorganic (non-carbon)
chemicals as salts and metals. If it stopped there, it might sound like a healthful hot spring
mineral spa, except perhaps for the intrusive “NORM”—naturally occurring radioactive
materials—and the heavy metals like lead and mercury.

But Produced Water also contains a smorgasbord of organic (carbon related) chemicals. The
most abundant aromatic hydrocarbons in the produced water usually consist of the one-ring
compounds benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX). The term “aromatic” actually
came from a sweet smell that was coincidentally present with what later became the defining
trait—compounds containing combinations of six carbon atoms linked into rings. To put it
technically, none of this is good to drink, breathe or use for bathing.2

Although, in the United States, the discharge of Produced Waters has been somewhat restricted
for the past 50 years—since 1917 in some states—much of the rest of the world has been
subjected to the deliberate fouling of the surface and groundwaters. This was done virtually
without regard for environmental protection or human health, often poisoning potable water.

Produced Water, then, is inextricably linked to the history of the petroleum industry and in
coming chapters I examine its environmental impacts in some of the major oil producing
provinces in North America.

While it is difficult to document the annual oil production by country and region, it is nearly
impossible to document the same monthly and annual statistics for Produced Water. This is
because areas like the Middle East have historically been secretive about the production from
their giant fields. It is particularly true as the world approaches (or passes) peak oil, when
global oil production begins its inescapable decline and new oil reserves are increasingly
difficult to find or expensive to produce. While the amount of oil coming out of the ground may
decline, though, there will be no shortage of the oceans of Produced Water coming up in its
place.

Today, as the environmental implications of pollutants commonly found in Produced Water—

such as endocrine disrupting chemicals and radionuclides—are becoming known, pressures
mount for operators to control the releases of Produced Water. In the North Sea, there is already
a demand for zero discharges, since the bioaccumulation of pollutants in fish could make fish a
hazard for human consumption. In North America, pressures to decrease the amount of
pollutants in Produced Water are also growing.

In the future, companies will likely become even more secretive about their Produced Water
discharges. So it is all the more important to gather production data from industry records
before they close that door and combine it with what is known about environmental impacts in
the area of the giant oil fields. Then we can interpret the satellite images knowing that we have
“ground truth” to corroborate the images. Between the satellite photos and production data we
can finally see the true extent of the impacts that oil companies have had on the land and the
water.

Throughout the 20th century, the petroleum industry argued, at least to the public, that
Produced Water was quickly diluted in the environment with no lasting effects. These
investigations and my experiences show the opposite.

In the past, the oil companies have pointed to lack of evidence of harms to support their claims.
Of course, they maintained control over all the technical data, rarely tested Produced Water
disposal sites for complex chemicals and almost never told the local people that they or their

2
A more detailed description of the individual components and possible environmental impacts is provided in
Appendix A.
livelihoods could be at risk. In short, they did all they could to limit the evidence of harm, but
not, I am sorry to say, limit the harm itself. Many of the case studies I am presenting reveal that
not only were the disposal methods for Produced Water dangerous, but that attempts to isolate
the discharges from the environment, feeble and ineffective as they were, still prove that the
industry was aware of the risks.

More damning still, in the United States, where treatment of Produced Water is required, oil
companies hold patents for methods and machinery for treating Produced Water. In other
words, the companies respond to regulation and financial penalties, but where regulations do
not exist or are not enforced, they choose not to use even their own treatment technologies.
They choose not to care.

Clean water is quickly becoming scarce and more costly. According to a recent United Nations
study, by 2025 more than half the countries on earth will find their fresh water supplies either
under stress or simply insufficient to meet demand.8 By the middle of this century, three
quarters of the global population could be facing freshwater scarcities. Furthermore, the Booz
Allen Hamilton consulting group has estimated that the world needs to invest as much as $1
trillion a year through 2030 to maintain and expand their freshwater infrastructures.9 Asia and
South America each require more than $5 trillion and the United States and Canada together
will need to spend close to $4 trillion in that time frame.

And then there are the losses beyond price. First, of course, are the losses felt by people—and
those who care about them—who are injured or killed by toxins released into their
environment. The United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reports that over 1
billion people already lack access to safe drinking water, yet global freshwater use is rising by
more than twice the rate of population growth. But there are other costs. “More than one fifth of
freshwater fish stocks are already vulnerable or endangered because of pollution or habitat
modification.”10 The World Wildlife Fund for Nature’s “Living Planet Index” concurs, listing
freshwater species as declining more rapidly in the last decades of the 20th century than species
on land or in the oceans.11 In North America, extinction rates for freshwater animals are
expected to be five times higher than for fauna on land.

Wherever the industry has gone, local societies have been left with areas polluted by Produced
Water which may well have more effect on future generations than more highly publicized oil
spills. Since roughly 2 percent of Produced Water actually is crude oil, the dumping of large
volumes of Produced Water actually is an oil spill, but with the added burden of heavy metals
and salts. By callously causing the contamination of water resources around the globe,
petroleum executives have doomed many of the poorest victims of the oil age to long-term
health impacts and to the search for increasingly scarce safe drinking water.

Oil companies vehemently deny that Produced Water creates any major, long-term damage to
water and soil resources. They have done little basic research to find out if it does. At the same
time, they have filled the literature with red-herrings, such as testing that has been limited to
acute toxicity—within select samples—while the more relevant question of sub-lethal and
chronic effects from lower levels of exposures are ignored. And should something still show up,
the company can always try to average it away. Sure, ten cancers in one small town may sound
bad, but in a 500 mile radius it may be “statistically insignificant.” Really, of course, the
victims are geographically insignificant—too far away to care about.

There is, though, a comparatively safe solution in most cases. Put the Produced Water back
where it came from. Reinjection can actually help push oil toward the producing wells. In the
long run, it can pay for itself in added production. But in the short term, it requires managing
the Produced Water and drilling those return holes. In the short term it can cost a few pennies
extra per barrel. In areas where it is not possible to reinject all of the Produced Water, it must be
disposed of like the toxic waste that it is. If too much toxic waste accumulates to be disposed of
properly then production in those areas must cease.

Clearly, a lack of transparency about Produced Water disposal practices and risks has allowed
corporations to leave a trail of environmental degradation. It has taken more than a century for
the dirty secret of Produced Water to be fully revealed and I hope that the following case
studies will give people the information they need to begin to hold the industry accountable.
The people of the Produced Water regions are entitled to compensation for the damages they
have suffered. They have placed their trust and their future in the hands of an industry which
always promises to act responsibly, but too often delivers only local pollution so that other
people, worlds away, can just slightly increase their already astronomical profits.

I would still be in the oil business if I could only have turned a blind eye to the impacts of the
oil business on water resources. As I viewed increasingly more sophisticated satellite images in
my quest for the next giant field, however, I became ever more aware of the impacts the oil
industry was having on the planet. In particular, it became clear that wherever the oil giants had
trod, they left behind polluted waters and damaged ecosystems. Looking at pictures of our only
planet, I realized that as a geologist and a citizen of the world I could no longer participate in
this planet-wide assault. Once my eyes were open to the danger, I couldn’t shut them again. I
write now to open other eyes.
Grown in California
I was born and raised in the Los Angeles Basin. Though famous for its Hollywood movies, the
big money came from the oil discovered by Edward Doheny in 1892. Now his name lives on
with Doheny Drive and Doheny Road, which wrap around Beverly Hills, keeping it safe from
Hollywood. Doheny himself went on to discover oil in Mexico and to involve President
Harding in the Teapot Dome Scandal. But for a time, the place where I grew up was producing
one quarter of the world’s entire output of oil. Until the tea came out of the pot in Wyoming and
big fields were found in Texas, California led the nation in oil production. Many of the largest
oil companies also grew up in California, including Chevron, Getty, Occidental and Union of
California, all of which had major interests in the Los Angeles Fields.

Source: BP America Inc.

Figure 8: Signal Hill, CA. ca 1932

Within decades of Doheny’s discovery, the Coast of Southern California had sprouted a forest
of oil derricks and no region had a higher density of them than the Los Angeles Basin.
 Source: USC L.A. Chamber of Commerce
Figure 9: Santa Fe Springs Field ca 1932

I attended high school in Santa Fe Springs, California, literally on top of one of the ten largest
oil fields in California. I remember riding past the acres of wood-and-steel towers perforating
Signal Hill and remember when truck-mounted equipment replaced the more dominant looking
towers. The Santa Fe Springs Field was discovered in 1919 and it is credited with being the first
oil field found on a dome using the principles of geomorphology. I was bound to take some
interest, but it took an environmental disaster to open my door to opportunity.
 Source: Clarke and Hemphill 2001
Figure 10: Santa Barbara Harbor showing oil spill 2/14/69

CASE HISTORY: SANTA BARBARA BLOWOUT - UNOCAL

In January 1969, Union Oil of California was drilling its fifth well from a platform about 5
miles from Santa Barbara, Calif. when it struck gas and blew-out at a depth of about 3500
feet12. Over the next ten days, the well—and then pressure fissures that developed as attempts
were made to shut down the well—disgorged more than 200,000 gals of oil and an undisclosed
amount of gas and water which resulted in an oil slick covering 800 square miles and impacted
35 miles of coastline13. At the time it was considered an ecological disaster of unprecedented
proportions. This was partly because the gooey sludge was polluting one of the most beautiful
beaches in the world (one of my favorite beaches) and partly because the LA news media was
only an hour away from the focus of the story. The media highlighted the thousands of fish and
birds that were killed. They daily reported on the cleanup efforts to save the animals (which
were almost completely ineffective). The well flowed oil for months until another relief well
could be drilled and capped. During the spill it was estimated that approximately 10,000 birds
died as the oil continued to seep throughout the year. Corexit was one of the dispersants used
offshore and 3000 tons of straw was used to soak up the heavy oil nearshore and on the
beaches. The Santa Barbara blow-out was world news and helped kick-start the modern
environmental movement. The Federal Government responded with a one-year moratorium on
drilling in the US Outer Continental Shelf. It also marked the beginning of more serious
environmental regulation for the oil industry; or so we were told.
Later when I worked in Union Oil of Calif. Headquarters in downtown LA, I took the
opportunity to read some of the reports on the spill, which by then filled an entire room. What is
clear is that the casing program was different from other previous wells and that some type of
human error was involved. According to the Santa Barbara County Energy Department, Union
oil received a waiver on the casing requirement from the USGS. Normally, a well like this
would require conductor pipe driven to 300 feet and then surface casing set to 870 feet
whenever high pressure shallow gas is considered a possibility. This is to ensure that the well is
isolated from shallow sands which might cause an underground blowout or breach to the
seafloor. The waiver allowed the company to drill ahead without surface casing and with
conductor pipe set at only 230 feet. While they were pulling out of the hole to change bits they
evidently created a suction and inadvertently swabbed the gas in causing the blowout. Red
Adair, the legendary well control expert, was brought in and eventually got the well capped.
Then the fractures caused a second well on the platform to begin leaking and a relief well had to
be drilled. The initial rate of flow was estimated at about 5000 barrels per day but then was
reduced to around 30 barrels of leakage per day for about a year. Of course, the lawyers had
already devoured every page of the documents like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Many
documents were rumored to have disappeared before the lawyers could get their teeth into
them.

The president of Union Oil told a congressional hearing at the time: “I don't like to call it a
disaster, because there has been no loss of human life. I am amazed at the publicity for the loss
of a few birds.”14 Those words may have set the course of my life. The spill itself was already a
public relations disaster and now the company’s president found himself stuck in the same tar.
In an attempt to remediate public relations, if not the spill itself, Union Oil began an outreach
program at high schools across the state. Santa Fe Springs High School was the pilot for the
program. Union would sponsor Explorer Scouts to entice budding scientists by showing them
state-of-the-art methods and technology. I jumped at the chance. We scouts were invited to visit
the most modern facilities, including refineries, research centers, and supertankers. The Union
Oil staff showed us in person what they were doing to protect the environment.

Eventually I was among the scouts chosen to be interviewed on Los Angeles radio stations to
spread good will for the company. When I graduated from High School, Union Oil offered me a
summer job. I would continue taking summer and part-time jobs from Union Oil all the way
through my training at the University of Southern California. Those early jobs make these first
case studies an unusual blend of research and reminiscence, but they also represent more
general problems.

The memories relating to my first case history begin with a smell. There was a large pond by
Santa Fe Springs Road where car windows would all go up, including mine if I remembered in
time. I used to wonder why it was so black and smelled so bad. Now I know. The second of the
following case histories also taught me that you don’t always need to go to exotic places to
learn surprising things, like how to cause an earthquake.
 Source: City of Santa Fe Springs
Figure 11: Santa Fe Springs Field ca 1960

CASE HISTORY: SANTA FE SPRINGS OIL FIELD - UNOCAL

Santa Fe Springs owes its start to geology. In the 1870s mineralized water caught the attention
of Dr. J. W. Fulton, who built a resort hotel based on the healing powers of natural mineral
waters of Dr. Fulton’s Hot Springs. Located between Los Angeles and San Diego, the springs
not only attracted arthritic easterners, but thirsty stage coach riders ready for a stop between the
young cities. Tourists, in turn, attracted the Santa Fe Railroad, which built a depot and named
the town for the railroad. And when someone finally looked under the springs in 1919, sleepy
Santa Fe Springs became a full-fledged California boomtown. Whatever healing powers Dr.
Fulton may have found in the waters (which may indeed have been soothing in the short term,
but were likely toxic) paled in comparison to the curative abilities of fabulous wealth to be
found in the area’s darker fluid.

Source: EPA Source: EPA

Figure 4: Aerial Photographs – 1945 and 1958 Figure 5: Aerial Photograph - 1958

The smelly pond of my youth, I now know, was actually a man-made, 42 million gallon,
concrete-lined reservoir. Built in the 1920s, presumably to capture up to a million barrels of
crude oil in the event of a blow-out, the storage reservoir was 600 feet in diameter (the length of
two football fields across) and approximately 20 feet deep. By the mid-1930s, the reservoir was
not needed as a crude oil catchment, but had become a waste pit for collecting oilfield wastes
such as Produced Water, drilling muds and other debris. In any event, the aerial photos taken in
1945 and 1958 show clear evidence that the enormous pit had periodically overflowed its
banks, spreading wastes across the entire site. The “pond” on Santa Fe Springs Road became
the Waste Disposal, Inc., superfund site on July 22, 1987. 15

According to documents filed with the state, citizens complained about conditions at the facility
throughout its operation, but little if anything was done for more than 50 years. Finally, testing
by the City of Santa Fe Springs in 1984 and 1985 found numerous hazardous substances,
including benzo(a)pyrene, phenol, toluene, benzene, lead, arsenic, and PCBs. All but the last of
these substances are commonly found in Produced Waters.

Land use architects refer to locally unwanted land uses as “LULUs.” One of the incidental
effects of LULUs is a tendency to pile on. Once land is spoiled—by a leaking retaining pond in
this case—it becomes more attractive for other dumping. After all, who will notice a few more
chemicals in an already saturated soup? The chemical fingerprints around and under the Santa
Fe retaining pond clearly show that the failure to contain Produced Water inside the concrete
reservoir was responsible for the primary contamination at the site.

What is less clear in this case is how many other hazardous materials were dumped at the site
after it had already been polluted. It is also possible that any further dumping may have been
done by or with the permission of the oil companies responsible for the site.
Uncharacteristically, they did little to keep people out. The first thing the EPA did was put up a
fence.

Soil sampling data from various depths below the surface can be put together in 3-dimensional
modeling, like a CAT-scan of a cancer. As shown in the computer-generated images, about 80
percent of the site contains underground pollution at depths ranging from 5 to 30 feet. Worse
still, buried hazardous materials are present underneath many of the buildings now located on
the site. Groundwater is estimated to be approx 50 feet beneath the facility. Within 3 miles of
the site, more than 15,000 residents of Santa Fe Springs obtain drinking water from shallow
wells. The closest residence is within 50 yards and the athletic fields of my former high school
are located close to the northeast corner of the site.

In 1995 the EPA developed plans for the cleanup and restoration of the site; they identified
eight companies responsible for the site contamination. The eight companies were Chevron
Corp, UNOCAL (now Chevron), Texaco (now also Chevron), Mobil Oil (Now EXXON-
Mobil), Santa Fe Energy Resources, and three other service companies. The cleanup plan called
for excavating contaminated soil and consolidating the soil in the original concrete-lined
container previously used for disposal.
 Source: EPA
Figure 12: Aerial photo of Santa Fe Springs field
after remediation. Note baseball diamond on left.
.
In an effort to recover approximately $16 million in cleanup costs incurred by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in 2004 against
several responsible parties and eventually reached a settlement. The area was capped in 2006
and gases will be vented and treated in the future. The cost of remediation for this single site
was well over $20 million to transform this disposal site into an industrial development.

The cost to the people of Santa Fe Springs may not ever be fully known. Annual rainfall
amounts vary from as little as 4.42 inches to the record of 37.25 inches just a few years ago, but
the average is 15.11 inches per year.16 Since many of the hazardous materials at the site were
essentially solvents—“wetter,” in a sense, than water—they can migrate quickly, especially
through the sandy soils. 15 inches of rain falling on the 22-acre site means an average total of
almost 9 million gallons of water flowing through or over the site. The EPA’s cap will stop
most of this flow from moving through the contaminants—close the stable door—but it remains
unclear how many of the toxins have long since bolted.

How many homes are quietly collecting vapors from solvents rising through their foundations?
How long will the water wells serving 15,000 people stay clean? Of course I’m hoping forever,
but to paraphrase a former California governor: “Hope, but verify.” This is also more than just
the story of my home town pond, but is just one of thousands of similar sites where oil
companies have made gestures toward protecting people and the environment from Produced
Water, but not actually done the job. The wastes consistently prove far more persistent than
commitments to keep them contained.
CASE HISTORY: COALINGA OIL FIELD – UNOCAL

My first summer job with Unocal was clearing dead weeds around Produced Water ponds in
Coalinga, southwest of Fresno in the central valley of California. The weeds were dead because
the saline Produced Water in the ponds killed them, but they had grown enough to become a
fire hazard.

The area once boasted over 2,000 wells, but only about seventy were still operating when I
arrived in 1970. Because these remaining wells were working an old field, they were pumping
out a lot of Produced Water and Unocal had decided to put the dry climate to work to reduce
the volume of its wastes by evaporation. As evaporation dried out the water, brush fires would
have set the surface of the ponds themselves on fire, which would have further reduced disposal
volumes, but might have drawn untoward attention to the entire mess. So, they put the ten high
school graduates to work as roustabouts. It wouldn’t be the last time I would try to stamp out
fires for the oil companies.

These very large ponds were essentially the mine tailings of another era. In 1890, the
discoveries of the Midway-Sunset field in Kern County and the Coalinga Field in Fresno
County opened large, potentially productive areas for exploration. After a lull, excitement
returned to the area when large gushers began to flow in the Oil City Area of Coalinga oil field.
One famous gusher, Home Oil Company well No. 3, sometimes known as the “Blue Goose,”
was completed at a depth of only 1,400 feet in 1898. This was one of the first wells to flow over
1,000 barrels of oil per day and it started a stampede of people flooding into the area to drill for
black gold.

The Coalinga oil field complex now consists of several large fields with a combined production
of over 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent produced each day. The Coalinga complex has
produced more than 850 million barrels of mostly heavy oil since its discovery together with
nearly 2 billion barrels of Produced Water. This water includes nearly 1 billion barrels in Steam
Flood and over 500 million barrels of waterflood. A detailed description of these enhanced oil
recovery techniques is found in Appendix 2.

As with my hometown pond, these evaporation pits have been recognized as hazardous. In the
first part of the oil rush, they were built simply as holding ponds. After excessive runoffs
caused the ponds to overflow, the ponds were re-engineered, including sprinkler systems to
disperse Produced Water into holding sections to speed evaporation. Water is money in the
central valley because valuable crops grow only where they can be irrigated. Without such
concern, there likely would have been even less attempt to control the Produced Water, but
treatment was primarily aimed at removal of oil and solids.
 Source: GoogleEarth
Figure 13: Produced Water ponds NW of Coalinga. The sites shown had large agricultural sprinklers which
were used to discharge Produced Water piped to the facility from the Chevron oil fields.

The oil producers left the residue remaining after evaporation on the site as if it was no worse
than salt. In fact, it contained a stew of organic toxins as well as mercury and chloroform. The
California Department of Toxic Substances Control eventually ordered 5,000 cubic yards of the
most contaminated soils removed as hazardous waste and 125 acres has basically been left for
dead, with a deed restriction against any food-chain crops and specific approval required for
any future use other than “open space.”
 Source: GoogleEarth
Figure 14: Image of Coalinga Field NW area showing open space

Oil companies like to say such practices are ancient history and that they know better now. But
the Nuevo Energy Company was ordered to stop similar disposal into unlined sumps only in
2002. In 2001 alone it had dumped over 90 million gallons of wastewater into porous ponds.

Shaky Business

While I was working at Coalinga in the 1970s there were a number of small earthquakes.
Coming from Los Angeles, where earthquakes are frequent, I thought little about it and I
certainly didn’t think what we were doing at Coalinga Field might be the cause.

However, in 1991, Arthur McGarr, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, argued that the
extraction of oil and water could trigger earthquakes. In his paper, he noted that the 1983
Coalinga (magnitude 6.5) earthquake occurred beneath the producing oil field and caused an
aftershock sequence whose extent coincided approximately with that of the overlying oil field.17
Despite this apparent coincidence, it had been dismissed as the cause because the earthquakes
occurred 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) down, seven or eight kilometers below the deepest
wells.

One of the reasons oil was trapped in Coalinga—and in many places in California— is that the
region is where two tectonic plates are intersecting. The Pacific Plate is pushing past the North
American Plate and generally buckling under the very edge of it. As the plates deform at their
edges, oil can be trapped in the wrinkles. But the intersection also creates huge bending forces
that, as any Californian knows, can finally snap. Fault lines are where the rock layers have
begun to crack, or where the different plates are grinding against each other. Sometimes the
slip is a horizontal sheer, with one side heading north to the other’s south, but one side of the
fault can also thrust up over the other at depth. When this kind of action is going on beneath
the visible surface features of the terrain, it is sometimes called a “blind thrust fault.”

The development of the global positioning system (GPS) made it possible to measure vertical
and horizontal movements of the ground surface accurately, but also cheaply enough to
measure many sites over large areas. Once earthquakes revealed the danger to Los Angeles
from blind thrust faults, scientists used the system to find and measure movements that could
help them track the fault lines. For a 25-mile stretch along the Santa Ana basin, groundwater
removal and re-injection was causing, the researchers surmised, both a long-term sinking—or
“subsidence,” a geological term for the earth’s downward shift—of about a half inch per year
and a “seasonal oscillation” of 2 inches in the vertical plane and 1/4 inch horizontally as water
was drawn down and then restored.18 This oscillation implied resilience, as if the seismic layer
were bending like the leaf spring of an old car.

Arthur McGarr observed that in each of the Coalinga earthquakes (shock and aftershocks) the
total shift matched the imbalance of forces. The Santa Ana measurements provided a baseline
of movement to be expected with removal and addition of the weight of water. McGarr noted
that removal of oil and water reduced the average density of the upper crust, meaning
essentially that it took weight off the seismically active layer far below the surface. That
weight, his work suggested, had been counterbalancing an equal amount of force in effect
pushing up the faulty rock layer.19

After my summer of brush clearing the Produced Water ponds, I was offered the opportunity to
continue working at night and on weekends at an automated production site in Los Angeles
while I attended college at the University of Southern California. Since work was close to the
dorm and it paid about three times better than other part-time work, I was more than happy to
take it.

My job was to monitor the alarm systems, record the production rates, and gauge the
temperatures and pressures in the oil/water separators or “heater treaters.” These consisted of
several huge pressurized vessels about 50 feet long and 30 feet in diameter that were heated to
separate the oil, gas, and Produced Water. If a problem occurred, we would shut down one of
the units and clean up the spills in the plant which occurred nearly every day. We were told to
mix the oil with detergents and use lots of water so the polluted runoff could not be traced back
to our facility.

The next summer, I worked as a mechanics assistant at the production site in Los Angeles. I
helped the mechanic repair valves on the scrubbers and on the heater treaters. After the repairs
were made we added anti-corrosive chemicals to protect the pipes and the equipment. The
Produced Water at the bottom of the vessels was sent to the city water treatment facility or
simply dumped in the sewer when necessary.

For my last short-term job in California, I was assigned to work on an Offshore Platform about
2 miles off the coast of Huntington Beach, California. That area has a spectacular beach and is
often selected for the International Surfing Competition. They said I was to be trained as a field
operator and I would be riding a helicopter to and from work. I found an apartment near the
beach.

On the platform called EVA things were also going well for me. Initially, I was trained to take
temperature and pressure measurements, record the production gauges, sample the water cut
and determine the oil gravity. One of my jobs was to wash down the decks to clean off oil and
chemical leaks. I was always careful to make sure that nothing went over the side. After all, it
was my beach and I didn't want it polluted.

One night, one of the supervisors flew out to the platform. He walked me around the deck and
then took me down to the lowest level about 20 feet above the ocean. He said that they were
expecting fog for the next few nights and he had a special job for me. He explained that on the
top deck they had a tank full of wastewater that they had to get rid of. He instructed me to wait
till the fog rolled in, and then I was to pull the lever (he pointed to a huge valve over our heads)
and dump the waste. I asked him if we had authorization to do that and he said it was "standard
procedure.”He said that we needed the fog because "occasionally the oil leaves a slight sheen
on the water and we don't want the environmentalists to know which company was
responsible."

He left and I spent the rest of the night retracing the line until I was sure I had found the tank
which was to be dumped. I stuck my finger in the tank and it came out coated with oil. Then I
dipped a coffee can in the tank and it too filled with black goo.

The next day, I called the supervisor and told him that there had to be a mistake. I explained
that the tank he wanted to dump was coated with oil. I told him that under no circumstances
would I dump it in the ocean and I asked to see his written authorization. He said "fine, if you
don't want to do it, don't bother, it’s no big deal.” I don’t know if we had a different
appreciation of what harm the oil might cause or if he presumed the production from the
platform simply outweighed those harms. Either way, I still believe it was a big deal.

A few days later, while I was off the platform on a break, I turned on the TV and saw a
helicopter hovering over an oil slick that was nearly three miles long and headed for the beach.
I could already see it from my window. The reporter was saying: "We can't be sure of the origin
of this slick, but it may have been a passing ship discharging its waste." I knew better. We’d
had another foggy night.

I looked out my window and could see the oil headed my way. When I got back to the platform,
I found that the tank had been emptied. I let it be known that if it happened again I would report
the incident to the authorities.

Shortly after that incident I was asked if I could work on a holiday. I was glad to do it, since I
would be paid extra. They explained to me that I would be the only one working on the
platform that day. They gave me a pep talk and a number to call in case of emergencies. When I
arrived by chopper, I spoke briefly to the senior operator who said everything was working OK.
Then he stepped into the chopper that had brought me out, gave me a thumbs up, and flew
away. A twenty-year-old trainee, I was nevertheless the man in charge. I went into the control
room and read all the previous reports. Then I checked the annunciator board to make sure all
the lights were as they should be and then went outside to inspect my empire.

I was quietly checking gauges and volumes when an alarm startled me. I ran back to the control
room and found that one of the auxiliary pumps had overheated. I switched to the back-up and
went down to check the situation. These pumps were not supposed to be critical to the
operation. They were only used to move waste Produced Water back into the tanks.

When I got down to the pump, the wastewater tank had an unusually high level. There was no
lid on this tank and if it overflowed it would spill oily water. I was thinking how glad I was
there was a backup pump. Only the water was still rising. The backup, I realized, also wasn’t
working and I was out of pumps. I checked the switches, but there seemed to be an electrical
short somewhere. I ran back to the control room and switched back to the primary pump.
Immediately the “high temp” warning light came on. I had the choice of allowing a spill or
starting a fire. I began imagining my name in the teasers for the six o’clock news.

In short, my previous summer as a mechanic’s assistant came in handy. I was able to tear down
one pump, pull a rag out of it, and get it running. Inches from overflow, the level in the tank
began falling. Of course I like to look back on this as the story of the plucky young geologist
saving Huntington Beach. But I am telling you the story to illustrate the kind of “safeguards”
the oil companies all too commonly rely on to prevent, say, another Santa Barbara spill. They
left one summer intern alone to handle whatever might happen.
I heard that very same platform caught fire 15 years later and did spill oil on Huntington Beach.

We hear assurances about modern safeguards that will make new offshore drilling far safer than
it used to be. First, of course, that isn’t saying so much. Second, most ocean platforms release
Produced Water into the ocean. The companies claim that the solution to pollution is dilution—
which ignores bioaccumulation. But third, we should think about attitude. Is the environmental
concern sincere, or will they build shiny platforms without any people on them capable of
handling emergencies? Is their environmental awareness a sincere concern with preventing
harm or is it awareness that environmentalists can do them harm? Are they waiting for the fog?

The year after the pump episode, Union Oil sent me to THUMS Islands in Long Beach.
THUMS was a joint project which stood for “Texaco, Humble (now Exxon), Union, Mobil, and
Shell.” THUMS consisted of a series of four fabricated islands designed to produce the offshore
portion of the Wilmington oil field. Wilmington Field is a 3 billion barrel field, the largest in
California.

Since Long Beach attracts tourists, the oil companies went to extraordinary, (some might say
bizarre), lengths to disguise their operations. They put the drilling derricks on circular rails so
that only one or two were visible at a time while they drilled wells only a few feet apart. Then
they covered them in sound proofing so they couldn't be heard. Next they added pastel colored
balconies to the derricks so they would look like office buildings or penthouse apartments.
They planted the islands with palm trees and other semi- tropical plants. Finally they sculpted,
in concrete, three spectacular 30-foot high waterfalls. There was no shortage of water since they
always had more Produced Water than they knew what to do with. The landscaping was so
good that the city made them add colored floodlights for night viewing. They used to get calls
from people who wanted to live in those high-rise apartments, but later, people called to find
out why the buildings were moving. Behind these impressive exteriors, the facilities are very
much like the frame houses at Universal Studios. Once behind the facades, there is nothing but
rusting old equipment and little pools of leaking oil.

Figure 15: Photo of a production island over Long Beach oil field showing THUMS Island,
Long Beach Harbor, CA. with oil derricks.

We were told that one of the unfortunate consequences of the extraction activity in Long Beach
was rapid subsidence. As I said above, the oil extraction business removes huge volumes of
fluids from the ground. Something has to give. Offshore, some areas near the THUMs complex
had dropped 60 feet. Onshore, there were houses that had fallen 20 feet. The settling caused
frequent bursts of gas mains and was responsible for more than a few fires and some deaths.

According to testimony provided by John A. Veil of Argonne National Laboratory before The
House Committee On Science And Technology Subcommittee On Energy And Environment on
October 30, 2007:

One of the most compelling examples of subsidence resulting from oil and gas extraction
involves the Wilmington oil field in Long Beach, California. Since the 1930s, more than 1,000
wells withdrew about 2.5 billion barrel of oil and a large volume of produced water [estimated
at approximately 18 billion barrels by the Calif. Div. of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources].
Between the 1940s and the 1960s, this field experienced a total of 29 feet of subsidence, caused
primarily by the withdrawal of hydrocarbons. Subsidence in the Wilmington oil field caused
extensive damage to Long Beach port industrial and naval facilities. A massive repressurization
program, based on the injection of water into the oil reservoirs, reduced the subsidence area
from approximately 50 km2 to 8 km2 (about 20 sq miles down to 3 sq miles). Approximately 2.3
billion barrels of water were reinjected through 1969. 20

Back in the San Joaquin Valley, not far from the scene of my first summer job, scientists using
a new kind of radar studied the settling of ground at the Belridge oilfield and the (aptly named)
Lost Hills. Using this “Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar,” scientists from California’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory detected settling rates as high as 40mm (about 9½ inches) in a mere
thirty-five days.21 They found the field areas were sinking 15 inches per year, as shown in the
map below. Note the red and orange bull’s eye which is directly over the field areas where the
fluid production occurred. In the hundred years since their discovery, the two fields have
produced 1.75 billion barrels of oil, a very respectable, but not exceptionally large volume on a
global basis.

Source: Fielding et al. 1998

Figure 16: Colors show relative apparent motion of surface, with the yellow and red areas moving away,
hence downward relative to dark purple areas. Note > 40 mm of subsidence over Lost Hills in 35 days.

Subsidence—collapsing land—is not only a problem in California. After I completed my

Geology Degree Texaco offered me a job in Louisiana. Now with a family to support, I jumped
at the offer and off we moved to New Orleans.
The Gulf
My first assignment in the Gulf of Mexico was to drill development wells in Garden Island
Bay, a giant field in Louisiana near the mouth of the Mississippi River that already had more
than 700 wells drilled. I occasionally took trips to the field in the company seaplane and I
remember flying over the eastern end of the Bird’s Foot Delta thinking someday —in a
thousand years or so—that land would all be underwater. I misjudged.

During the flights, I saw hundreds of channel cuts dredged to move barges around for drilling
and I could see the wetlands disappearing practically before my eyes. My job was to remap the
entire field at a particular depth horizon and propose additional development or injection wells
for the Produced Water. It was how Texaco trained all the new geologists and the company was
now using the same exercise to boost my college courses in paleontology. “Applied
micropaleontology” may sound like an oxymoron outside of Jurassic Park, but it is a key tool in
the oil business. Identifying and comparing the kind of microscopic fossil shells recovered in
sediment core and cuttings samples helps date the layers and show whether they were, for
instance, formed in shallow water and then buried or originally deposited on a deep seabed.

I did well enough to be transferred for a stint as a paleontologist. In those early days I asked for
instructions how to get to the rigs. The veteran workers would always turn their backs as they
pointed south, saying: "Just drive till your feet get wet.” They were half-serious because there
was only one road through Plaquemines Parish which went to the mouth of the Mississippi
River. If you went too far you’d go swimming with your truck on.

In reviewing paleo-data on each of Texaco’s deep wells in South Louisiana (roughly 10, 000
wells) I was interested by patterns of deposition and subsidence. First I plotted the position of
every well drilled below 15,000 feet. This focused on 200 of the 10,000 wells, because most
were not that deep. Next I recorded the pressure, age, rock type, and depositional environment
of all these wells. Gradually, I was able to map the depth at which drilling problems would
occur and predict the thickness of the sands in any area throughout South Louisiana. In effect,
though, I was measuring the combined rate of subsidence for the entire delta.

Putting paleontology to work I could calculate, with some variations of rates at given times, the
rate of deposition and subsidence. If creatures known to be alive, say, ten million years ago
were now 10,000 feet below the surface, then they are moving down 1 foot each 1,000 years.
For a long time now the rate of subsidence was roughly in balance with the rate of deposition
from sands and clay minerals coming down the river and—especially important to making oil—
the settling of dead biota such as marine plankton, algae, or the microscopic shellfish I was now
using to date the whole process.

When the lead geologist who led the trips down the Mississippi Delta quit, the company asked
me to take his place. This allowed me to train many other geologists to understand the
depositional environment of the region. I was often asked how fast the delta was sinking. Based
on paleontology, I would answer that it would take hundreds, if not thousands of years for the
“bird’s foot” land of the delta to be submerged. That bit of the curriculum has since been
modified.

There is a new kind of subsidence upsetting the age-old balance. Removing oil and Produced
Water3 is vastly accelerating surface subsidence. Levees on the Mississippi River are also
slowing the deposition process except in the more focused outfall outside the levees, but even
this would not cause the delta lands to sink at their current rate. The lands are drowning because
their foundations are literally being undermined by oil extraction.

CASE HISTORY: GARDEN ISLAND BAY – TEXACO

Figure 17 Garden Island Bay GoogleEarth image 2010

Flanking both sides of the Mississippi river’s channels are narrow natural levees that have been
elevated to protect the region from natural flooding. Beyond the levees are Louisiana’s
marshes, which are very near sea level, and a vast array of oil and gas fields and associated
infrastructure. Some of these areas have been in production for more than 70 years and are still
producing. Nine fields support nearly 6,000 oil wells including Garden Island Bay, discovered
by Texaco in 1934. Garden Island Bay field sits in the eastern branch of the Bird’s Foot south
of Pilottown.

3
Technically, while the water is still in the ground it is Formation Water or Water of Formation. It becomes
Produced Water only when a well produces it from underground.
With over 16,000 acres held in production, Garden Island Bay is one of the largest remaining
Louisiana State Leases. This field has had cumulative production of over 231 million barrels of
oil and probably several hundred million barrels of Produced Water. These fluid extractions
have come with a steep price.

According to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, subsurface and deep well water
and oil/gas extraction has been directly related to coastal subsidence in areas of Texas and
Louisiana. This has led to the loss of large areas of coastal habitat in these subsidence districts,
with a concomitant loss of essential fish habitat. Coastal subsidence is a permanent geological
action and when it happens, it is unalterable. Once the coastal marsh and grass beds are
drowned by the rising seawater they are difficult or impossible to reestablish.

Source: NOAA
Figure 18: The Bird’s Foot Delta before and after Hurricane Katrina

The first satellite image above shows the Bird’s Foot Delta of the Mississippi River just 20 days
before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. Garden Island Bay Field is the large green patch south
of Pilottown, Louisiana.

While working for Texaco in the Gulf, my family and I lived in an apartment in New Orleans
that was 15 feet below sea level. Twice, we evacuated to the home of friends in Georgia to be
clear of hurricanes. I was very concerned with the potential of Lake Pontchartrain breaking its
levees. The lake is only 20 feet deep, but 20 miles across. I was worried that strong winds
might create even more wave action than would occur on a deeper lake, amplifying the threat to
the levees.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005. Where we once lived was
inundated. Offshore the hurricane was easily a Category 5 storm. Onshore, as we all know, it
completely devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Fewer people notice or cared that
Garden Island Bay Field [shown above as a dark patch southeast of Pilottown] simply sank.

The Chandeleur Islands in the east where I used to lead my field trips practically vanished.
Figure 12 below, taken in July 2001, shows narrow sandy beaches and adjacent overwash
sandflats, low vegetated dunes, and back-barrier marshes broken by ponds and channels. Figure
13 shows the same site on August 31, 2005, two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on
the Louisiana and Mississippi coastline. Storm surge and large waves from Hurricane Katrina
submerged the islands, stripped sand from the beaches, and eroded large sections of the marsh.
Today, few recognizable landforms are left on the Chandeleur Island chain. It is those islands
which would have provided the primary barriers to oil incursions into the marshes from the BP
Deepwater Horizon oil blowout.

Figure 19: The Chandeleur Islands before Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina alone might be blamed for the changes in the Chandeleur Islands were it not
for a few courageous geologists who anticipated the problem years before. In July 2004, the
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Ocean Service
(NOS) and National Geodetic Survey (NGS) published “Technical Report 50.”22 The opaque
title was only slightly elucidated by the subtitle: “rates of vertical displacement at benchmarks
in the Lower Mississippi Valley and the Northern Gulf Coast.” The study showed that rates of
subsidence in southern Louisiana are significantly higher than previously thought. The land
itself is going down
Figure 20: The Chandeleur Islands after Hurricane Katrina

To be more precise, the authors of Technical Report 50 conclude that the land is sinking 200 to
5,000 percent faster than previous estimates. Kurt Shinkle of the National Geodetic Survey and
Roy Dokka of Louisiana State University examined thousands of benchmarks spanning 70
years:

The resulting analysis indicates that subsidence has occurred during the past century and is
probably still going on throughout the lower Mississippi Valley and adjoining coastal plain.
Subsidence is greatest in coastal regions, especially in the Mississippi River delta plain where
displacements of up to -30mm/year were computed. Significant subsidence is occurring across
much of southern Louisiana at a mean rate of -11mm per year. 23

Hurricane Katrina, then, was responsible for tremendous damage and for causing the erosion
and submersion of large parts of the lowest lying lands. Oil removal was not primarily
responsible for the acute changes visible in the pictures shown here. But it was responsible for
the chronic changes that made Katrina’s work all the more devastating. Not only had the
drilling simply lowered the land surface, but in doing so more of the covering vegetation was
killed by salt water overwash, but also intrusion into groundwater. Losing vegetation—or
altering it to more shallowly rooted varieties—on barrier lands makes it much more vulnerable
to erosion.

There had been warnings before Katrina hit that development was reducing the barrier effect of
islands and wetlands around New Orleans. Development, to most people, implies building, but
more damaging in this case was oilfield development. The channel cuts proved devastating,
allowing storm surge to roar right through the bayous. And, as delta deposits, the barrier lands
in question were necessarily very near water level. While 11 millimeters (about ½ inch) per
year may not sound like so much, the oil companies have been at work in the area for a long
time.

As shown on the map below, more than 150,000 wells have been drilled in the wetlands of
South Louisiana. More than most places—because so much of Louisiana is low and wet—
removing oil from under the state is actually removing a significant amount of the state itself.
(See below)

Source: ESRI ( Lyles and Namwamba 2005)

Figure 21: Map showing some of the more than 150,000 wells which
have been drilled in the wetlands of South Louisiana

In a piece for the Associated Press, Cain Burdeau writes of other causes of wetland loss around
New Orleans including housing and the levees restricting silt deposition. Then he adds: “But
many scientists say the oil industry's 10,000 miles of canals — enough to stretch nearly halfway
around the world — and the drilling they supported played a decisive role. Some scientists say
drilling caused half of the land loss, or about 1,000 square miles.”24

The canals themselves turned marsh into open water, but the dredges emptied their shovels on
the adjacent banks on either side of the new canals. These spoil banks blocked natural flows,
either drying out large areas or holding water in them until the vegetation died. The wells
brought up millions of gallons of Produced Water each day that was mostly poured into the
marshes until state environmental officials began enforcing regulations against the practice in
1985. Pouring out that much Produced Water into already stressed areas was the ecological
version of overkill. A study at Southern University concluded “the majority of the land loss and
vegetation change that has occurred in the Louisiana coastal wetlands over the past 100 years is
a result of canals and channels that were dug to provide transportation for oil and gas
exploration.” 25 The canals proved disastrous to New Orleans when Katrina hit.
 Source: Nielson 2005
Figure 15: Enhanced satellite image showing numerous channel cuts in the Miss, River

It says something about the power of the oil companies that such destructive practices were
ever allowed, but especially that they continued long after they should have known better.
Instead of trying to work with the scientists and engineers studying these problems at places
like Louisiana State University, their response has been, first, to deny that they caused much
harm—“But there is no doubt there are many, many causes for wetlands loss and access to oil
and gas operations is rather insignificant,” said the president of Louisiana’s oil lobby. 26 Second,
to twist it into a positive, “It fuels the nation,” the television campaign says; and finally, get
someone else to pay to fix it: “Tell Washington to shore up America’s energy coast.”27

Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil Corporation said of the delta’s decline: “The land moves around a
lot along the coast. Geologists say there is evidence that slipping-and-sliding faults have caused
land loss.”28 As a geologist, I could actually help show that this statement is correct, much as
the pathologist might say a gunshot victim died because his heart stopped. Mr. Tillerson just
isn’t going far enough. The slipping causes land loss, but the drilling is a major cause of the
slipping and faulting. The drill-bits are the bullets. I’ll let you take this metaphor as far as you
dare, but Mr. Tillerson must have known precisely what he was not saying.

A 2005 report by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies,
found that five areas at outer reaches of the Mississippi River Delta had experienced
considerable land loss from subsidence over the past 40 years. The report states, “… the rapid
subsidence and associated wetland loss were largely induced by extraction of hydrocarbons and
associated formation water with some subsidence controlled locally by sulfur mining at a few
sites.”29 In a 2006 report by the same authors:

Analysis of remote images, elevation surveys, stratigraphic cross-sections, and hydrocarbon

production data demonstrates that extensive areas of wetland loss in the northern Gulf Coast
region of the United States were associated with large-volume fluid production from mature
petroleum fields. Interior wetland losses at many sites in coastal Louisiana and Texas are
attributed largely to accelerated land subsidence and fault reactivation induced by decreased
reservoir pressures as a result of rapid or prolonged extraction of gas, oil, and associated brines.
Evidence that moderately-deep hydrocarbon production has induced land-surface subsidence
and reactivated faults that intersect the surface include: (1) close temporal and spatial correlation
of fluid production with surficial changes including rapid subsidence of wetland sediments near
producing fields, (2) measurable offsets of shallow strata across the zones of wetland loss, (3)
large reductions in subsurface pressures where subsidence rates are high, (4) coincidence of
orientation and direction of displacement between surface fault traces and faults that bound the
reservoirs, and (5) accelerated subsidence rates near producing fields compared to subsidence
rates in surrounding areas or compared to geological rates of subsidence. 30

There it is. The sinking matches not just the places fluids are being withdrawn, but the time.
Faults open parallel to the fields and coincide with areas where drilling has lowered the overall
pressure below the surface layers. And while the land “moves around a lot along the coast,” it
moves by far the most where there is drilling.

Another question, though, is how far the pressure of the fields reaches. According to NASA’s
Earth Observatory web site, “In a paper published in the journal Nature, an international team
of scientists determined the subsidence in New Orleans itself in the three-year period prior to
Hurricane Katrina. The team used data collected by Canada’s RADARSAT satellite between
April 2002 and July 2005. The researchers found that most of New Orleans itself sank 8
millimeters per year (about 1/3 inch) relative to global mean sea level during that period.”31

With barrier lands settling, surrounding wetlands being turned into channels for oil barges, the
city itself settling down only somewhat slower than barrier lands, and with even larger
increases in sea level to be anticipated from global warming (caused, in part, by burning the oil
removed from under the city), the prospects for New Orleans are not encouraging. There may
be boom times ahead for people who build and repair pumps and levees, but nervousness for
everyone else. Although New Orleans was settled before Houston, it was not the first to settle
down. After spending a few years in New Orleans and a short stint overseas, I eventually
wound up in Houston working for Tenneco Oil. Subsidence was still on my mind and here the
evidence for a link to fluid withdrawals was even more convincing.
Texas – Slipping Away
As they learned at the sink-holes in Florida, most man-made subsidence results from ground
water withdrawal, but the earliest observation of subsidence resulting from human activity was
actually from oil and gas field production. The Houston area has perhaps the best examples in
the world of subsidence that results from both groundwater and petroleum withdrawal.

The first documented instance of land subsidence due to fluid withdrawal was from the Goose
Creek oil field near the city of Houston. In 1917, oil was discovered on the margin of Galveston
Bay near the mouth of the present-day Houston Ship Channel. After production of several
million barrels of oil, bay waters began to inundate the oil field. In 1926, W.E. Pratt and D.W.
Johnson recognized newly formed faults and fissures that resulted from fluid withdrawal.32

Source: Berman 2005

Figure 22: Measured subsidence between 1918 and 1926 around Goose Creek oilfield. Lines
of equal subsidence (feet) for an 8-year period are shown in gray lines: for a 1-year period,
in black lines.
 Source: Berman 2005
Courtesy of Houston-Galveston Coastal Subsidence District
Figure 23: Subsidence occurring between 1905 and 1978 in the Houston-Galveston region
 Source: Berman 2005
Figure 24: LIDAR image of the Houston area with faults and salt domes depicted

Source: Berman 2005

Figure 20: Map of subsidence from 1973-1995
Clearly, ground subsidence due to withdrawal of underground fluids may produce catastrophic
damages to the surface infrastructure and to the environment. Subsidence rates of several cm
per year with the recorded accumulated collapse reaching several meters are not uncommon in
some parts of the world.

As we have seen, withdrawal of oil, gas, and water in the Wilmington oil field, in Long Beach,
California, produced land subsidence of 8.8 m (over 28 ft) between 1932 and 1965.33
Withdrawal of oil and water in Lost Hills oil field in California has recorded subsidence rates of
up to 40 centimeters/year (more than 15 inches /year),34 and extraction of underground water in
the San Joaquin Valley in California, reached 9.0 meters (nearly 30 feet) between 1935 and
1977.35

In addition, withdrawal of water and oil in the Ekofisk oil field in the North Sea has reportedly
reached subsidence of more than 9 meters (about 30 feet) between the mid-1970’s and 2010,36
while withdrawal of oil and water in heavy oil fields along the east coast of Maracaibo Lake in
Venezuela37 has caused subsidence of 7.0 meters (about 23 feet) between 1926 and 2004.

Source: USGS
Figure 25: Map of Oil and Gas Fields in the Northern Gulf Coast

Before we move along the gulf coast, Louisiana and Texas have another lesson for us
concerning competing interests. As Hurricane Katrina so vividly demonstrated, oil and gas
production from more than 50,000 wells drilled in the Gulf Coast38 can have major impacts
outside the oil industry. Aside from the catastrophic flooding that was very likely a direct result
of canals dug for oil production, studies at Louisiana State University had already estimated
that the loss of one-fifth of the 10,000 square mile delta caused by channeling and subsidence
cost $15 billion a year in lost ecologic and economic value. Surprisingly, I never heard any
outrage until now

In the summer of 2010, outrage in Louisiana is building as oil washes onto the beaches and into
the marshes. The people of the Gulf Coast are trying to discern the true extent of the damage
and wondering how BP and the U.S. government failed to protect them and the ecosystem. The
following analysis is a geologist’s view of the blowout. Based on my experience, combined
with the bits of truth in the billowing cloud of media coverage, we have been badly betrayed.

Discovering and holding accountable the people responsible for the oil spill may be important
in encouraging people to do the right thing in the future, but it is equally critical right now that
we understand all the forces—corporate, political, and geological—that made this disaster
inevitable.

The real lesson may be very simple: play with fire long enough and you will get burned. In this
case it is the people and wildlife of the Gulf Coast that are being hurt and no one knows how
long it will take for the scars to heal.

I have worked in the oil patch for decades as a roustabout, a pumper, a mechanic, a geologist
and even a micropaleontologist. One of my jobs was to look at rock samples from the bottom of
a well and correlate with other nearby wells by matching well logs and paleo. We used the
correlations to help pick the casing points (where to set and cement pipe) and try to prevent
blowouts by anticipating sudden pressure increases I have spent months on offshore oil rigs
which could have blown out at anytime. Fortunately, I have never actually experienced a
blowout, although some of the crews I worked with did come close a few times and needed to
use the blowout preventers (BOPs). A BOP looks like a five story piece of modern art. There
are so many valves and gauges and hoses, those in the industry just call these the devices the
“stack” or the “Christmas tree.” They are tested frequently and are considered to be the last line
of defense.
 Source: Oilstates Products
Figure 26: Typical subsea BOP stack

Drilling technology hasn’t changed all that much in the last 50 years. It is still about screwing
the straws (stands of drillpipe) together and rotating the whole assembly with a rockbit at the
bottom to break up the sediments. The mud is circulated to bring up the rock fragments while
holding the pressures under control. Still when the bit wears out or there is a problem in the
hole, the whole string has to be pulled out (stand by stand) and then run back into the hole
before drilling can proceed. It is true that much of the process has been automated and longer
stands of pipe can now be automatically lifted into place in the derrick, but the principle is the
same. The main change has been the use of alloys to enable the equipment (like the BOPs) to
withstand greater external pressures like those that are encountered in the deepwater Gulf of
Mexico.

During some of my assignments wells were being tested at high pressures and cemented. Still,
the closest I ever came to an actual blowout was during a drill-stem test of an exploration well.
We had closed all of the inflatable packers while we allowed the oil from the reservoir to flow
into the drill string for the rate test. These packers work something like the balloons in a heart
by-pass operation and isolate the fluids and pressure from the rest of the open pipe. When we
opened the top packer; the well unloaded. That is to say all of the gas and oil that was in the
pipe came shooting out of the wellhead at tremendous pressure. One of the “newbie” engineers
didn’t realize what was going on and had apparently watched too many John Wayne movies.
He decided it was his job to move the kelly and swivel, (the connector to the mud pumps) back
over the pipe. While the black rain fell down on us most were content to just wait for it to stop.
Meanwhile, the engineer’s futile efforts to “control the well” sprayed us all with a steady stream
of oil for about five minutes.

At the time, we all thought it was pretty funny and it looked just like one of the old movies (like
“Hellfighters”) with oil gushing to the top of the derrick and the rig hands falling all over each
other and laughing. Of course, we all knew that if the lower packer let go and the well really
started coming in we could just hit the blowout preventer (BOP) and we would all be safe. We
knew that the BOP contained at least a dozen back-up systems and at least five different
methods of shutting in the well. So unless someone did something stupid, we couldn’t get into
trouble. This is what we were all taught. We were wrong, but lucky.

We didn’t know at the time that BOP’s failed at least a quarter of the time in the offshore Gulf
of Mexico39 and that BOP failure is responsible for the vast majority of blowouts worldwide. I
realize now that fact was something the manufacturers of the BOPS, the oil companies that
leased them and the government oversight agencies (like the Minerals Management Service)
charged with inspecting them didn’t want us to know. I see now, as do all Americans, why they
kept this information quiet. Companies like BP would rather take their chances than pay for
more reliable BOPs. For its part, the MMS was not only the regulator, but the tax collector. It
was no more anxious than BP to slow the flow of income.
CASE STUDY: DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL BLOWOUT - BP

Source: Wiki
Figure 27: Deepwater Horizon Rig on fire

The Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible rig, while under contract with BP, PLC. [formerly
known as British Petroleum], suffered a blowout on April 20, 2010 resulting in the death of 11
men on the drilling platform and serious injuries to 17 other workers. Nearly 100 others
managed to escape relatively unscathed. The resulting oil leaks could have catastrophic
consequences for the people of the Gulf Coast and the environment of the northern Gulf of
Mexico.

It is still unclear exactly where the injured were located at the time of the blast or how the
lifeboats were filled during the subsequent evacuation. What is known is that on the day of the
blowout the rig was visited by several BP managers who were there, ironically, to celebrate the
company’s safety record. It has also been reported that some of the lifeboats were launched
before they were at full capacity forcing several to jump about 100 feet into the flaming oil and
gas-covered ocean. We may never know for certain who gave the orders to launch those boats
before they were full and we don’t know the circumstances which led to those orders, but the
emergency drills all called for a full accounting of all personnel before launch. Then again the
drills, like BP’s estimates of potential environmental harm, may have understated the danger.

I have been on several rigs when managers or inspectors were due to visit the platform and
those days are anything but normal. All the little spills are cleaned up and everything on the rig
gets a new coat of paint, especially the Helipad, which visitors see first. Routine tasks are
sometimes neglected and everyone is focused on first appearances and superficial details.
 The exploration well had reached total depth of 18,360 feet below the rig including a mile of
“riser” from the seabed to the surface. It had already supposedly been cemented and it is likely
that many were relaxed and waiting for their piece of cake. Never mind that the hole had
experienced a series of problems for weeks before the explosion. These hole problems
(including stuck pipe, sidetracks and lost circulation) had put BP more than a month behind
schedule and undoubtedly added pressure to cut corners and get back on schedule. After all, the
rig and services were costing about a million dollars a day and even for a company that made
$6 billion in profit in the first quarter of 2010 that is a lot of incentive to speed things up.

This was not BP’s first major problem in recent years. As I have detailed in other sections, The
Deepwater Horizon blowout is actually the third major safety and maintenance lapse in the past
five years on a BP facility in the U.S. First, there was the 2005 Texas City, Texas, explosion
and fire in a BP refinery which resulted in the death of 15 people along with 170 injuries. Later,
OSHA levied a fine for $87 million on BP for failure to make the required improvements. Then
came an oil spill in 2006 at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska which leaked at least 5,000 barrels of oil on
the frozen tundra. BP admitted that it had neglected routine maintenance on the line and agreed
to pay a $20 million fine. It seems that the company was trimming maintenance to improve
profitability. Time will tell whether this most recent disaster is an example of a British company
being “penny wise and pound foolish,” as it now appears.
 Source: MMS

Figure 28: Lower Marine Riser Assembly and BOP

While the exact cause of the blowout is not known, several contributing factors have been
identified. The BOP was slightly damaged weeks before the explosion when a rig hand
inadvertently moved the pipe several feet while the BOP was partially closed. This annular
BOP section works like clay in a closed fist and is supposed to deform to fit around any size
pipe or tool caught in the BOP when it closes. There is no record that the rubber seals were
repaired even after one of the mudloggers reported finding a handful of rubber fragments in the
mud stream perhaps indicating that some of the rubber seals had been damaged and broken off.
BP later found that there was a dead battery on one of the control pods and one of the critical
hydraulic lines on the BOP was leaking.

The casing program is also being re-evaluated in light of the disaster, especially the tapered
string run from the wellhead to total depth. It has been questioned since tapered strings are
more common for production wells than wildcats and several other operators have testified that
they do not use this casing configuration for wildcats drilled in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.
Use of nitrogen-foamed cement at this depth and temperature is often unpredictable and
Halliburton reportedly used the minimum amount of cement together with the minimum curing
time. This casing and cement program is surely a recipe for disaster. Halliburton’s own reports
presented in Congressional hearings state that the models indicated a SEVERE gas flow
problem due to BP’s decision to use only six centralizers( to keep the pipe in the middle of
hole) instead of the recommended twenty one centralizers. 40

After the cement job, the operator apparently never ran a standard Cement Bond Log which
would have given them an indication of the cement integrity. Even after a negative pressure test
they failed to run a leak off test that would have told them if there was channeling in the
cement, which would have allowed high pressure gas to escape to the surface.

The biggest error may have been a failure to monitor the flow of mud in and out of the hole.
Since they were discharging mud to the ship tender alongside, the captain could see when the
mud was flowing, but apparently was never informed when the mud pumps were on and when
the mud was being pushed out of the well due to the reservoir pressure. Since the heavy mud
was the primary control on reservoir pressure any indication that mud was flowing out of the
well with the pumps off should have been a red-flag that the gas and oil were rising in the pipe.
BP either failed to see these warnings or ignored them because they continued to deliberately
displace the heavy mud with lighter seawater virtually guaranteeing a blowout for a well that
was already flowing oil and gas

In short, BP acted like a teenager who accelerates the car when the lights turn yellow, runs stop
signs when he thinks no one is watching and occasionally runs red lights because he assumes
the car has good brakes. But he hasn’t actually tested them. Then he acts surprised when he has
an accident. He tries to hide the damage with 2 million gallons of toxic paint and then blames
everyone else who was in the intersection. Also like our wayward teenager, BP should be
punished with the loss or suspension of its operator’s license and should not be in charge of
repairs.

A few days after the blowout occurred, BP tried to focus all attention on containment, knowing
full well that containment efforts on past spills have achieved only minimal success. For a time
they were entirely successful in containing media and government attention to the three-ring
circus below rather than on the horror show unfolding above. Of course, it helped to have three
separate leaks to control, that way there was almost always something to see on the news
besides the oil washing ashore.
 Source: Unified Command41

Figure 29: Simultaneous Well Control Operations

Although many of the facts of the blowout are still being debated, an examination of
containment options reveals why control of a blowout from the top is extremely difficult and
the drilling the relief wells is almost always the ultimate solution.

First, as described in detail in a later chapter, a similar blowout in Mexico in 1979 (Ixtoc 1)
which occurred in less than 200 feet of water took ten months to bring under control using
divers instead of robots. Well control technology has changed little since that time and the
physics haven’t changed at all.

Second, a 1999 study for Minerals Management Service showed that containment of deepwater
blowouts was considered impractical. According to the PCCI Marine Engineering report Oil
Spill Containment, Remote Sensing and Tracking for Deepwater Blowouts: Status of Existing
and Emerging Technologies:

“The behavior of fluids released in deep water, under high hydrostatic pressure and low ambient
temperature, are likely to be fundamentally different than for shallow water…

There has been speculation that solid methane/water hydrates might form from some blowout
gases. The formation of neutrally buoyant hydrates might eliminate the driving buoyancy of the
rising plume…”
The authors concluded that in most circumstances, it is not realistic to expect responders to
contain or recover submerged oils.”

Source: VARCO

Figure 30: Shear Ram blades

Third, the BOP could break apart at any time. Originally, it seems it was a victim of poor
maintenance reportedly with loosened hydraulic lines and dead batteries. It also appears that
when it was last serviced, technicians left a pair of testing rams in position which were not
capable of shearing the pipe. After the more than 50,000 ton rig capsized while still connected
to the riser, it severely bent the pipe and lower marine riser package and some have said caused
the BOP to lean as much as 10 degrees. Now we are left with a BOP which is partly closed with
drill pipe and possibly casing wedged inside. The efforts to plug the leaks in the BOP and riser
by shooting rubber and steel into it through the choke and kill lines (the “junk-shot” would be
more appropriately named “crap-shoot”) have undoubtedly put additional strain on the valves
and connections. It should be noted that when Red Adair, the famous well control expert tried
to put additional pressure on the Ixtoc 1 BOP in 1979, the valves ruptured and oil started
leaking from the seabed around the casing. That is a distinct possibility in the BP case also, and
could ultimately increase the spill rate and make the well even more difficult to control. This is
why the top hat integrity tests were so critical.

Finally, the wellbore itself is in terrible condition and thus any additional pressure on the well
or its equipment could cause an even greater failure. From a geologist’s perspective, the
reservoir has already been damaged since the well lost circulation while it was drilling to total
depth. This means that if pressure is increased the casing and cement could further deteriorate
and an underground blowout could follow. This would result in gas and oil escaping into
shallower sands of lower pressure and ultimately could lead to a breach at the seafloor which
would take even longer to stop. This happened in Santa Barbara in 1969 when oil started to
flow through faults and cracks in the overlying sediments. Also, any change in pressure could
further collapse the casing at the bottom of the well which might increase the flow.
So BP was trying to contain the oil while it was flowing wild at as much as 60,000 barrels of oil
per day without allowing any pressure to build up in the well or BOP. To get some idea of how
difficult the flow is to contain imagine filling a bathtub with a fire hose capable of shooting
fluids at 10 gallons per second. This is nearly an impossible task.

Given all these impediments, it is hard to believe that BP actually stopped drilling the 2nd relief
well temporarily so they could borrow the BOP in case it was needed for the kill operation.
These kinds of decisions put the 2nd relief well weeks behind the progress on the 1st relief. If the
first well got stuck or ran into other problems, the Gulf Coast could have waited additional
weeks for the replacement to catch up. BP should have been told in no uncertain terms that they
needed to keep two wells drilling at all times. If they stalled a relief well again they should have
been ordered to commence a 3rd relief well at an additional cost of about $100 million. The
government should provide enough incentive for BP to keep focused on the relief wells until
the well is plugged.

Source: NASA
Figure 31: Terra Satellite MODIS Image of BP oil Slick in May 2010

On May 24, 2010 NASA’s Terra Satellite captured this image of the oil slick off the Mississippi
Delta using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS).42 Since oil
smoothes the surface it enhances reflections of the sun along the satellites path. Oiled areas are
more difficult to detect and interpret along the shallow coastline but the shores were definitely
impacted.
What is next now that BP has shown that it has a poor track record with managing risk and
protecting the environment? Perhaps, the first step should be to demand total transparency.
From the beginning of this catastrophe, BP has been cagey about all of the information and data
which could actually aid in decision making. For example, they originally estimated the flow
rate and 1,000 barrels per day and then 5,000 barrels per day. Then they tried to argue that the
flow rate didn’t really matter, which contradicted everything that experts and laymen alike
already knew about oil spills.

As a consequence, BP should be ordered to turn over every piece of data which could in any
way relate to getting this blowout plugged. At a minimum, that would include all logs of the
formation characteristics, producing intervals and pressure tests of different zones, all video,
daily logs and especially equipment diagrams. They should also provide any seismic data used
to anticipate faults or shallow gas which could cause problems for the relief wells.

BP has from the beginning acted as though it was merely protecting trade secrets from
competitors. From the minute this well blew out BP effectively forfeited rights to secrecy from
competitors and from the government. If they do not turn over all of the data on this well
immediately, then the data should be subpoenaed and, if necessary, the FBI should seize all
relevant records as they would do in any other white collar crime investigation.

It is even possible that the United States would need the cooperation of the British Government
to determine what instructions were sent from the BP Corporate Headquarters in England. As of
now, this has become an international disaster with the potential that in the next few months
this spill or the underwater plumes below could get caught up in the Gulf Stream and
transported all along the East Coast of the U.S. or conceivably all the way to Europe. BP
understands that knowledge is power and clings to it for its own protection. It is time to share
all information.

BP has consistently minimized threats while telling everyone that the odds are good that a
particular procedure will be successful. Of course, its press-releases never share the basis for
those odds and they always add a disclaimer that this procedure or the next has never been done
a mile below the ocean surface. Shouldn’t someone be asking why these procedures have never
been tested at the water depths in which they are most likely to be needed? BP acts like it is
running a gambling casino rather than an oil operation and is unwilling or unable to present any
historical success or failure records to support their risk assessment based on past global
experiences.

For example, before the “top-kill” and “junk-shot” plans failed, BP announced that the
procedure had a 60 to 70 percent chance of success. Shouldn’t somebody have demanded to
know what the odds were based on at that time? Does that mean that out of a list of 10
deepwater wells in the world which have attempted to control blowouts in the last decade these
techniques have worked 6 or 7 times? Don’t we have a right to know what the factors were
which determined success? Does it mean that based on computer simulations the scenario failed
400 times out of 1,000 runs or does it mean that when BP tried a scaled down version in a
swimming pool or a well in shallow water with real, Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) the
procedure worked 3 out of 5 times? If they haven’t done simulations with ROVs shouldn’t we
find out why not after 12 weeks of gushing oil? Where is the evidence for BP’s claims or are
they a company that operates by gut feel rather than evidence-based, decision making? Even the
lottery has to reveal the odds of success based on past payouts.

Another example is the so-called “top hat” process which BP’s Tony Hayward thought would
have a 90 percent chance of being successful. We need to know how many of these hats have
been built in the past (besides the IXTOC 1 sombrero) and how many succeeded in containing a
significant percentage of leaking oil. Otherwise their reassurances are nothing more than PR in
line with the notion that all publicity is good publicity.

Later, when BP was informed that some of our best oceanographers were seeing evidence of oil
plumes, their initial response was that the reports of oil didn’t feel right because oil floats on the
surface. They did not dispatch a fleet of submersibles and research vessels to determine the
extent of the threat, they just told NOAA they had no direct evidence of oil plumes and NOAA
blindly repeated the claims.

It is tempting to assume that since BP has all of the data and the government is looking over
their shoulder that they must be making the right decisions. Unfortunately, their accident record
and recent failures do not support that conclusion.

In fact, during the original top-kill operation the Coast Guard was actually reporting success in
stopping the flow of oil when in reality BP had stopped pumping mud into the well at least 12
hrs before because the procedure had failed. The mud and oil were leaking out of the riser for
all to see on the “spillcams.” How difficult would it have been for the government to have
assigned one person to the ship from which the mud pumps were being controlled to report
independently on when the mud pumps were turned on and off? Apparently just as difficult as it
was for BP to assign one person to monitor the backflow of mud from the original well,
someone who would have known that the well was “coming in” and a blowout was imminent.

It was embarrassing for me to watch those joint press conferences between BP and government
agencies like NOAA, EPA and the Coast Guard knowing full well that BP was spinning every
piece of information they released to the press while the government was congratulating them
on their progress. BP was acting like they were photo-ops and a chance to bolster their products
and their image. The Obama administration was far too slow to realize that BP didn’t always
tell the truth and that BP and the government actually had different agendas. There can be no
more appropriate symbol for the schism between BP and the government than when an aide at
long last ripped the BP logo off the podium before the Coast Guard’s new daily briefings.

The problem is that BP (and the government) have such an unrealistic view of the company’s
operating and decision-making abilities that they put more faith in press releases than in actual
functioning back-up systems. They start to minimize the safety cushion instead of maximizing
it. Once this attitude takes hold of a company, then accidents and disasters become inevitable.

I witnessed a similar dynamic when I was at Enron. I tried to argue that emergency backups
were the first and most important requirement for operating offshore. The company argued that
as long as we had planned redundancy, we only needed one fail-safe. I was overruled; the
system failed and a man died. The company blamed it on the employee’s alleged preexisting
medical condition.

To make matters worse, the previous administration stacked the Minerals Management Service
with people from the oil industry, explaining that only people who had worked in the business
have the expertise to evaluate and regulate industry proposals. Unfortunately, changing hats did
not change their corporate disdain for costly back-up systems. By default, then, the government
itself has become the final back-up system. A better blowout preventer would have been far
more effective.

BP, like Enron, is faced with an impossible conflict of interest. Every decision must be
evaluated in terms of its safety risks, the risks to the environment, the impact on the company’s
image and most importantly, (for them) the impacts on the stock price and future earnings.
Moreover, every decision must be weighed against every action that is not taken in order to
reduce future liabilities. This situation is totally unacceptable.

BP cannot function very well in the midst of this crisis, given the level of government
intervention, public and legal scrutiny, and the tens of billions of dollars at stake. For its part,
the government is facing a buildup of resentment in Britain and has to be concerned that such
resentment could affect British contributions to the wars in the Middle East.

So what could be done to radically improve the situation? Sometimes radical solutions are
needed to solve impossible problems. President Obama should definitely have pulled BP off the
job. This does not mean that the government should have taken over operational control. Given
the MMS’ poor record on safety and ethics and the lack of experience in deepwater, I can’t
think of a worse solution than turning over operations to the government; but there is a better
option. The President could have assigned operations to another major oil company not invested
in the outcome. Obama would, of course, made clear that BP was still picking up the tab. For
the clean-up, he should still create a consortium of environmental groups and toxic clean-up
specialists to make the tough clean-up decisions. This would new operators to make decisions
based on the facts and the evidence rather than the bottom line. This would also permit a new
risk assessment and a new atmosphere of disclosure, since other operators would have had
nothing to gain from secrecy and nothing to lose from failure.

The fact is that this kind of change of operatorship occurs all the time in the oil industry during
a crisis. Whenever one company has more assets than another or wants to pursue a development
strategy more aggressively, they simply buy out the previous operator. Often, an operator runs
into financial difficulties and is forced to sell its interests in a well or development before it can
determine the value. In this case, another company would buy out the entire Macondo prospect
in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico for what it is worth in today’s market. They would then take
over control of all the contractors already on site. I figure that given the indefinite moratorium
on deepwater drilling and the likelihood that the rumored 50 million barrel discovery will never
be developed by BP, that prospect is now worth about $1 to BP. Certainly, another company
would have to ensure that all environmental costs and legal liabilities are borne by BP, which
would also be required to pay all costs associated with abandoning the well. Since, in my
opinion BP America PLC won’t exist much longer in its present form, transfer of operatorship
before BP restructures or sells out would seem to be the best option.

While the media is focused on the oil washing ashore, evidence is building of a far greater
tragedy in the works. This section is intended to give a glimpse of what residents of the Gulf
Coast might have to deal with as a result of BP pouring dispersants in the ocean to hide some of
the evidence of damage.

Dispersants – 2BE or not 2BE?

The BP Deepwater Horizon blowout was no accident. It was a predictable outcome of a

corporate culture that rewarded cutting corners and a cozy relationship with government
oversight agencies like the Minerals Management Service (MMS) which resembled groupies
fawning over a rock band. This was the same MMS by the way which has been implicated in
sex, drugs, porn and bribery scandals in both the Denver, Colorado and the Lake Charles,
Louisiana offices. It is the same agency which overlooked the standard royalty clause for
deepwater leases and accidentally granted the oil industry a $50 billion tax windfall.

The aftermath of the blowout is no accident either and it may well determine the future health
of the Gulf of Mexico. Once again government agencies (like NOAA and the EPA) were
simply following BP’s lead rather than doing their homework and protecting this country’s
resources. The recent use of toxic dispersants in America is a disgrace and an insult to science.
A brief history of global dispersant use sets the stage.

History of Dispersant Use:

In 1978, The AMOCO (now BP) Cadiz tanker broke apart on the Brittany Coast of France and
spilled about 1.7 million barrels (70 million gallons) of oil stretched across 200 miles of
shoreline. The French Navy tried several dispersants but they were ineffective and highly toxic.
Some contained the carcinogen benzene. After the spill, one of the chemical company
subsidiaries of ELF Aquitaine produced an early form of COREXIT dispersant called Inipol.
In the United Kingdom, in 1996, the Sea Empress spilled about ½ million barrels of oil on the
coastline of Wales. They sprayed over 100,000 gallons of dispersant, but have since banned the
use of COREXIT because it failed to meet the toxicity requirements for their rocky shorelines.

In Australia last year, 50,000 gallons of dispersants were used on the 9 million gallon Montara
oil spill in the northern Timor Sea.

In the US, dispersants were generally applied to small spills off the coast of Louisiana and
Texas. Then came the massive Ixtoc 1 blowout in 1979 offshore Mexico on the Campeche
Bank. Pemex used over 1 million gallons of mostly Inipol dispersant applied over a five-month
period on the blowout which spewed more than 3 million barrels of oil

A decade later the use of dispersants took on a whole new meaning. Toxic dispersants were
used liberally by Exxon after the Valdez tanker spill in 1989. . The clean-up was organized and
administered by Alyeska Pipeline Services Company. This consortium of five oil companies
maintains the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and is responsible for the cleanup of spills. It is controlled
by none other than BP, which owns nearly half of the company shares. Immediately after the
spill, Exxon began purchasing large quantities of dispersant (Inipol) from the French oil
company, Elf Aquitaine, which later merged with Total. The Inipol dispersant contained 12% of
a toxic solvent known as 2 Butoxyethanol or 2BE. This in small concentrations is the active
ingredient in Formula 409 all purpose cleaner (0.5 to 5% 2BE) and several other household
cleaners. At higher concentrations, 2 BE is a registered herbicide and a major component of
several dispersants and degreasers.

Seeing an opportunity, Exxon quickly bought the patent from the French and began
manufacturing a dispersant with a new formula (Inipol EAP 22) later called COREXIT 9527
through the Exxon Chemicals division. The only problem was that their new formula, which
contained 38% of 2BE did not have EPA approval. Not to worry, they figured out that all they
needed to do was submit the forms and their own test results and the dispersant would
magically appear on the EPA National Contingency Plan (NCP) list and be permitted for use.
(See the current disclaimer below on the EPA NCP site.43)

Excerpt from the EPA NCP Product Schedule:

Disclaimer: [Product Name] is on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s NCP Product
Schedule. This listing does NOT mean that EPA approves, recommends, licenses, certifies, or
authorizes the use of [Product Name] on an oil discharge. The listing means only that data have
been submitted to EPA as required by subpart J of the National Contingency Plan, Section
300.915. (Source: 40 CFR §300.920 (e)).

Exxon began using the new 2BE formula even before the EPA had tested it for toxicity. After
the oil washed ashore they began calling Inipol EAP 22 a surfactant, suitable for
bioremediation. In fact the COREXIT Materials Safety Data Sheets44 (MSDS) carried the
warning, “No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product."

Ultimately, 72 miles of Alaskan beaches were sprayed with 460,000 lbs of this Inipol
surfactant. These surfactants were not very effective and were harmful to the environment.
According to a NOAA incident sheet “It took longer for some sections of shoreline to recover
from some of the invasive cleaning methods (hot water flushing in particular) than from the
oiling itself45.”Environment Reporter, Vol. 23, No. 51, p3168 (April 16, 1993).

Exxon must have known from previous tanker spills that any money spent on dispersant and
clean-up operations could be used to reduce settlement costs in later court cases. [Court records
will have to be examined to determine if they included the price of the manufacturing rights in
their mitigation costs.] Of course, when later the case went to court, Exxon claimed that it had
spent millions on the spill cleanup. Neither the jury nor the judge had any way of knowing that
part of those millions Exxon actually paid to themselves for the dispersants. What better way to
reduce liability than to pay yourself? This is a lesson that was not lost on later oil companies
dealing with spills and blowouts like the current Gulf of Mexico catastrophe.
The health impacts on cleanup workers exposed to oil and COREXIT in Alaska are still being
revealed and publicized by Dr. Riki Ott, a toxicologist, author and community activist. Her May
2010 essay “Lessons from the Exxon Valdez Spill46” claims:

“After the 2002 Prestige oil spill off Galicia, Spain, and the 2007 Hebei Spirit oil spill in South
Korea, medical doctors found fishermen and cleanup workers suffered from respiratory
problems, central nervous system problems (headaches, nausea, dizziness, etc.), and even
genetic damage (South Korea). I have attended two international conferences the past two years
to share information with these doctors.

During the Exxon Valdez spill, health problems among cleanup workers became so widespread,
so fast, that medical doctors, among others, sounded warnings. Dr. Robert Rigg, former Alaska
medical director for Standard Alaska (BP), warned, “It is a known fact that neurologic changes
(brain damage), skin disorders (including cancer), liver and kidney damage, cancer of other
organ systems, and medical complications–secondary to exposure to working unprotected in (or
inadequately protected)–can and will occur to workers exposed to crude oil and other
petrochemical by-products. While short-term complaints, i.e., skin irritation, nausea, dizziness,
pulmonary symptoms, etc., may be the initial signs of exposure and toxicity, the more serious
long-term effects must be prevented.”[1]

Unfortunately, Exxon called the short-term symptoms, “the Valdez Crud,” and dismissed 6,722
cases of respiratory claims from cleanup workers as “colds or flu” using an exemption under
OSHA’s hazardous waste cleanup reporting requirements.[2]

Sadly, sick Exxon cleanup workers were left to suffer and pay their own medical expenses. I
know of many who have been disabled by their illnesses – or have died.”

The Centers for Disease Control NIOSH website recently posted symptoms of oil spill cleanup
workers from around the world.

The use of 2 Butoxyethanol [2BE] is still common today The EPA pre-approved the use of
Exxon's COREXIT 9527 dispersant for the BP Gulf of Mexico blowout. This dispersant
contains47 up to 60% of 2BE and NALCO Chemicals now claims they no longer manufacture
this particular COREXIT formula. This leads us to ask where did the 200,000 to 300,000 gals
of this dispersant that was dumped indiscriminately in the Gulf come from? Was it sitting in BP
and Exxon warehouses in Texas and Alaska just waiting to be dumped? Or perhaps it was
quickly manufactured and then discontinued when the blogosphere started to publicize that it
contained 2BE.These are questions which the EPA should pursue since they are going to be
held responsible for the massive use of these toxic substances.
.
According to the ATSDR profile48, 2BE carries the following risks for human health.

Human exposure

Moderate respiratory exposure to 2-butoxyethanol often results in irritation of mucous

membranes of the eyes, nose and throat. Heavy exposure via respiratory, dermal or oral routes
can lead to hypotension, metabolic acidosis, hemolysis, pulmonary edema and coma. For
animals, chronic inhalation exposure at even low concentration can cause organ failures and
mortality.
Although the Materials Safety Data Sheets [MSDS] for these dispersants do not list all of the
environmental and health data for these chemicals it is still possible to find it through the CDC.
The CDC dispersants webpage49 shows the critical components of COREXIT:

COREXIT EC9527A contains between 30-60% of 2-butoxyethanol (solvent) and COREXIT

9500 contains between 10-30% of petroleum distillates (kerosene solvent). The following are
the excerpts from those Materials Safety Data Sheets:

2-Butoxyethanol
Several occupational exposure limits (OELs) have been established for 2-butoxyethanol. The
legally enforceable OEL in the United States is the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL). For airborne 2-butoxyethanol the
OSHA PEL is 50 parts per million (ppm) for up to a full work shift.
The NIOSH [National Institute for Safety and Health] Recommended Exposure Limit (REL)
for 2-butoxyethanol is 5 ppm, also for up to a full work shift. The NIOSH REL is intended to
minimize potential long-term health effects to workers, primarily hemolysis of red blood cells
(RBCs). Hemolysis of RBCs has been found in animals exposed to 2-butoxyethanol, but recent
data suggests that human RBCs are less susceptible to these effects. Both the OSHA PEL and
NIOSH REL contain guidance to minimize skin contact with 2-butoxyethanol.

Petroleum Distillates

Petroleum distillates are a colorless liquid with a gasoline- or kerosene-like odor. They are
composed of a mixture of paraffins (C5 to C13) that may contain a small amount of aromatic
hydrocarbons. Because dispersants containing petroleum distillates are sprayed and generate
mists, OELs for mineral oil mist are applicable.
Exposure to oil mist can cause irritation to the eyes, skin, or respiratory tract. The OSHA PEL
and NIOSH REL for mineral oil mist are 5 mg/m3 up to a full workshift. NIOSH also specifies
a short-term exposure limit for oil mist of 10 mg/m3, which is the average amount of oil mist a
worker may be exposed to over 15 minutes without experiencing health effects. NIOSH also
recommends preventing skin contact with oil mist.

At the New Jersey Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet on 2-butoxyethanol 50 there is an additional
warning for 2BE:

The threshold limit value (TLV) is 20 ppm averaged over an 8-hour workshift.

2-Butoxy Ethanol may be a CARCINOGEN in humans . There may be no safe level of

exposure to a carcinogen, so all contact should be reduced to the lowest possible level. The
above exposure limits are for air levels only. When skin contact also occurs, you may be
overexposed, even though air levels are less than the limits listed above.

From this it is clear that the average inhalation limit is very low and that 2BE could cause
cancer from air contact, skin contact or both from prolonged exposure
The New Jersey Hazardous Substance excerpt below describes both the short-term and long-
term human health effects of 2BE

Acute Health Effects

The following acute (short-term) health effects may occur immediately or shortly after
exposure to 2-Butoxy Ethanol: Contact can irritate the skin and eyes with possible eye
damage. Inhaling 2-Butoxy Ethanol can irritate the nose and throat causing coughing
and wheezing.
2-Butoxy Ethanol can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain.
Exposure can cause headache, dizziness, confusion, lightheadedness, and passing out.

Chronic Health Effects

The following chronic (long-term) health effects can occur at some time after exposure
to 2-Butoxy Ethanol and can last for months or years:

Cancer Hazard
2-Butoxy Ethanol may be a CARCINOGEN in humans since it has been shown to
cause liver cancer in animals. Many scientists believe there is no safe level of exposure
to a carcinogen.

Reproductive Hazard
2-Butoxy Ethanol may damage the developing fetus. There is limited evidence that 2-
Butoxy Ethanol may damage the male reproductive system (including decreasing the
sperm count) in animals and may affect female fertility in animals.
Other Effects
2-Butoxy Ethanol may damage the liver and kidneys.

Mixed Exposures
More than light alcohol consumption can cause liver damage. Drinking alcohol may
increase the liver damage caused by 2-Butoxy Ethanol.

Where the potential exists for exposure over 50 ppm, use a NIOSH approved supplied-air
respirator with a full facepiece operated in a pressure-demand or other positive-pressure mode.
For increased protection use in combination with an auxiliary self-contained breathing apparatus
operated in a pressure-demand or other positive-pressure mode. Exposure to 700 ppm is
immediately dangerous to life and health51. If the possibility of exposure above 700 ppm
exists, use a NIOSH approved self-contained breathing apparatus with a full facepiece operated
in a pressure-demand or other positive-pressure mode equipped with an emergency escape air
cylinder.

The warning above is rarely mentioned in any of the company COREXIT safety literature. That
is probably in part because the oil companies don’t want to be required to provide breathing
apparatus and also because they don’t want clean-up workers to know that they could be risking
their lives if they come in close contact with these chemicals.

The NIOSH document52 links to information on mortality for 2BE. Here you will find data on
lethal concentrations to test animals exposed to 2 BE.
Toxicity Data

Lethal concentration data:

LC50 LCLo Adjusted 0.5-hr Derived

Species Reference (ppm) (ppm) Time LC (CF) Value
Rat Dodd et al. 1983 450 ----- 4 hr 900 ppm (2.0) 90 ppm
Mouse Werner et al. 1943 700 ----- 7 hr 1,680 ppm (2.4) 168 ppm

It is not at all clear that the EPA considered all of these links on their website and the
documentation that supports these toxicity conclusions before they pre-approved the use of
hundreds of thousands of gallons of this material which could wash ashore. Still given these
warnings it is imperative that the EPA immediately halt the use of COREXIT 9527 with 2 BE
and demand the complete formula for COREXIT 9500 with petroleum distillates. At the very
least, the government should set up a protocol to carefully monitor the long-term health of all
workers involved with cleaning up the BP spill. It is likely that the manufacturer never
anticipated that these products would be utilized in such enormous quantities or ever intended
to expose 40,000 workers to their effects. They certainly never imagined that they would be
applied near public beaches where millions of people enjoy their recreation every summer.

The health effects on clean-up workers in Louisiana have already been felt. The LA Times53
(5/26/10) reports that:

“some fishermen who have been hired by BP to clean up the gulf oil spill say they have become
ill after working long hours near waters fouled with oil and dispersant, prompting a Louisiana
lawmaker to call on the federal government to open mobile clinics in rural areas to treat them.
The fishermen report severe headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty breathing. Concerned
by the reports, Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius asking the agency's help providing medical treatment, especially in
Plaquemines Parish, a southern region where many fishermen live…”

More recently, an article by Elana Schor (Greenwire 7/9/10) disclosed that 20% of offshore
cleanup workers and 15% of onshore responders which BP tested had been exposed to levels of
2BE up to 10 parts per million. Firedoglake reports:

“Data from Louisiana Office of Public Health shows that almost half of workers reporting
illnesses were working offshore. Their symptoms include headaches, nausea, vomiting, sore
throat, coughing, shortness of breath, and irritation of the nose and eyes - symptoms consistent
with of exposure to 2-butoxyethanol.”

These are clear indicators for some scientists concerned with worker health.

“To Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist who studied the 1989 Exxon Valdez
spill off Alaska, it's "déjà vu."

"What we saw with Exxon Valdez was a parallel track — sick animals and
sick people. Harbor seals were looking like they were drunk and dying …
 and autopsies showed brain lesions. … What are we exposing these poor
fishermen to?" Ott said. …

The United Command has previously responded by temporarily recalling 130 vessels
contracted to help clean-up the oil offshore. They have since suggested that the fishermen may
have been overcome by heat stroke. The United Command probably has not read the NIOSH
warning for lethal concentrations of 2 BE excerpted below:

Basis for original (SCP) IDLH: The chosen IDLH is based on the mouse 7-hour LC 50 of
700 ppm [Werner et al. 1943 cited by Patty 1963, Browning 1965, and ACGIH 1971]. No other
useful data are available on which to base the IDLH. The chosen IDLH is probably
conservative, because Patty [1963] reported that exposure of workers for several hours to 300
to 600 ppm would probably cause respiratory and eye irritation, narcosis, and damage to
the kidney and liver. Both Patty [1963] and ACGIH [1971] noted that humans appear to be
more resistant to the toxic effects of 2-butoxyethanol [Carpenter et al. 1956], which further
indicates that the chosen IDLH might be conservative.

Lethal dose data:

LD50 LDLo
Species Reference Route (mg/kg) (mg/kg) Adjusted LD Derived value
Mouse Carpenter et al. 1956 oral 1,230 ----- 1,754 ppm 175 ppm
Rat Dow 1986 oral 470 ----- 670 ppm 67 ppm
Rabbit Dow 1986 oral 300 ----- 428 ppm 43 ppm
G. pig Smyth et al. 1941 oral 1,200 ----- 1,711 ppm 171 ppm
Rat Smyth et al. 1941 oral 1,480 ----- 2,110 ppm 211 ppm

Human data: It has been stated that humans would be able to tolerate saturated concentrations (i.e.,
about 1,000 ppm) for 1 hour without experiencing any significant nonreversible effects [Carpenter et al.
1956].

Revised IDLH: 700 ppm [Unchanged]

Basis for revised IDLH: Based on acute inhalation toxicity data in humans [Carpenter et al. 1956], a
value of about 1,000 ppm would have been appropriate for 2-butoxyethanol. However, the original
IDLH for 2-butoxyethanol (700 ppm) is not being revised at this time.

It has also been rumored that 2BE may have been partly a cause for the Gulf War Syndrome.
Huge amounts of COREXIT were sent to the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War in 1991.
COREXIT was used on oil spills in the Persian Gulf (the largest in history) and solvents
containing 2BE were used for cleaning vehicles and distributed to soldiers for cleaning their
weapons. It is clear that some veterans of the war (diagnosed with Gulf War Syndrome) and
clean-up workers from Alaska have shown the same set of symptoms and complained of the
same chronic health problems.

Dead Zones
Despite these significant health risks to the population, an even greater threat from COREXIT
dispersants may be lurking just below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico. Until recently, few
people recognized the potential for COREXIT to significantly deplete the levels of oxygen in a
major water body. However, now that BP has chosen to dump nearly 2 million gallons
(including over 750,000 gallons in the deep ocean) scientists are becoming concerned. Yet, it is
unlikely that the EPA has recognized the relevance of its own studies on the use of de-icers in
airports and the risk of oxygen depletion in the Gulf. The warnings issued in their report take on
a whole new meaning in the context of deliberating dumping dispersants in the ocean at levels
never before contemplated.

The oxygen balance of the Gulf of Mexico has always been somewhat precarious. The
tolerance of most living organisms found there has rested on a thin knife edge. Too many
nutrients and the microscopic plants and animals use up that oxygen giving rise to the so-called
“dead zones” each summer along the Louisiana coast. Most studies indicate that at dissolved
oxygen levels below 2mg/l many fish and shellfish begin to die off. Since the normal level for
dissolved oxygen throughout much of the Gulf of Mexico is slightly above 4 mg/l this does not
leave a lot of oxygen to spare.

Low oxygen levels or Hypoxia can sometimes cause death to bottom dwelling organisms which
are unable to leave the area. These hypoxic zones have been thoroughly mapped
spatiotemporally. Seasonal stratification is believed to contribute significantly to the
development of hypoxic zones in combination with the nutrients which pour into the Gulf from
the Mississippi River. These nutrients come primarily from the runoff of nitrogen and
phosphate fertilizers and waste from farms upstream. It is the salinity stratification of the
summer months which prevents the mixing of oxygen from the surface waters.

Eutrophication is caused by algal blooms responding to the nutrient overload. The traditional model for
the development of hypoxia is shown below.

Figure 32 Model for Development of Hypoxic Conditions

The Dead Zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico is the largest in the U.S. and the second largest
in the world.
 Source: Jacques Descloitres
Figure 33 MODIS Image of N Gulf of Mexico Jan 2003

This satellite image of the northern Mississippi Delta54 shows hypoxic coastal water (light
blue). This color change is due to excessive nutrients being washed into the sea

Source: NASA
Figure 34 Seasonal Change of Dead Zones in 2004

Hypoxia in the northern Gulf normally develops in late February and lasts through early
October. It is strongest in the summer months from June to August. Hypoxic waters are present
at depths from 15 to 100 feet has extended up to 80 miles offshore. These dead zones can be
disastrous to commercial fisheries along the coast and they are accelerating and become more
widespread in marine environments worldwide.
 Source: Rabalais
Figure 35 Catch rates of Shrimp and Fish relative to Dissolved Oxygen

The Gulf is a major source of seafood for the U.S and supplies 16% of commercial fish, 66% of
harvested oysters and 72 % of harvested oysters. The charts above55 indicate that the
commercial catches of shrimp and fish drop to near zero when the dissolved oxygen levels drop
below 2 mg/l. If the hypoxic zones worsen it will have a huge impact on fishermen and coastal
economies. A new dead zone was discovered in 2007 on the Texas Coast at the mouth of the
Brazos River.

Dr Nancy Rabalais and her colleagues have been studying seasonal oxygen trends56 and have
projected that in 2009 the area of hypoxic zones may have shrunk significantly. This appears to
reverse a 5-year trend of expansion and would be good news for the marine ecosystem in the
Northern Gulf.
 Source: Rabalais
Figure 36 Annual Area of Hypoxic Zones

As you can see by the chart above, 2009 falls well below the long-term average. If that trend
could have continued, then the Gulf of Mexico might have met the goal of reducing the hypoxic
areas to less than 2,500 square kilometers. Sadly, there is little chance of reaching that target
now in 2010 due to the BP Blowout and environmental fallout.

The first reason is that merely having a blanket of oil on top of the Gulf waters reduces mixing
and aeration and could impede stratification. The second problem is that the oil itself acts like
an organic food source for oil-eating bacteria that have evolved to benefit from the natural oil
seeps which have occurred for epochs.

Finally, the potential impacts of the dispersants on the oxygen balance of the Gulf of Mexico
have not been fully revealed until now. It may take years to completely appreciate the
catastrophe that awaits the Gulf ecosystem, but by the time people realize what environmental
crimes have been committed it will be too late to reverse their effects.

As I have described above, COREXIT 9527 contains up to 60% 2BE. However, a little known
fact is just how much oxygen these dispersants consume while they are being degraded.
According to some reports, 2-Butoxy ethanol has a very high biological oxygen demand and is
considered to be readily biodegradable. Biodegradation reached 74% in the Modified Sturm
carbon dioxide evolution test. This means that in the Closed Bottle test the chemical consumed
more than70% of the theoretical oxygen demand, with no inhibition of the test system.
Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) was 0. 70 gram oxygen consumed/gram product using
unadapted and 1.63 gram oxygen consumed/gram product using adapted sewage seed.BOD for
adapted sewage seed was 71% of theoretical oxygen demand and the Chemical oxygen demand
(COD) is 2.18 gram oxygen consumed/gram product.

Finding truth, like oil, often requires deep drilling; the former through public relations and the
latter through mere rock. A case in point is the decision by the EPA and NOAA to allow BP to
utilize COREXIT in enormous quantities. It has been estimated that more than 250,000 gals of
COREXIT 9527 has been used on this blowout. That represents about an eighth of all the
dispersant (mostly COREXIT 9500) used so far. That is a terrifying amount of chemical given
the level of toxicity and limited effectiveness as shown on the EPA NCP.

Toxicity and Effectiveness

Dispersants
Toxicity
(LC50 values in Effectiveness (%)
Product ppm)
(1:10 Product-to-No. Prudhoe Average
South
2 Fuel Oil ratio) Menidia Mysidopsis Bay of
Louisiana
(96-hr) (48-hr) Crude Crude
Crude Oil
Oil Oils
BIODISPERS 5.95 2.66 51.00 63.00 57.00
COREXIT EC9500A
®
2.61 3.40 45.30 54.70 50.00
COREXIT® EC9527A 4.49 6.60 37.40 63.40 50.40

Contrast the toxicity and effectiveness of COREXIT 9527 along with the much higher volume
of COREXIT 9500 that BP has used equal to at least 1 million gallons. COREXIT 9500 was
supposed to be a less toxic form of the earlier Exxon COREXIT 9527 formula. The EPA chart
above shows that COREXIT 9500 is both more toxic and less effective than COREXIT 9527.
True, they removed the 2BE, but they replaced it with unknown petroleum distillates as the
solvent.

On June 30, 2010, the EPA released their study “Comparative Toxicity of Eight Oil Dispersant
Products on Two Gulf of Mexico Aquatic Test Species”. Not only did it admittedly fail to
measure toxicity of the dispersants in combination with the oil, it continues to compare acute
toxicities of dispersants for mysid shrimp and silversides. They also conveniently managed to
ignore the toxicity of the hundreds of thousands of gallons of COREXIT 9527 which they
allowed BP to dump into the ocean. Either NOAA and the EPA haven’t figured out that oxygen
consumption and chronic inhalation are the greatest risks or they have deliberately tried to
divert attention away from the serious harm that dispersants can cause. Either way they have
completely missed the boat in assessing dispersant risks and have ignored oxygen depletion in
shallow water. Their July report which will look at oil and dispersants in combination is not
likely to be a significant improvement.

Worse still, one of the main ingredients of COREXIT is propylene glycol (1-5%) which has one
of the highest known biological oxygen demands. Propylene glycol is a component in newer
automotive antifreezes and de-icers used at airports. In a 2009 report for EPA, “Environmental
Impact and Benefit Assessment for Proposed Effluent Limitation Guidelines and Standards for
the Airport Deicing Category57,”they conclude the following:
 “Though more expensive than ethylene glycol, propylene glycol is considerably less toxic to
human beings and other mammals. When released to surface waters in large quantities,
however, it has the potential to consume large quantities of dissolved oxygen from the water
column, potentially affecting the ecosystem and human use of aquatic resources…”

“Propylene glycol is known to exert high levels of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) during
degradation in surface waters. Sufficient [dissolved oxygen] DO levels in surface waters are
critical for the survival of fish, macroinvertebrates, and other aquatic organisms. If oxygen
concentrations drop below a minimum level, organisms emigrate, if able and possible, to areas
with higher oxygen levels or eventually die. This effect can drastically reduce the amount of
useable aquatic habitat. Reductions in DO levels can reduce or eliminate bottom-feeder
populations, create conditions that favor a change in a community’s species profile, or alter
critical food-web interactions. [22] Discharges of raw or partially treated sewage from cities and
towns were a common cause of low oxygen conditions in surface waters prior to implementation
of more stringent sewage treatment requirements under the Clean Water Act. The oxygen
depletion potential of airport deicing operation discharges is many times greater than that of raw
sewage. For example, before application, Type I propylene glycol-based deicing fluid is
generally diluted to a mixture containing approximately 50% propylene glycol. Pure propylene
glycol has a BOD5 concentration of approximately 1,000,000 mg/L. A typical diluted
propylene-based deicing fluid could therefore have a BOD5 concentration of approximately
500,000 mg/L. In comparison, raw sewage typically has a BOD5 concentration of
approximately 200 mg/L. The amount of fluid used to deice a single jet depends on the nature
of the precipitation event and the size of the aircraft but can range from a couple hundred to
several thousand gallons. Therefore, deicing a single jet can generate a BOD5 load greater than
that of one million gallons of raw sewage. A large hub airport often has several hundred flights
each day. Pavement deicers applied to airfield pavement can also exert significant BOD. The
BOD5 generated from deicing activities at a large airport in a single day can therefore equal the
BOD5 associated with the raw sewage from more than one million people (or a large city) (US
EPA 2008a).”

If the runoff from the propylene glycol deicing of a single airport in a single day is equal to the
raw sewage of a city of a million people, imagine what more than one million gallons of a
chemical which uses 2500 times more oxygen than raw sewage can do to the water column.
Already there are reports of water samples containing as much as 400 parts per million
propylene glycol. So far we have only scratched the surface of this ever growing problem. Now
let us probe deeper.
 Source: Rabalais & Turner
Figure 37 Dissolved Oxygen, Temperature and Salinity from S. Louisiana 1992

The chart above shows the monthly development of the hypoxic zone58 near Terrebonne Ph,
Louisiana during the summer of 1992. The vertical profiles of Dissolved Oxygen (mg/L) are
shown by the blue circles. These profiles show that an abrupt drop in dissolved oxygen from
8mg/L to near zero occurred at a depth of between 10 and 15 meters off Southeastern Louisiana
between March and August. This is precisely the time and place and depth where the oil slick is
projected to remain throughout the summer of 2010.

The million gallons of dispersants used at the surface do not really clean-up the oil; they merely
move it deeper into the water column. Many experts believe that by breaking up the oil into
smaller droplets the dispersants spread the oil and dispersant emulsions throughout the upper 10
meters or so of the water column. Given the extremely high oxygen demand of these
dispersants (as detailed above) it is reasonable to assume that the development of this year’s
hypoxic zones could be the most extensive and dramatic on record. This could easily lead to
massive fish kills since the dead zones could spread too quickly and too far for fish to simply
swim away. It could also spell the destruction of shrimp and oyster beds in the coastal region
due to low oxygen levels. While this could be a disaster for the Gulf Coast seafood industry it is
not the worst that can happen.

According to a press release from the Coast Guard’s United Command, by the middle of July
2010, BP had already dumped over 750,000 gallons of dispersant at the wellhead and riser a
mile down at the seafloor. In reality, this is the only part of the whole operation which is
unprecedented in the Gulf of Mexico. It represents an experiment on a colossal scale and the
outcome could determine the life or death of the Gulf for decades.

As we have already seen, the Northern Gulf of Mexico already struggles to maintain enough
oxygen during summer to support a healthy ecosystem. The deep vertical profile of dissolved
oxygen reveals a great deal about this struggle. This chart shows that in the Central Gulf of
Mexico an oxygen minimum (< 3 ml/L) is reached near 400 m about (1300 ft). From there
oxygen increases rapidly (> 4 ml/L to around a depth of 1200 m (about 4000 ft) where it begins
to increase more slowly. Maximum oxygen levels are reached near the bottom below 3000 m
(close to 10,000 ft). While some may argue approximately 2 million gallons of dispersant can
have little impact on the Gulf as a whole, it must be remembered that as organisms die and
accumulate in the Gulf, the decaying organic matter uses up even more oxygen. The result is a
cascading failure of oxygen lowering events which could significantly impact biological
productivity for years.

First the oil spreads a suffocating blanket across the surface forcing organisms that can migrate
to move deeper while bacteria use up oxygen consuming the oil. The migrating organisms
encounter more dispersants which themselves have a high oxygen demand creating more
hypoxic zones. The dead organisms sink to the seafloor where they are confronted with more
concentrations of dispersants using up the remaining oxygen and preventing any significant
oxygen replenishment from the deep inflowing currents. It is a perfect storm of oxygen
deprivation brought on by BP and being played out beneath the surface of the ocean. This
storm can only result in massive ecosystem disruption. The victims will not only be the marine
life, but those who are dependent on it for their livelihoods and survival.
 Source: Nowlin and McLellaan (1967) and Nowlin et al. (1969).
Figure 38: Vertical Distribution of Oxygen in Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean

Plumes
So, given the low oxygen scenario, the existence of the recently discovered oil and dispersant
plumes in the deep Gulf of Mexico are particularly troubling. The first signs of trouble popped
up on May 12, 2010. By that time, the EPA had authorized the use of some 400,000 gals of
dispersants at the surface and subsea. EPA Director Lisa Jackson estimated then that the ratio of
COREXIT (9527 and 9500) dispersants was about 50/50.

A report which appeared in Nature (5/18/10) said that scientists from Mississippi Universities
had encountered unusual conditions at a depth of about 3,000 feet. They noticed that oxygen
levels had dropped and their fluorometer was measuring high levels of fluorescence often
indicative of oil. In addition their transmissometer was telling them that the water had suddenly
become quite murky. Soon they were able to map a plume which extended in a southwest
direction from the blowout. The plume seemed to remain about 300 ft above the sea floor and
followed the deep currents in that area. The plume was about 15 to 20 miles long and 4 or 5
miles wide and was already beginning to deplete the oxygen in nearby water by as much as 30
percent. On the next trip they discovered numerous plumes at various depths far from the
wellhead. Although the project was funded by NOAA, the chief administrator, Dr Jane
Lubchenco, was initially skeptical of their conclusions, but several scientists came to their
defense.

As reported in the NYT (May 20, 2010),

“The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other
agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in
the deep ocean. They are especially concerned about getting a better handle on problems that
may be occurring from large plumes of oil droplets that appear to be spreading beneath the
ocean surface…”

“Rick Steiner, a marine biologist and a veteran of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, assailed
NOAA in an interview, declaring that it had been derelict in analyzing conditions beneath the
sea. Mr. Steiner said the likelihood of extensive undersea plumes of oil droplets should have
been anticipated from the moment the spill began, given that such an effect from deepwater
blowouts had been predicted in the scientific literature for more than a decade, and confirmed in
a test off the coast of Norway. An extensive sampling program to map and characterize those
plumes should have been put in place from the first days of the spill, he said...”

Then on May 27, 2010, scientists from the University of South Florida reported finding a large
undersea plume stretching 22 miles from the wellhead to the Northeast towards Mobile Bay
Alabama. They found the plume was about 6 miles wide and stretched from the surface to about
3300 ft. Undoubtedly, additional plumes are present at various depths which have not yet been
mapped.

So why on earth would BP choose these particular blends of dispersants to mix with the oil?
The answer once again revolves around politics, power and money. As previously mentioned,
much of the supply of dispersants came from oil companies or NALCO Holding Company.
Nalco and Exxon Chemical Company formed a joint venture company in 1994 called
Nalco/Exxon Energy Chemicals L.P. Nalco was acquired in 1999 by the multinational
corporation then called Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, which eventually bought out Exxon Mobil’s
interest in the joint venture in 2001. NALCO subsequently held an initial public offering (IPO)
and its major shareholders are unknown but some reports suggest that BP may hold a
significant interest. Meanwhile, BP had stockpiled a third of the world’s supply of dispersants,
mostly COREXIT. When the order came from BP for huge quantities of COREXIT, NALCO
stock increased. According to the Dow Jones Newswire59 on May 3rd 2010:

“Its shares jumped 18 percent to $29.25, hitting its highest point since October 2007…”
“The Jefferies analysts said Nalco wouldn't likely be the only supplier of the chemicals as they
are made by many other firms, including BP itself. But they said it could lead to somewhere
between $35 million and $80 million in sales, or about 1 percent to 2 percent of total Nalco
revenue…”

This is not the only financial link to the manufacturers of COREXIT. The Nalco website60 states
that Rodney F. Chase became a member of [NALCO] Board of Directors in May 2005. Mr.
Chase is a former Deputy Group Chief Executive of BP and served on the board of BP for
eleven years. He retired from BP in April 2003 after 38 years of service.

Furthermore, Exxon (the previous manufacturer of COREXIT) along with BP had large
stockpiles of COREXIT. It is connected to NALCO through Vice president Steve Taylor and
another Board Member. Daniel S. Sanders became a member of [NALCO] board of directors in
January 2005. Mr. Sanders is the former President, ExxonMobil Chemical Company, and Vice
President, ExxonMobil Corporation. He retired from ExxonMobil on August 31, 2004 after 43
years of service. In 1988, Mr. Sanders became Executive Assistant to the Chairman and
President of Exxon Corporation, and in 1990 was appointed Senior Vice President of Exxon
Company, U.S.A.

Given that at least two Board members had been connected to COREXIT use, they also likely
had financial incentives through stock to promote its distribution. Is it any wonder that they
virtually ignored any requests from the EPA to find a safer more effective dispersant than
COREXIT? Nor is it surprising that Lamar McKay (Chairman of BP America) pleaded
ignorance when he was brought before Congress and questioned about the use of COREXIT61.
(As reported by the LA Times May 19, 2010)

“Asked by Rep John Hall (D-NY)

Hall: Why do you think COREXIT would have been chosen over, as Mr. Nadler [Rep.
Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)] said, a less toxic and more effective product like Dispersit, for
instance, which you would think would be a better choice, and did BP talk to -- did your
company talk to the manufacturers of the other dispersants to find out if they were
available?
McKay: I've not been personally involved in the choices around the dispersants and
what's happened in terms of talking to companies and understanding the availability, the
effectiveness or the choices they have made. We can get you some information on that.
I've just not been involved in that.”

“Asked by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)

Now, you remember you're under oath. Who decided -- and don't tell me the National
Incident Command. They authorized the use, as I understand, of any dispersant on this
list. Who decided which dispersant to use -- BP? McKay: I don't know the --
Nadler: You don't know.
McKay: I don't know the individual who decided --
Nadler: I didn't ask the individual. Was it the BP who decided or was it the government
who decided, or the National Incident Command?
McKay: I don't know. I don't –

It may have been wiser for him to have pleaded the 5th Amendment because that is a phrase he
will probably become very familiar with in the coming months. That is especially true when it
comes to questions about the potentially criminal use of dispersants by BP in the Gulf of
Mexico.

Louisiana will not be the only victim of this disaster, but this is where the bargain with the devil
was made. For more than 50 years, its residents have turned their back on environmental
concerns caused by oil development offshore while saying “it can’t happen here.”
Partly, I suppose, the whole state of Louisiana is like a company town. If you want to work for
—or have friends or family work for—the company, you don’t complain. But like their product,
the oil companies, too, represent concentrated power, power that can be focused and directed.
Much of that lost $15 billion in economic value from the subsiding delta was lost to fishermen.
Individual shrimp boat captains cannot afford to sponsor advertising campaigns to air
grievances. Their dispersed power is no match for the likes of BP and Exxon, so their
grievances go unresolved. In the history of oil production in Mexico, we see these repressed
grievances, like oil, building pressure under the surface—until tapped.
Mexico

All petroleum companies in Mexico have been a blessing to the communities in which
they have operated.

---- Edward L. Doheny, 192262

Source: EIA
Figure 39: Index Map of Mexico

In Mexico, the rocks that produce oil are more clearly exposed than they are in south (See
figure 22 below.) I had always wanted to get a closer look at them. When I was offered the
chance to lead a field expedition into northern Mexico in 1980 to collect samples, study oil
seeps and photograph the structures, I felt like I was back in my element. My time as a
paleontologist would serve me well, but I am a geologist at heart—I prefer mountains to
microscopes.

We worked in box canyons called potreros which the local people used as corals for rounding
up their animals. It was common for the entrance to the canyons to be flat as a floor and for the
walls to rise to more than 1,000 feet at the end and sides. An anticline is a geologic crease, as if
all the layers involved had been hit from below by the blade of a shovel. They push up, with the
youngest layers still on top of the oldest and, in cross-section with either side in opposite
inclinations. The potreros fit between the hills in these creases and it was not hard to imagine
these anticlines rounding up something other than cattle under their surface. That explains why
the first oil exploration teams found some of the largest onshore oil fields in Mexico with barely
a dry hole. One of the first oilmen on the scene was none other than our friend from Beverly
Hills, Edward Doheny, who found oil in the Huasteca region in 1900. By 1921 his Mexican
Petroleum Company was making $100 million a year.63
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 40: 2008 image of Monterrey showing box canyons

In 2008 Mexico was the seventh largest oil producer in the world and ranks just behind the
United States and Canada among Western Hemisphere producers. The state-owned company,
PEMEX, is one of the world’s largest oil companies and it has held a virtual monopoly on all
petroleum activities in the country since about 1938 when foreign companies were nationalized.
As a result, it is difficult to obtain reliable estimates of oil reserves and production and nearly
impossible to get data on Produced Water. Nevertheless, many experts agree that, overall, crude
oil production is declining as many giant oil fields have reached maturity.

Oil & Gas Journal estimates the proven and probable oil reserves of Mexico at more than 10.5
billion barrels of oil.64 More than half of this production is in heavy oils as shown by the
PEMEX chart in figure 23.
 Source: PEMEX
Figure 41: Chart of Mexico’s crude oil types

In 2008, Mexico produced more than 3.2 million barrels per day of oil liquids from more than
6,000 producing wells. According to U.S. Energy Information Agency statistics, it consistently
ranks behind Canada and just ahead of Saudi Arabia as one of the top three oil exporters to the
United States with nearly 1.4 million barrels of oil per day to the United States in 2008.

While the vast majority of Mexico’s more than 350 oil and gas fields are offshore, there is
significant onshore production from fields in the south [about 500,000 barrels of oil per day]
including Samaria Luna and Bellota Jujo [together about 120,000 barrels of oil per day] and in
the north [about 80,000 barrels of oil per day] there is Poza Rica (about 10,000 barrels of oil per
day) as well as the giant Chincotepec, heavy oil, field under development.

As seen in the PEMEX chart and table below, the onshore area daily production rates declined
slowly over a ten year period.
 Source: PEMEX
Figure 42: Graph of Mexico’s oil production by region (thousands of barrels per day)

Mexico’s falling oil production and closed system make evaluation of Produced Water onshore
very difficult. According to a 2007 report presented at the Stanford Workshop on Geothermal
Reservoir Engineering, “The total volume of Produced Water equals or exceeds the oil
production” at this complex.65

The Produced Water was said to be more than seven times saltier than seawater. But it is
similarly enriched in metals and nonmetals, such as strontium, bromine, boron, iodine,
selenium, and arsenic. There were also elevated concentrations of silver, thallium, selenium,
and cadmium, which exceed permissible limits of environmental legislation for surface
discharge. The group recommended evaporation of the Produced Water in solar ponds or
crystallization plants.

There are no available tables of the rates of Produced Water and it is not known what
percentage of the Produced Water is re-injected overall. It is reasonable to assume that the
average amount of Produced Water per barrel of crude oil is at least as much as that in the
United States or an average of seven barrels of Produced Water per barrel of oil. This would
yield at least twenty million barrels of water per day of Produced Water, which Pemex must
either re-inject or dispose of from the onshore production.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 43: Index map of coastal Mexico

Efforts to assess the onshore environmental impacts of this Produced Water production from
satellite images have proved disappointing. Many of the field areas are widely dispersed or
occur in highly developed urban areas. The Google Earth images below are all from the Poza
Rica complex in the northern onshore region. The first image shows what appears to be the
production facility with water lagoons both to the north and on the south. The next image is a
close-up of the storage tanks.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 44: Poza Rica production complex

Source: Google Earth

Figure 45: Poza Rica tanks and ponds
The final image onshore Mexico is a close-up of the lagoons showing the apparent spillway into
the adjacent river on the left of the lagoon.

Source: Google Earth

Figure 46: Close-up of Poza Rica lagoons and streams

Unfortunately, not all of the significant oil pollution of water resources can be seen by satellite
as this offshore case study demonstrates.
Gulf of Mexico Déjà vu Two

The BP Macondo Prospect blowout in the Gulf in April 2010 is eerily reminiscent of a previous
1979 offshore blowout, known as Ixtoc 1. A thorough analysis of this earlier disaster provides
striking parallels (like top hat and sombrero) between the BP Macondo Prospect blowout and
Ixtoc 1. It also reveals how companies dealt with these disasters in very similar ways. News
cycles have short memories. While PR companies get better at spin for the media, the oil giants
only seem to learn how to repeat their mistakes.

Why do the oil companies seem incapable of understanding that some things can’t be fixed, that
fish and shellfish stocks can take decades to recover from pollution and that the price of long-
term environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico or Alaska is just too high? Because
companies are not humans and because the costs usually do not fall on the humans behind the
corporate structure. Even when the companies lose money, their executives may simply pass
the losses along to investors or customers. Until specific executives know they will bear
personal responsibility and liability for their decisions, change is unlikely.

In 1979, I was involved in drilling wells for Tenneco Oil, near the South Texas coast during the
Ixtoc 1 blowout. I can remember telling my young son not to pick up the tarballs washing
ashore on Padre Island, one of my favorite vacation spots. I recall the look and smell of the
ribbons of orange-colored oil mousse caught in the waves. Many people in the Gulf Coast are
probably reliving this experience today and many more may still have to go through something
similar in the near future.

The Ixtoc 1 and Macondo Prospect blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico were caused by remarkably
similar conditions and they demonstrate virtually identical reactions. This completely
contradicts BP’s assertion—but especially arguments of the other companies that want to keep
drilling in deep water—that the current situation in the Gulf is unprecedented and unique. Not
only are there precedents, but a careful review shows that these incidents were entirely
predictable and preventable.
CASE HISTORY: - IXTOC 1 BLOWOUT - PEMEX.

Source: Google Earth

Figure 47: Google Earth Index Map of Ixtoc 1

In 1979, Pemex had the worst offshore oil well blowout ever known until the BP Macondo
disaster. The exploratory well Ixtoc 166 was being drilled in the Gulf of Mexico about 60 miles
from the town of Ciudad del Carmen (See Index map above) offshore on the Campeche Bank.
The Campeche Bank in the early 1980’s was estimated to contain about half of Mexico’s oil
production and one third of the shrimp catches harvested in all Mexican waters at that time.
According to the Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ, Mar. 4, 1991, p. 45) the area is known for its light,
sweet marine crude oil which averages about 35 degrees API Gravity. The region is generally
low in sulfur (about 1%), but contains nearly 3% heavy asphaltenes. These asphaltenes are big
molecules which are almost insoluble and difficult for bacteria to biodegrade. They are of
concern because asphaltenes don’t evaporate, they are resistant to dispersants and they
bioaccumulate as tarballs are ingested. These tarballs coat the sediments and persist for many
years.
Figure 48: Sedco 135 rig before sinking

The Sedco #135 was the semi-submersible platform that was used to drill the Ixtoc 1 well
operated by PEMEX, the government oil company. Ironically, Sedco was later acquired by
TransOcean, the owner of the rig which sank in the recent BP Deepwater Horizon explosion
and fire.

Figure 49: Aerial View of IXTOC 1 oil slick and fire

The blowout occurred as the Ixtoc 1 well was drilling at close to 12,000 ft below the seafloor in
water depth of only about 160 feet. The company had set 9 5/8 inch casing just 100 feet above
their total depth. They began losing mud circulation probably due to the soft, low pressure
sands which they encountered on June 2, 1979. As is common in these situations, PEMEX
decided to pull the entire drill string out of the hole in order to more easily pump the lost
circulation material which was supposed to seal the fractures. While the drill crew was
removing the pipe, they inadvertently created a suction and the swabbing action suddenly
caused the well to begin to flow. As the mud was replaced by the much lighter oil and gas
coming out of the formation, the pressure at the surface increased dramatically. As the flow rate
increased, more gas was released and when the gas encountered the mud pump motors an
explosion and fire ensued. The explosion spread the flames and the drilling tower eventually
collapsed and burned.
The drill crew on the rig floor was alerted to the impending disaster by the mud that was rapidly
flowing out of the well. They attempted to close the blowout preventer using the shear rams but
the thick, heavy duty, steel drill collars which are joints used to connect the lengths of pipe
were preventing the rams from severing the pipe connection. Drillers are expected to know
from the pipe length when the collars could be lodged in the BOP, but mistakes happen and
drill crews are only human.

Figure 50: Aerial view of IXTOC 1 Wellhead Fire

The actual blowout occurred on June 3,, 197967, and fortunately the entire crew was evacuated
and there were no fatalities. The gas and oil burned with such intensity that entire derrick
burned, capsized and eventually sunk to the seafloor. The semisubmersible rig was so badly that
it had to be towed away from the flames and was eventually scuttled in deep water. Although
initially the BOP remained intact on the seafloor, it was obscured by nearly 2 miles of drill pipe
and platform equipment and debris. There were reports that the collapse caused damage to the
BOP and the well structure. While it was obvious that a huge amount of gas came bubbling up
and burned at the surface, it is not known how much gas and Produced Water accompanied this
spill.
It is estimated that more than 3 million barrels of oil (about 140 million gallons) spewed from
the well over the 10 months it took to bring it under control. This was the world’s largest oil
disaster up to that time and it is still the second largest single oil release in history; that is until
the BP Macondo well.
The famous well control expert, Red Adair, was brought in to control the blowout which was
initially flowing at approximately 30,000 barrels of oil per day. By the end of June, his dive
team had succeeded in clearing the rubble. In July, they started pumping mud into the well and
reduced the flow to about 20,000 barrels of oil per day. They tried a junk shot in August
consisting of 100,000 steel, iron and lead balls which reduced the flow further to about 10,000
barrels of oil per day. They eventually succeeded in getting the BOP partially closed.
Unfortunately, as the pressure built, there were leaks around the wellhead and the BOP valves
ruptured. So, his team was forced to open the BOP again. It is rumored that the BOP was blown
off of the wellhead and there were indications that the downhole casing had collapsed. As a
result, they started to experiment with non-sealing containment devices and began to drill two
relief wells.
Although PEMEX claimed that half of the released oil burned when it reached the surface, a
third of it evaporated, and the rest was mostly dispersed, there was international pressure to
contain the oil that was leaking into the Gulf. A major effort was launched to deploy the
“Sombrero” containment device.68
The “sombrero” oil collector system in concept is similar to the “top hat” design which BP first
tried to use to control the Deepwater Horizon blowout. Due to the extreme water depths (about
5,000 feet) in that well the pressure and temperature allowed for the formation of methane gas
hydrates or clathrates (a bit like natural gas snowflakes.) These clathrates formed when the
natural gas mixed with cold seawater and plugged the pipes preventing the oil flow. BP was
then forced to abandon this approach and move on to junk shots and top kill. Due to the shallow
water depth the “Sombrero” had no trouble with frozen methane, but it still didn’t recover much
oil.

The containment device in Mexico was designed and built by Brown and Root, Inc. (a
subsidiary of Halliburton) for Pemex. [Ironically, Halliburton is the same company that
performed the cement job on the BP well shortly before it blew out]. Because this type of
collection device had not been utilized before, it took nearly three months to design build and
install the unit. Although it could be manually adjusted by divers, the “Sombrero” failed to
collect more than 15% of the oil and had to be abandoned after a storm damaged the structure.
The rest of the oil escaped under the hat because so much water was coming in with the oil that
the riser could not handle the volume. It has been reported that at its peak the system was
recovering over 1.5 million barrels of total fluid per day but only about 2% (by volume) was
actually oil. BP has never reported what percentage of the recovered fluids at the surface of the
Deepwater Horizon blowout is water. The surface facilities were so overwhelmed with this
production rate that it was estimated that half of the oil collected was thrown overboard along
with the water. BP has so far not reported discarding either seawater or Produced Water from
their recovery operations.

Source: MMS
Figure 51: IXTOC 1 "Sombrero" Collector
After the Sombrero system failed there was nothing left for PEMEX to do but wait for the relief
wells to intersect the target at the source of the blowout. The first relief well failed to stem the
flow and three months later, the second well was successful. They eventually succeeded in
capping the well on March 23, 1980 exactly 281 days after the blowout occurred.

For mitigation operations, PEMEX responded with 12 aircraft which flew nearly 500 missions
and they used with hundreds of boats together with more than 500 men in the cleanup. In the
first 5 months, they distributed between 1 and 2 million gallons of mostly COREXIT 9527
dispersant on the oil which was spread over 1,000 square miles. Because of the dispersant’s
inability to successfully treat the weathered oil, they were not used in the U.S. and were
eventually stopped north of 25°N at the Coast Guards insistence.

Figure 52 Impacted shoreline, South Texas1980

By mid June, the Ixtoc oil slick and sheen had covered 5000 sq miles (close to 10% of the
surface area of the Gulf of Mexico) and once it became captured by the prevailing northerly
currents, it was headed for the Texas coast.

It took nearly two months for the oil spill to travel 600 miles to reach the Texas beaches.
During that time, the U.S. did everything possible to prepare for the black tide. The authorities
deployed booms and skimmers along the major bays and inlets. They even built sand berms to
seal Aransas Pass and Cedar Bayou, but nothing seemed to stop the oil. Tarballs began washing
up along a 15 mile stretch of Texas shoreline on August 6, 1979 and orange colored oil mouse
began washing up in waves along the coastline throughout the remainder of the month. North
Padre Island was nearly covered in oil by August 26th. Some of the oil formed nearly 40 tar
mats submerged in shallow waters just offshore and a few of these stretched for nearly 200 feet.
Countermeasures mostly proved ineffective and by Sept the whole of the South Texas coast was
impacted by oil.

Fortunately, in mid September a storm passed through the Gulf cleaning the beaches and
leaving mainly tar mats. Afterwards, cleanup efforts were focused on the Barrier Islands, which
had been washed over with oil during the storm. Eventually, workers had to resort to shovel and
rakes because the heavy equipment removed too much sand. The oiled material that was
removed amounted to over 10,000 cubic yards.
To add insult to injury, Early in November 1979, during the Ixtoc I spill, there was another
unrelated oil spill on the Texas Coast. Just 5 miles off of Galveston, the tanker Burmah Agate
collided with the freighter Mimosa creating a huge fire which burned perhaps 150,000 barrels
(about 6 million gallons) of crude oil. While another 3 million gallons of crude oil were
probably spilled offshore. In the following decade, it was often possible to identify which
source the buried oil came from on the basis of the chromatographic fingerprint of the
weathered oil.
Ultimately, it is estimated that more than 70,000 barrels (about 3 million gallons) of oil from
the Ixtoc blowout washed ashore on U.S. beaches killing over 1400 birds and fouling more than
160 miles of coastline. Tourism fell by 60 % near Texas beaches while the oil was washing
ashore. The United States tried to get Mexico to pay damages, but the Mexican Government
denied financial responsibility.
Many valuable technical lessons should have been learned from the PEMEX Ixtoc 1
experience, and work has continued on ways to control blowouts, especially in deepwater.
In 1999, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) commissioned a report, “Oil Spill
Containment, Remote Sensing and Tracking for Deepwater Blowouts: Status of Existing and
Emerging Technologies.” by PCCI Marine and Environmental Engineering. The conclusions
regarding subsea collectors are particularly relevant to conditions in the Gulf of Mexico today.

7.1.3 Subsea Collectors

“While the logical approach to controlling oil released from a deepwater blowout would appear
to be to contain and collect the oil at the blowout source, the difficulties associated with the
design and installation of an effective collector in deep water makes these devices
impractical…”
\
“After the Ixtoc 1 blowout, MMS blowout research and development concentrated on
shipmounted, deepwater suspended open collector systems (i.e. “sombrero” type) which are
bellshaped, rigid-walled, and provide limited access to the wellhead (Brown & Root, 1985). The
research indicated that a bell or cone shaped device could function if properly dimensioned and
if it covers the blowout source. The bottom radius of the collector should preferably be one and
a half times the anticipated offset error during installation. It should be tall enough to
accommodate a 30' tall wellhead assembly. The double collector/double riser shown in Figure
18 was found to be the most efficient, although the exact shape is immaterial. Ability to vent gas
will be an important capability for any cap type device. No research on this system has been
performed since the 1985 report, which did not address deep water blowouts. The
equipment will have to be designed to accommodate a high percentage of water for each
ton of recovered oil.

The dimensions of the device required to accommodate this volume, in combination with
the water depth handling requirements, makes the approach impractical and expensive
given the low probability of blowout occurrence. The most serious limitation of the system is
the cost, which was estimated at $58,784,000 in 1985.The latest comprehensive summary of
subsea blowout collection devices is contained in Section 6 of the DEA-63 Project Report (Neal
Adams Firefighting, Inc, 1991). This report generally categorizes the collectors as bell-shaped
devices, rigid-wall cylinders or flexible columns.
Among the technical hurdles associated with deepwater subsea collectors, the following were
included:

1. They all limit access to the wellhead to some degree, and most prevent using other types
of well control measures such as vertical intervention.

2. They have limited tolerance for debris on the seabed.

3. None are in stock and few, if any will handle all blowout situations. Long lead times for
construction are anticipated.

4. They would require a seal against the seafloor to prevent entraining a large volume of
seawater in the plume. This situation may be mitigated if a subsea template can be installed
around the wellhead or BOP, to which the device can be attached.

5. They would require a diameter sufficient to encapsulate the entire stack, with provision
to accommodate a leaning wellhead/stack assembly.

6. Riser size is critical for bell systems. Small riser diameters result in a backpressure and
spill under of oil at the bottom of the bell.

7. Rigid cylinders may be limited in deepwater because of the large surface area of the
cylinder exposed to current forces along the water column. Heavy anchoring would be required.

8. Flexible columns have been shown in laboratory experiments to suffer considerable

whipping and flapping associated with the flow of blowout fluids and gas. They lack the ability
to withstand significant pressure differentials across the walls.
 These difficulties have caused most researchers to conclude that sealed containment of
blowout oil is not practical in deepwater with existing technology. This conclusion was also
reached in a recent evaluation of the state-of-the-knowledge and practical opportunities for
dealing with submerged oils that was recently published (Brown, et.al., 1998). The authors
concluded that in most circumstances, it is not realistic to expect responders to contain or
recover submerged oils.”

Note the remarkable similarity between the containment devices designed for the MMS report
and the containment vessels currently being deployed in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

Mexico holds many lessons for those who are wise enough to pay attention. The same can also
be said for Canada. However, here the thirst for oil at any cost seems to blind us to the
consequences.
Canada—Stripped to the Bone
Canada is at a crossroads. The choices it makes from here, whether to sacrifice clean water for
the convenience of the American motorist or to protect their heritage and demand a better way
to develop the oil sands --will shape Canada’s future.

When I was a young boy, I visited the Glacier National Park in Montana and the Waterton
Lakes on the Canadian side of the border in Alberta. The area had a profound impact on me. I
remember scaling the edges of the glacial valleys and looking back down on the crystal clear,
mirrored lakes. This unspoiled natural wonderland, with its entire history exposed in the rocks,
helped inspire my love of geology. Even with the tourist trails, roads and campfires, it was
magical and I remember thinking I had found paradise.

Alberta is not only beautiful, but abundant in oil. Pragmatic opinion says that Alberta will profit
from exploiting the resources. While this may be so, there are very real costs to be considered
in sacrificing natural resources to get it.

Unfortunately, oil profits are measurable and go to specific people. The value of not ruining the
climate—or abstaining from ruining glaciers and watersheds— is harder to measure. Moreover,
particular people profit from oil, while the advantages of preserving natural systems are more
diffuse. So oil development has built-in and well-heeled boosters, the environment suffers from
benefiting too many people, too generally. It is too easy for each of us to believe environmental
protection is somebody else’s job.

Source: Pembina Institute

 Figure 53: The Athabasca River delta is the largest fresh water delta in the world
and is downstream from Alberta's oil sands operations

Canada supplies far more oil to the United States than any other single country. For its part,
Canada exports almost exclusively to the United States, with only 1 percent of its oil going
elsewhere. According to the United States Energy Information Agency, in 2008 the United
States imported daily almost 2.5 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products from
Canada. This is more than the United States imports from the all the countries of the Persian
Gulf combined and represents 13 percent of U.S. imports.

If the oil sands in Alberta are included, Canada’s roughly 180 billion of proven oil reserves are
just behind Saudi Arabia in quantity. These oil sands represent over 95 % of the remaining
reserves in the country, but are far more difficult to extract and more expensive to process than
conventional crude oil.

Source: EIA 2008

Figure 54: Canadian Oil Production and Consumption

As shown by the oil production chart above, in 2008 Canada’s total oil production (with liquids
included) was roughly 3.4 million barrels per day. Nearly 40% of that production came from
Alberta and about half of Canada’s total oil production came from oil sands. The country’s oil
production is expected to increase as oil sands production is expanded and new offshore
discoveries come on-stream. According to the 2009 EIA International Energy Outlook, Canada
expects to be producing more than 4.2 million barrels per day of oil from the oil sands by
2030.69 This is equivalent to more than 1 billion barrels per year.

While the oil sands of Alberta hold enormous reserves, albeit of heavy oil, Canada also has
three large oil fields off its Atlantic coast (including Hibernia, Terra Nova, and White Rose)
which together total about 370,000 barrels/day. The operators plan to expand this production
using satellite fields and they are hungry for more acreage to explore and develop. ExxonMobil
has recently announced it plans to develop the Hebron field which is expected to come
onstream by 2017 with peak productions estimated at more than 175,000 barrels of oil per day.

I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1999 when the oil industry (primarily Texaco) lobbied hard to
lift the Canadian oil moratorium on Georges Bank in the Gulf of Maine. After emphatic protests
from environmentalists and the fishing industry as well, Canada agreed to extend the
moratorium until 2012. This was in line with the 2008 Executive Order by US President Bill
Clinton which extended the moratorium on oil and gas exploration on the United States side of
Georges Bank until 2012. In April 2010, President Obama extended it by executive order until
2017. On May 13, 2010, following the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Canadian
Government announced that it would extend the moratorium until December 31, 2015. The US
Moratorium on Drilling on Georges Bank was expiring, but Fishermen at NORIGS, whom I
worked with in Halifax, were dismayed that the Government of Nova Scotia did not match the
U.S. timeframe.

Disposal of Produced Waters offshore was one of the major concerns of those opposed to
drilling. Canadian regulatory limits are quite specific about the concentration of oil in Produced
Water that can be discharged offshore, but like the rest of the world, there are no limits
regarding the total amount of Produced Water that can be released into the environment. A
monthly weighted-average of oil in discharged produced water cannot exceed 40 milligrams per
liter and the daily average of oil in produced water cannot exceed 60 milligrams per liter on any
given day.70

Experiments by Norway’s Institute of Marine Research (NIMR) and the zoological department
at the University of Gothenberg, Sweden show that alkylphenols found in Produced Water
caused delays in the maturation of the fish at the lowest concentration studied, 0.032 parts per
billion. This delay suggests that some cod might spawn too late for other individuals to fertilize
their eggs, thus damaging the animal's ability to reproduce. The study concluded that even
small, diluted amounts of Produced Water could be harming cod stocks and possibly other
marine species.71

The chart below compares the predicted composition of Produced Waters in an offshore
Canadian Field (Hibernia) with those of the United States and North Sea data in Europe.
 Source: CAPP 2001
Figure 55: Organic Chemicals in Produced Water from Hibernia Development Project
Environmental Impact Statement

Cumulative production of Produced Water from the three offshore fields (shown below) was
about 14.5 million cu meters (about 90 million barrels) until 2000, but would be expected to
increase substantially as Hibernia and other recently developed offshore fields mature.

Source: CAPP 2001

Figure: 56 Cumulative Production from Canadian Offshore Platforms to 2000

In 2001 the Hibernia platform, Canada's largest offshore project, was pumping out an average
of nearly 20,000 barrels of Produced Water into the ocean each day. According to the NIMR
study, in the North Sea the produced water has a mean average of 8 milligrams of phenols per
liter of Produced Water. The scientists estimated that more than 300 million tons per year of
Produced Water were discharged into the North Sea resulting in about 20 tons of alkylphenols
per year being dumped into the sea. This was of concern because Norwegian scientists had
concluded that Produced Water may have been having a feminizing effect on cod and other fish
species in the North Sea. A similar feminizing effect on cod is possible in Canadian waters near
the platforms.

Source: Alberta Geol Survey 2008

Figure 57: Index Map of the Alberta oil sands areas

Still, for more than fifty years, the main source of Canadian oil production has been far from
the ocean in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin which underlies most of Alberta and parts
of the other western regions. In 1999, conventional oil from the Western Basin represented 65%
of Canada’s production, but now supplies only about 38% of conventional production. In 2007,
Conventional oil production from Alberta fell more than 3% from the previous year to about
190 million barrels.

Canada’s future oil production plans depend heavily on the development of the oil sands (also
called tar sands) found mainly in Alberta. The largest deposits, the Athabasca oil sands in
northern Alberta, are some of the largest in the world. Northern Alberta also has oil sands
deposits near Cold Lake and Peace River. In addition, the Canadian Arctic has significant oil
sands deposits on Melville Island.

While conventional production continues to fall rapidly, production from the oil sands is rising,
but so is the environmental cost.
CASE HISTORY: ATHABASCA OIL SANDS
The map of Alberta on the previous page shows the enormous spread of the oils sands projects
in Alberta and indicates the magnitude of the area potentially impacted by oil sands
developments. Reportedly, an agreement has been signed between PetroChina and Enbridge to
export synthetic crude oil from the oil sands to China and elsewhere in the Pacific. It involves
construction of a pipeline capable of exporting 400,000 barrels of oil per day from Edmonton,
Alberta, to the west coast port of Kitimat in British Columbia.

Source: Google Earth

Figure 58: A recent Google Earth image shows a distant view of Alberta’s oil sands
from more than 50 miles above the earth.

As shown above, the oil sand strip mines extend for more than fifty miles from north to south.
The extensive mine in the center of the image is said to be the world’s largest strip mine and is
one of the few man-made objects capable of being seen with the naked eye from a spacecraft.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 59: A recent Google Earth image shows the extent of oil sands development
around the southern end of Cold Lake in Alberta.

The well network west of Cold Lake (shown in white above) spans more than seven miles
across and the wells around the town of Cold Lake at the bottom of the image are about ten
miles south.

Oil sands are contained in bitumen, a type of coal, which holds huge amounts of heavy viscous
oil. Oil sands worldwide are estimated to contain 1.7 trillion barrels of original oil in place with
about 150 -300 billion barrels being ultimately recoverable. Since globally, about 1 trillion
barrels of oil has been produced to date, the oil sands contain (in place) about 70% more oil
than has ever been produced.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 60: Recent Google Earth image showing a single oil sand strip-mine at Fort McMurray.
As shown, the mine stretches for more than 10 miles across the image.

The Athabasca oil sands have been in production since 1967 when the original Great Canadian
Oil Sands (now Suncor) mine began operation. The Syncrude consortium has been operating
reportedly the biggest mine of any type in the world since 1978. The Oil and Gas Journal
reports that cumulative production of the oil sands is about 6.4 billion barrels of oil at the end of
2008. In 2007 they produced about 1.3 million barrels of oil per day with 800,000 barrels of oil
per day of synthetic crude or roughly 500 million barrels for the year.72

As oil sands were developed and older conventional fields matured, average water cuts
increased. The chart below compares the Produced Water-to-oil ratio in Canada and worldwide.
It shows that the average Produced Water-oil ratio in Alberta in 2003 was 16 barrels of water
per barrel of oil, while Saskatchewan averaged 11 barrels of water per barrel of oil and
worldwide the figure was probably around 7 barrels of Produced Water per barrel of oil.
 Source: Hum et al. 2006
Figure 61: Chart Comparing Water Oil Ratios in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Worldwide

As shown by the Oil Production chart below, production in southeast Alberta has clearly been
driven by the economic success of the oil sands concentrated in Area 5.

Source: Hum et al. 2006

Figure 62 Chart showing the Daily Oil Production for SE Alberta

These developments have resulted in very high Produced Water-to-oil ratios throughout
southeast Alberta (see chart below) with area 5 showing more than 25 barrels of water to barrel
of oil equivalent.
 Source: Hum et al. 2006
Figure 63: Chart showing the Produced Water-to-oil ratio for SE Alberta

As the oil production increased, the Produced Water rates skyrocketed to more than 10 million
barrels per day. This resulted in water cuts above ten by 2004, half of which came from
southeast Alberta. (See the Produced Water chart below). In 2003 the volume of fresh water
allocated to the petroleum industry in Alberta was about 3 billion barrels, and 1.7 billion barrels
of Produced Water was injected into disposal wells associated with oil and gas production in
Alberta.

Source: Hum et al. 2006

Figure 64: Chart showing the Produced Water Production in SE Alberta
Canada does not have that much water to spare. Even in Canada, which has the largest per
capita water supply in the world, shortages of drinking water are sometimes experienced. Only
the United States uses more water than Canada. The country ranks 28th out of 29 countries in
the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in terms of
per capita water consumption.73 Canadians use about 10,000 barrels of water per person per
year, which is 65% above the OECD average. Domestic water use is actually the smallest of the
three major users of water so this figure does not include water use in the agricultural,
industrial, or commercial institutional sectors.74

There are currently two principal methods to extract bitumen from the ground. Open-pit mining
is basically strip mining and is used for oil sand deposits close to the surface, though about 80%
of the deposits are too deep to be strip mined and require an in situ extraction process. This
process uses steam to separate the bitumen from the sands and lift it to collecting pools. To
date, about half of the production has come from open pit mining, but in situ extraction is
expected to become dominant. Most of the large oil sands projects in the Athabasca area have
utilized open-pit mining. In Alberta it is estimated that the Athabasca deposits from surface
mines alone contain 35 billion barrels with another roughly l00 billion barrels of bitumen
recoverable by in situ methods.

In strip mines, energy is needed for scooping up tons of material, crushing it and moving it as a
water/oil slurry to be further treated by heat and chemical processes. For deeper deposits, the
heat must be transmitted to the formation to get the tar hot enough to flow. Either way, though,
it takes about the same energy input, which currently comes primarily from natural gas. Since
the price of a given amount of energy from natural gas is much higher than for crude oil, the
comparative cost disadvantage of synthetic to natural crude is even higher than the 40 percent
penalty associated with turning bitumen into synthetic oil. As one online forum aptly notes,
using gas to make oil “is like using champagne to make beer.”

There is, though, a more harmful disadvantage. All that energy required to get synthetic crude is
still causing carbon emissions. A RAND Corporation study finds that the lifetime carbon
emissions from synthetic crude are 20 percent higher than those for flowing sweet crude—and
that assumes carbon capture systems are used where possible in production. Between emissions
from the strip mining processes and heating the bitumen, the Alberta oil sands operations taken
together are among the top five greenhouse emitting sources in Canada.
 Source: Pembina Institute
Figure 65: Syncrude upgrader

The oil sands lie beneath an area the size of Florida (54,000 sq mi), but so far only about 160
square miles have reportedly been disturbed. The image above shows the oil sands processing
facility at Ft. McMurray. The oil sands industry is heavily dependent upon both water and
natural gas. These are necessary in both the extraction of bitumen from oil sands and the
upgrading of bitumen to synthetic oil. Limits on natural gas or water availability in the area
could constrain future oil sands production. According to a Pembina Institute report, approved
oil sands mining operations are currently licensed to divert roughly 2.25 billion barrels of water
from the Athabasca River, or more than twice the volume of water required to meet the annual
municipal needs of the City of Calgary.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 66: Recent satellite image of Produced water pond next to the river.
Note that each of the major ponds shown is about 3 miles across.

Oil sand operators use saline water whenever possible, but industry figures indicate that they
still need 2-5 barrels per barrel of oil produced in mines and 0.5 barrels per barrel of freshwater
for in situ production. Current licenses for water allocations total nearly 2% of the Athabasca
river flow, however actual use in 2006 was about 0.4%. In Alberta, operators are not permitted
to dispose of Produced Water above the base of groundwater protection or in freshwater
aquifers where the total dissolved solids are less than 4000 milligrams per liter, but accidents
happen and leaks still occur.
 Source: Public Domain (2006)
Figure 67 –Aerial photo of Syncrude’s oil sands facility at Mildred Lake
showing huge sulfur stockpiles in yellow.
Processing of the tar sands has also yielded about 50 million tonnes of petroleum coke. Since
the deposits have relatively high sulfur content, this has resulted in more than 10 million metric
tons of sulfur being stockpiled at the sites. Some of these sulfur stockpiles (yellow rectangles)
can be seen in the image of Syncrude’s Mildred Lake facility above. The tailing pond at
Mildred Lake has a volume of 200 million cubic meters (about 1¼ billion barrels) and was
estimated in 2008 to emit 4-40 million liters of methane per day. Of course, as these deposits
degrade they leak sulfuric acid into the lake. Since the global price of sulfur has recently
jumped from $50 tonne in mid-2007 to the $150–350 range, these stockpiles are expected to
begin to decrease.
 Source: Pembina Institute
Figure 68: Suncor millennium mine

It has been estimated that each barrel of oil from oil sands from open pit mines requires digging
out of about four metric tons of materials and generates roughly 80 kilograms of greenhouse
gases as well as waste water and sand residues. A barrel of oil takes 250 cubic feet of natural
gas to mine and 500 cubic feet of gas to upgrade to synthetic crude oil. This gas is enough to
heat a house for four to five days. The total oil sands industry consumes enough natural gas to
heat more than 3 million Canadian homes.

The 2007 US Energy Independence and Security Act restricts use of oil sands by federal
agencies, including the military, because extraction and processing of oil sands results in levels
of greenhouse gases which exceed those of conventional fuels. Therefore, in order for the
United States to be able to utilize Canadian oil sands production on a large scale, either the
extraction technology must be improved with carbon sequestration methods storing carbon
dioxide underground or Congress must modify this legislation.

According to a 2008 report by Environmental Defense of Canada, the tar sands are now the
biggest capital project on Earth as well as the largest energy project on the planet.
 Source Google Earth
Figure 69: NASA Enhanced 2005 satellite image of Produced water ponds and the adjacent river.

The tar sand mines are creating enormous pools of contaminated Produced Water called tailings
ponds. These tailings ponds are constantly growing and cover more than 50 square kilometers.
Incredibly, one of the largest dams in the world is Syncrude’s earthen dike which holds back a
toxic sludge reservoir of Produced Water. Many fear that a failure of one of these earthen dams
caused by earthquakes, structural failure, or even terrorist action could be catastrophic for the
entire region as the toxic sludge would pour into the Athabasca River.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 70: Low-angle recent satellite image of Ft. McMurray Produced Water Ponds

The recent Google Earth image above is a close-up of the tailings ponds at the Syncrude
facility. Each of these ponds is about a mile across and is adjacent to the river which cuts across
the image. A breach of one of these ponds could be an environmental disaster not only for the
local residents, but for all citizens and wildlife living downriver.
 Source: Roy Luck AAPG 2005
Figure: Aerial view of a single tailings and Produced Water pond at the Suncor facility.

Most of these tailings ponds leak fluids into the rivers. In 1997 Suncor reportedly testified that
its Tar Island Pond leaks approximately 1,600 cubic meters (more than 10,000 barrels) of toxic
fluid into the Athabasca River every day. According to Canada’s National Energy Board “the
principal environmental threats from tailings ponds are the migration of pollutants through the
groundwater system and the risk of leaks to the surrounding soil and surface water.... the scale
of the problem is daunting and current production trends indicate that the volume of fine
tailings ponds produced by Suncor and Syncrude alone, will exceed one billion cubic meters
(more than 6 billion barrels) by the year 2020.”75

Source: Alberta Geol Survey

Figure 71: Aerial view of the Suncor oil sands plant in northeastern Alberta
The Mackenzie River Basin Board concluded in 2003 that “an accident related to the failure of
one of the oil sands tailings ponds could have catastrophic impact on the aquatic ecosystem of
the Mackenzie River Basin due to the size of these ponds and their proximity to the Athabasca
River.”76

As pollution from these tailings ponds spreads it bioaccumulates in the food chain. Reportedly,
a tar sands company concluded that arsenic could be as much as 450 times the acceptable levels
in moose meat from the region. The Alberta government claims that arsenic levels are “only”
17 to 33 times the acceptable levels. These levels are above the “acceptable” rate of additional
cancers of 1 per 100,000 people. In other word, they can be expected to cause even more
premature deaths.

It is inevitable that people who live downstream of these ponds and eat the animals will be
impacted as well. The Health Authority of Fort Chipewyan reported dangerous levels of
mercury and arsenic, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).77 The rising levels of PAH
in Athabasca River sediments (shown below) of greater than 1part per million exceed the levels
known to cause liver cancer in fish embryos (the horizontal red line).

Source: Environmental Defence 2008

Figure 72: Concentrations of PAHs in Athabasca River sediments 2001-2006

These toxins may explain the unusual cancers that have been found downstream of the tailings
ponds. However, there are no Canadian guidelines for sediment concentrations of total PAHs.

John O’Connor, MD, and medical examiner in Fort Chipewyan, has raised concerns about the
number of cases of bile duct cancer (cholangiocarcinomas), colon cancers, lymphomas,
leukemia, autoimmune diseases such as lupus, as well as thyroid cancers, overactive thyroid,
and skin rashes.78 Syncrude’s own findings show that the Produced Waters in the tailings ponds
are “acutely toxic,” and “high solubility and low adsorption result in export from reclaimed
areas to off-site aquatic environments.”79 In other words, they dissolve in water, but don’t stick
to soil and therefore go where the water goes.

The primary toxic constituents of oil sands Produced Water in the tailings ponds have been
identified as naphthenic acids. Naphthenic acids (NAs) are found in many petroleum sources,
including the bitumen in the oil sands of Northern Alberta. NAs are complex mixtures of
predominately polycyclic carboxylic acids and small amounts of other acids. These NAs are
known to be acutely toxic to aquatic species. Although some biodegradation of NAs occurs
over time, the high molecular weight compounds frequently found in tailings ponds appear to
be resistant to aerobic bacteria.

Canada is just the latest of many countries that have made the Faustian bargain to trade their
water quality for oil wealth. They have endangered vast areas of formerly pristine wilderness
and left behind only the bleeding scars of industrialization. The question now is whether the
United States will make the same deal with the devil in Alaska.
Alaska – Wasteland or Wonderland?
The next few years will determine the long-term future of Alaska. Before the United
States makes decisions about Alaska, they deserve to see the legacy of production and
pollution which the companies have already bequeathed to us. The oil industry claims
that it has learned its environmental lessons and is now ready to begin massive
exploitation of America’s last pristine wilderness area, the Alaska National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR). It wants people to believe that it only plans to exploit a small
percentage of this vast wilderness and that it has learned to reduce their ecological
footprint. The companies promise to be environmentally friendly and use only green
techniques and procedures to insure that they don’t pollute this irreplaceable frozen
treasure.

So let’s see what they have learned since the Exxon Valdez catastrophe. Let us review
how they have treated the areas they have developed in Alaska. Finally, let’s consider
how they have treated the environment and the people they have impacted. Shouldn’t
we ask the companies why, if they have truly learned the lessons from the past, they
have not used more of their plentiful petrodollars to clean-up (not cover-up) the scars
which now pockmark the earth wherever these giants have tread?

Alaska now ranks second among the states (behind Texas) in terms of production and
proven reserves (2005 estimate; 4.3 billion barrels) if we exclude offshore production in
federal waters. Alaska also has the largest pipeline in the country, capable of pumping
more than 2 million barrels of oil per day. The state has the largest oil and gas field in
North America (Prudhoe Bay) and the field has the highest production rate and the
greatest cumulative production in the United States. Fourteen of the nation’s largest oil
fields have been found on the Alaskan North Slope.

Yet despite these superlatives, the oil industry is in serious decline in Alaska with
production falling from 2 million barrels of oil per day in 1988 (about 25% of domestic
production) to 864,000 in 2005. As the Alaskan fields have matured, production has
declined sharply and revenues have decreased for both the state and the participating oil
companies. Pressures have increased to cut costs and cut corners and mistakes have
inevitably followed.

Alaska is an unforgiving climate with extreme weather conditions and a fragile

ecosystem. The infrastructure is easily disrupted by miscalculations, accidents, and
maintenance problems. Nowhere was this more evident than in Prince William Sound in
March 1989 when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground and dumped more than 250,000
barrels of crude oil onto Alaska’s shores. Another example of alleged mismanagement
and neglect occurred in August 2006 when BP was forced to shut down most of
Prudhoe Bay field due to excessive pipe corrosion. As we will see, this was not the first
of the oil industry’s problems in Alaska, nor was it the last.

Source: DOE NETL 2007

Figure 73: Graph of Alaska North Slope oil production and forecast.

As shown on the historical and forecasted oil production chart below, oil production
from the North Slope began in 1977 and peaked in 1988. Prudhoe Bay Field dominates
the production shown in light blue with Kuparuk River Field shown in beige. Production
stabilized briefly between 2000 and 2003 and then continued its inevitable decline. It is
estimated by the U.S. Department of Energy that by 2025 production could fall below
300,000 barrels of oil per day (horizontal red line below) which is the minimum flow
rate for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.80

Cumulative production from the North Slope is now more than 15 billion barrels of oil
from twenty-seven oil fields with proven remaining reserves of about 7 billion barrels. It
is remarkable that all these fields were found in 1968 and 1969.
 Source: DOE NETL 2007
Figure 74: Map of Alaskan North Slope Production Facilities and Pipelines in 2006

North Slope exploration began as early as 1909 with the recognition of oil seeps on the
coast, east of Point Barrow. This led to the establishment of the 23-million acre Naval
Petroleum Reserve in 1923, on lands now known as the National Petroleum Reserve
Alaska (NPRA). Ultimately about 500 exploration wells and several thousand
development wells were drilled in the North Slope province.

The footprint of the North Slope oil facilities and roads (shown on the map below)
covers about 10,000 acres, but the entire complex extends across 800 square miles. It
grows as new oil fields are developed.

Source: U.S. FWS 2001

Figure 75: Extent of North Slope oil fields in 2001

As exploitation of the North Slope has expanded there has been a need for more roads
into the tundra. Environmentalists have become concerned about the long term impacts
of gravel roads and drilling pads on the ecosystem, so oil companies have gradually
shifted to construction of ice roads and pads in winter. This has resulted in substantially
increased water use on the North Slope. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, an ice road may require 1 to 2 million gallons of water per mile and each ice
pad may need ½ million gallons of water.81 Often, it requires more than one season to
complete an operation so new ice pads and roads have to be built each year. These
subsequent ice roads could be offset by a road width from the previous roads to reduce
damage to the tundra so the area of environmental impact may be significant. The
Bureau of Land Management reports that over a single season, the amount of water
needed for ice roads and ice pads for oil development may be as much as 15 million
gallons.

Source: Google Earth

Figure 76: A recent Google Earth image shows a well site on the North Slope
with its roads and pad adjacent to a pipeline.

Historically, drilling mud, cuttings, Produced Water, and oil were allowed to be dumped
into unlined reserve pits on the pads or discharged along the roads. These reserve pits
were known to have allowed contaminated fluids to seep through the embankments and
into the tundra. This resulted in measured increases in salts and metals in adjacent water
at some sites. According to government reports (NRC 2003) a large number of unclosed
reserve pits remain at remote well sites and there is no comprehensive plan to handle the
potential environmental contamination from these poorly sealed pits.82 Reserve pit
closure programs begun in 1996 have reportedly closed or covered-up over 600 reserve
pits, but covering them is not a cure and more remain.

More recently, operators have been strongly encouraged to store drilling solids and
fluids including Produced Water from wells in tanks until they can be injected into
disposal wells. It has been estimated that in the past more than 1.5 million barrels of
these contaminated liquid wastes were generated each year on the North Slope. Wastes
that are uniquely associated with oil operations have generally been exempt from
provisions of the Resource and Recovery Act and the Clean Water Act. Disposal of
Produced Water into freshwater bodies including wetlands is prohibited without a state
or federal permit. In addition, the surface discharge of fluids from reserve pits is
prohibited unless authorized by the state. Discharge of Produced Waters into ice-
covered or open marine waters of less than 10 meters is prohibited, but the state can
authorize discharges into waters greater than 10 meters on a case-by-case basis. As I
will show, these regulations have done little to protect the unique resources and fragile
environment of Alaska’s natural wilderness.
---------------------------------------------
CASE HISTORY: SWANSON RIVER FIELD -BP
The discovery of Swanson River oil field on the Kenai Peninsula by ARCO (now BP) in
1957 was the first major, commercial discovery in Alaska. The first Cook Inlet oil
production (Swanson River) began in 1958. The impacts on the Kenai Peninsula are
easily seen today.

The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge which surrounds the Swanson River Field was
established in 1941 by President Roosevelt to protect the population of moose on the
Kenai Peninsula. When oil was discovered on the refuge an oil boom ensued.
Approximately 200 wells were drilled resulting in the discovery of at least three
significant oil and gas fields spread over 30 square miles. These required nearly 50
miles of roads and pipelines with 60 well pads.

Source: Alaska Dept. of Natural Resources

 Figure 77: The map shows the 2005 distribution of oil and gas fields on the Cook Inlet.
Swanson River is the large oil field (green colored near the center of the map.

As shown on the production chart below, oil production on the Cook Inlet peaked in
1972 at just less than 85 million barrels of oil per year. Oil production in 2005 was
down to 7.1 million barrels of oil per year. More than 1.3 billion barrels of oil had been
produced by that time and it was then estimated that there remained 94 million barrels
of proven remaining recoverable reserves.

Source: Alaska Div. O&G 2006

Figure 78 Cook Inlet Production and Forecast to 2025
 Source: AOGCC 2005
Figure 79: Swanson River Field Produced Water Disposal Rate and Cumulative Disposal

The chart above shows the Produced Water disposal rate and cumulative Produced
Water. From 1990 to at least 2004 the rate of Produced water disposal by Unocal
hovered around 10,000 barrels per day. The chart shows that the cumulative Produced
Water disposal in just 3 to 4 wells is more than 50 million barrels of Produced Water.83

Ten years after the Exxon Valdez, one of the largest spills in Alaska occurred in the
Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. In January 1989, a Unocal pipeline leaked nearly
300,000 gallons of Produced Water and crude oil from a gathering line coming from a
well in the Swanson River Field. Since the federal government does not regulate these
gathering lines, spills are relatively frequent and they do not always appear in
government reports. According to these reports there have been more than 350 spills,
fires, and explosions from oil and gas activities in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.
This has resulted in the contamination of more than 100,000 tons of soil. Reportedly,
groundwater in some areas has been contaminated at levels 10 times the EPA limits.
One area of the refuge is heavily polluted with xylene.

Records of environmental impacts are poor for the first two decades of drilling on the
refuge, but in 1999 the Fish and Wildlife Service reported contamination events which
were not reported appropriately. In 2001 the agency released the Contaminants
Assessment of the Kenai Refuge, which documented nearly 250,000 gals of Produced
Water spilled in more than 300 incidents.84 This report lists numerous spills and
contamination events at Swanson River Oil Field including the following:
 Flowline Break, 1961: A pipeline burst in winter, spraying crude oil 2,000 feet; oil from
the spill reached the Swanson River. The extent of the leak was not discovered until the spring
thaw.

 Flowline Break, 1969: A pipeline lying just 40 feet from the Swanson River burst,
spraying crude oil over the frozen water.

 Compressor Plant Explosion, 1972: A compressor plant explosion released
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the wildlife refuge contaminating more than 100,000 tons
of soil. The contamination was not discovered until 14 years later.

 Pipe and Supply Yard Xylene Contamination, 1988: Xylene and other volatile organic
compounds were discovered in soil and groundwater samples; in concentrations ten times EPA
health standards. The groundwater at the site is still contaminated, even after a decade of
remediation.

 Flowline Leak, 1991: A pipeline leaked 5,630 gallons of crude oil and Produced Water,
contaminating soils near a road right-of-way.

 Flowline Break, 1999: A recreational snowmobiler discovered the largest spill ever
reported on the wildlife refuge. More than 200,000 gallons of crude oil and Produced Water
were released on the refuge.

 Underground Pipeline Leak, 1999: 8,600 gallons of Produced Water percolated up into
wildlife habitat. More than 1,600 gallons reached the Swanson River.

In 2001 the Fish and Wildlife Service and refuge biologists found an abnormally high
number of deformed frogs in the Kenai Refuge. Reportedly, the “number of
abnormalities recorded was the largest number found in any of 43 wildlife refuges
sampled nationwide. It also was the largest number of frog abnormalities ever reported
in the State of Alaska. According to the Refuge Update. “The discovery of significant
numbers of abnormal frogs at Kenai was a surprise,” and second stage research is
underway.85

The early data suggested that higher frog deformity occurred within the oil field areas.
“Frogs found in oil fields on the wildlife refuge showed deformities such as missing
hind legs and feet, misshapen hind legs, clubfeet and missing eyes.” It has not yet been
determined which of the many possible oil field contaminants are primarily responsible
for these deformities.
 Source: Google Earth

Figure 80: Recent Google Earth image showing the Kenai Peninsula between the Swanson River
Field area and Kenai Alaska.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 81: Google Earth image of Swanson River Field area.

Source: Google Earth

Figure 82: Recent image of the refinery and loading terminal at Nikiski
located on the coast with pipeline to Swanson River Field
-------------------------------------------

CASE HISTORY: PRUDHOE BAY - BP

Source: NYT 8/8/06

Figure 83 Prudhoe Bay Oil Rig

The Prudhoe Bay Field was discovered in 1968 by ARCO Humble and immediately
became the largest oil field in North America. With cumulative production of more than
10 billion barrels it represents about half the oil so far found on the North Slope. By
1980, the field was producing at a sustained rate of more than 1.5 million barrels of oil
per day and the state held that rate of production for conservation purposes for nearly 10
years. As of 2005, over 2500 wells had been drilled and production which had fallen to
about 400,000 barrels of oil per day was declining at rate of about 6% year. In 2005 the
estimated remaining recoverable reserves were about 2-3 billion barrels.

Source: Source: U.S. FWS 2001

 Figure 84: Prudhoe Bay Processing Facility

As the Production Chart for Prudhoe Bay Oil Pool shows (see below), the Produced
Water rate (blue line) and oil production rate (black line) were both at about 1.2 million
barrels per day in 1991 corresponding to a water cut of about 50%. Thereafter, oil
production continued to decline rapidly while Produced Water production has declined
more slowly. This resulted in a Produced Water rate from this single reservoir of about
250,000 barrels of water per day while the oil rate had fallen to less than 80,000 barrels
of oil per day. Similar decline curves are available for other reservoirs within the
Prudhoe Bay field.

Source: DOE NETL 2007

Figure 85: Prudhoe Bay Unit Daily Production showing Produced Water Rate in Blue

Development of Prudhoe Bay Field is spread over an area of more than 200 square
miles with six separate Produced Water and gas processing facilities.
 Source: Independent UK 3/21/06
Figure 86: Aerial photo of 2006 Pipeline Spill

The largest oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope occurred on March 2, 2006 at Prudhoe Bay
when more than 200,000 gals (about 5000 barrels) of oil leaked into the Arctic. The spill
came from a hole (about the size of a dime) in a pipeline that was caused by corrosion.
The pipeline leak detection system reportedly sounded four times during the week
before the spill was discovered, but employees interpreted the leak detection alarms as
false alarms. The pipeline was owned by BP, which later pleaded guilty to the negligent
discharge of oil and was fined $20 million under the federal Clean Water Act. Court
documents showed that some of the lines had not been inspected internally with a so-
called “smart pig” since 1992. Reportedly BP's own 2003 plan for safe maintenance and
management of its facilities filed at the Alaska Department of Environmental Protection,
says that the interval between smart-pig runs is typically five years, -which is different
from the fourteen-year reality.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration of the Federal

Transportation Department which normally regulates pipelines from the wells (like the
34 inch line that leaked) exempts pipelines like this that are in rural areas and are run at
low pressures.

An FBI investigation was triggered by allegations from Chuck Hamel, an advocate for
oil workers. Hamel claimed that more than a dozen past and current BP workers were
told to cut back on corrosion inhibitors and to falsify records. The FBI confirmed that it
had discussed the matter with other workers as well.

Source: Google Earth

Figure 87: Close-up of a pipeline in the Prudhoe Bay area showing obvious evidence of previous spills

The recent image above appears to show numerous traces of previous pipeline spills, but
it is not known which of these involved crude oil and which were mixed with Produced
Water at Prudhoe Bay. Note that the scale indicates that these various spills occurred
over a pipeline length of more than three miles.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 88: Recent image of pipelines in the Prudhoe Bay - Kuparuk Area
showing evidence of numerous spills

BP had previously been fined $1.2 million in 2004 for environmental violations. The
court-ordered inspections revealed that six miles of pipeline was badly corroded and in
need of replacement. Corrosion is normally caused by carbon dioxide and Produced
Water in contact with the pipe. It is normally controlled by the addition of corrosion
inhibitors. However, a 2005 internal company report said BP “based its corrosion-
fighting on a limited budget instead of needs.”86 On August 7, 2006, the company began
shutting down the pipeline to replace all sixteen miles of feeder pipelines that connected
the Prudhoe Bay field.

Congressional hearings were called in 2007 to investigate the causes for the pipeline
shutdown. News reports identify Robert Malone, chairman of BP America Inc.,
testifying that there were "extreme budget pressures at Prudhoe Bay" because of a sharp
decline in production from the North Slope. When asked if this could have discouraged
preventive maintenance, Malone replied, “It not only could have, we believe it did."87

A U.S. government report released in March 2007 blamed BP for cost-cutting at the
company's Texas City refinery, where a 2005 explosion killed 15 people and injured
170, the worst United States industrial accident since 1990.88 The House subcommittee
was told by the Chemical Safety Board that there were "striking similarities" between
the refinery accident and the Prudhoe Bay spills. They were told both incidents revealed
"a checkbook mentality" that prevented actions that might have avoided the problems.89
Another Produced Water spill in May 2007 in Prudhoe Bay shut down the BP pipeline
carrying 100,000 barrels of oil per day.
CASE HISTORY: KUPARUK RIVER FIELD

Figure 89: Index map of Kuparuk field

The Kuparuk River field is the second largest oil field developed on the North Slope
with proven reserves of nearly 3 billion barrels of 24ºAPI oil. The field was discovered
in 1981 and went on production that same year at an initial rate more than 35,000
barrels of oil per day. Within a year, both water injection and gas injection were
initiated. By 1988 Kuparuk River field was producing over 300,000 barrels of oil per
day, a rate which was maintained until 1992 when it began to decline rapidly. By 2005
the field was producing less than 150,000 barrels of oil per day and declining at a rate of
about 5% per year. It has produced more than 2 billion barrels of oil.

In April 2001 a major pipeline spill of Produced Water occurred at Kuparuk River field.
Approximately 92,000 gals (about 2000 barrels) of Produced Water spilled onto the
tundra. According to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC),
saltwater kills the tundra plants and can have lingering effects. Ed Meggert, the ADEC
manager for spill response said “It’s about the same toxicity as diesel…From the state's
perspective, it doesn't make any difference. It's all hazardous substances.”90

ConocoPhillips Petroleum, the operator, responded to a leak detection alarm within

minutes and the spill was confined to an area of less than an acre. The strategy for
cleaning seawater injected Produced Water from tundra is to flush the area with fresh
water for several weeks. BP was the other major leaseholder in the field. Other owners
include Unocal, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron Texaco.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 90: Recent image showing the Kuparuk River Field area
together with numerous meltwater lakes.
 Source: Google Earth
Figure 91: Recent image showing the roads and pads surrounding the meltwater lakes
at Kuparuk River Field.

Source: Google Earth

Figure 92: A recent close-up image shows the production facility in the Kuparuk field area
with a Produced Water pond on the left apparently directly connected to the larger melt water lake
above

An even larger Produced Water spill occurred on March 26, 2005. The spill was not
detected until a contractor worker noticed wet snow on the pad. The operator,
ConocoPhillips, initially estimated the spill involved more than 2500 barrels or about
113,000 gals of Produced Water covering more than two acres. The ADEC later
estimated the spill at about 1200 barrels or roughly 50,000 gals. They concluded that the
cause of the leak in the 6” line from the well-carrying injected seawater Produced Water
was internal corrosion.91 This was only the third largest Produced Water spill which
occurred on the North Slope. The largest Produced Water spill occurred in March 1997
and involved more than 750,000 gallons of diluted seawater.

Just about a week after the huge Prudhoe Bay oil spill in March 2006, the Kuparuk
River Field had another Produced Water spill. The spill contaminated a small area of
snow-covered tundra and resulted in the shutdown of about fifteen oil wells and their
associated pipelines. This further taxed the resources already being stretched at Prudhoe
Bay.
As recently as December 2007, Conoco reported another spill of about 4,000 gals of oil
and fluids.92 Workers heard a loud noise as the 24 inch pipeline sprayed gas, water and
oil onto the snow covered tundra.
 Source: U.S. FWS 2001
Figure 93: Index Map of ANWR and 1002 area

CASE HISTORY - ALASKA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE -

ANWR
This brings us to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for which Big Oil has
been salivating for decades. ANWR covers 19.8 million acres (80,000 km2) of the north
Alaskan coast, but it used to be much larger. In fact, the North Slope of Alaska
(covering nearly 50 million acres) was reserved exclusively for US military use during
World War II.

During the 1950s, the government produced a report called “The Last Great
Wilderness,” which recommended certain areas be set aside for conservation. In 1960,
close to nine million acres were designated by the Eisenhower administration as the
Arctic National Wildlife Range calling it "one of the world's great wildlife areas... one
of our remaining wildlife and wilderness frontiers."93

In 1960, US Interior Secretary Seaton designated 8.9 million acres of coastal plain and
mountains of northeast Alaska as the Arctic National Wildlife Range to protect its
"unique wildlife, wilderness, and recreation values." This was followed in 1980 by
Congressional passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
(ANILCA) which created more than 100 million acres of national parks, wildlife
refuges, and wilderness areas from Federal holdings in Alaska. Section 1002 of this act
specified a portion of the coastal area not designated as wilderness (1.5 million acres) of
the coastal plain known as the 1002 area would be studied before oil development
would be permitted.

In 1983 the native Kaktovik village was persuaded to agree to a land exchange with the
Arctic Slope Regional Corporation which resulted in the drilling of the KIC well in
1985. Ten years later, President Clinton vetoed a bill which would have permitted
additional drilling in the ANWR.

Source: U.S. FWS 2001

Figure 94: 1990 photo of the KIC exploratory well drilled in 1985.

In the 1002 Area, the nearest pipeline is 30 miles away and the nearest support facilities
and gravel road are about 50 miles. The oil industry unveiled their plans for
development of the 1002 Area to Congress in 1987. The map below shows a network of
well pads and pipelines and production facilities stretching for more than 50 miles
across the entire area. As mentioned previously, a lot of water is needed to build ice
roads and pads. Water resources are scarce in the 1002 area and in winter only about 9
million gallons may be available.94 This is only enough water to maintain about 10 miles
of ice roads. Any further development would probably need a permanent network of
gravel roads and pads.
 Source: Source: U.S. FWS 2001
Figure 95: Hypothetical Petroleum Development Plan of the 1002 area

I have never been to the Alaskan North Slope, but I hope to see it one day. I hope my
sons will one day be able to visit it and show the “Last Great Wilderness” to their
children. I don’t want to be the one who has to explain to them in twenty years that a
barren stretch of wasteland covered with roads, production facilities, spills and dying
vegetation is all that is left of their pristine national heritage.

For over a century, the companies have hidden the full environmental impacts of their
operations from the public and continually denied any connection between public health
and oil activities. They have reinforced these assertions by restricting their chemical
analysis almost exclusively to the amount of oil droplets found in their Produced Water.
They know full well, meanwhile, that it is the minute amount of toxins you don’t see
that accumulate and cause the greatest harm in living organisms.

They have reassured uninformed governments and agencies that the percentage of oil in
water is the critical factor while at the same time ensuring that no limits are ever placed
on the total amounts of Produced Water that can be discharged. This is like telling a
patient that he can consume as much medicine (or poison) as he can swallow as long as
the formula doesn’t exceed the recommended concentration. The result of this near-
sighted strategy has been (as I have shown) the near complete transformation and
environmental degradation of the areas surrounding most of the giant oil fields of the
world.
When it comes to Alaska, the oil companies are all saying “trust us, we know what we
are doing now, and we care about the environment and the natural resources.” I say to
the companies, look behind you, see the despoiled footsteps you have left in your path
and clean up those places before you ask for more. Shouldn’t we ask why companies
making the highest profits in history are still cutting corners on maintenance, safety and
the environment to compensate for falling production? Don’t we need to know why the
companies are quick to argue that the mess they leave is someone else’s responsibility
while they spend millions in legal fees and lobbying to make sure they are never held
accountable?

To stop Big Oil in its tracks, simply tell them that they will forfeit their entire acreage
and investments if they fail to adequately protect the environment. Let them know that
complete toxicity tests will be performed on every Produced Water discharge and that
all sources of Produced Water and surface waters will be carefully monitored and usage
charges will apply. Also, let them know that we will be watching their every move from
the sky and they will be held legally and financially accountable for any mistakes made.
That should be enough to encourage them to look elsewhere.

Finally, my 35-year long quest to discover if Big Oil can coexist in harmony with nature
has been concluded. Across the continents and around the globe wherever the giants
have left their footprints, they have degraded the surrounding environment. Not in small
ways with an occasional oil spill here and there, but with profound changes that last for
decades if not centuries. The impacts of the giant oil fields are easily seen in satellite
images today, with the accompanying changes in the landscape, vegetation, and
wildlife. But, it is the changes which are not so easily seen, like the changes in the
health and lifespan of the people and animals that are unfortunate enough to live on or
near the fields which are the most devastating.

Only when the oil companies are forced to value the water, air, and soil they use and
abuse as much as the oil they extract can we really expect positive change. The history
of the oil companies (as revealed in these pages) teaches us that what they don’t value,
we ultimately lose. As I have shown, they have demonstrated an almost complete
disregard for the water resources of this planet and water is the one resource we can
never afford to lose.
Conclusion: Global Perspective
What lessons can we take away from this tour of the Produced Water impacts of some
of the world’s giant oil fields? Most already know that crude oil is toxic, you can’t drink
it, and you can’t bathe or swim in it without consequences. It consists of more than 200
harmful organic chemical compounds and metals.

But what of the 300 million barrels per day (more than 12 billion gallons per day!) of
Produced Water that is generated around the globe. It accompanies every oil field
ultimately overwhelming the oil in both total volume and amounts discharged? Well, it
too is toxic, although somewhat less than the original oil. It too consists of most of these
200 organic chemical compounds and metals, just in lesser concentrations. People are
only exposed to oil, though, from the occasional spill, which the oil companies claim are
always localized, temporary, and accidental. The same claims cannot be made for
Produced Water. In fact Produced Water finds its way into the environment practically
from the day oil production begins in a field. It increases in volume and frequency until
it literally drowns the oil field in a sea of H2Oil.

Produced Water, as we have seen in satellite images and case histories, does not stay
localized. Wherever there is major oil production there is contaminated Produced Water.
If you could image the earth in a way that made Produced Water glow in the dark, you
would see the oil producing regions of the world lit up like Christmas trees on every
continent. And what if the Produced Water that the oil companies routinely dump in the
ocean were bright red instead of mostly clear? Then every offshore platform would be
immersed in a blood red sea fanning out for miles, sometimes hundreds of miles, away
from the production facilities.

Not surprisingly, the public generally has never heard of one of the largest sources of
water pollution on the planet. Anyone who tries to investigate on-site is told they are
trespassing on oil company property. Government agencies which may have
occasionally inspected the facilities are told to pay no attention to those pits, “that’s just
Produced Water.” Then they are assured that the Produced Water pits and ponds
complied fully with industry standards and shown hastily prepared charts of oil
percentages. Rarely, are health inspectors or researchers allowed into the field
compounds to take water samples or analyze the Produced Water for potentially harmful
components.

So, is oil production as currently practiced safe? It is a question the oil companies dread
and one which they have strenuously avoided. Only in Norway has the government
insisted that oil companies achieve near-zero discharge of Produced Water. Other
countries have turned their backs on the health implications of Produced Water until it is
too late. Then they find that they are left with an abandoned oil field, widespread toxins,
and generations of sick people—all as income from oil production ends.

What does the future hold for Produced Water on a global basis? As the world begins to
run out of its easily available oil supply, three energy trends are clear. There will be
increasing reliance on natural gas or methane for fuel, coal bed methane will become
attractive economically and more oil shale deposits will be mined. Let’s now look at
what the greater reliance on each of these technologies will mean for Produced Water.

Although natural gas fields involve far less Produced Water than oil fields, their impacts
are far from negligible. According to the Argonne National Labs, (Veil et al. 2004),

“In addition to formation water, produced water from gas operations also includes
condensed water. Produced waters from gas production have higher contents of low
molecular-weight aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and
xylene (BTEX) than those from oil operations; hence they are relatively more toxic than
produced waters from oil production. Studies indicate that the produced water
discharged from gas/condensate platforms are about 10 times more toxic than the
produced waters discharged from oil platforms.” 95

Coal bed methane gas will also increasingly be relied upon to make up for the shortfall
in oil supplies. Although the impact of produced water from coal bed methane
operations has not received as much scrutiny as Produced Water from oil and gas
operations, several potential hazards have emerged. Produced Water associated with
coal bed methane can increase the oxygen demand in aquatic environments, putting
aquatic organisms at risk. While this may at first sound like an acceptable trade-off, it is
yet another way that tremendous volumes of fresh water can ultimately become
unusable. Those aquatic organisms are part of keeping the water clean.4

In a 2006 Report to Congress on “The Interdependency of Energy and Water,” the

Department Of Energy estimated that the U.S. alone may have:

“Two trillion barrels of oil in the form of oil shale deposits, which is more than triple
the proven oil resources of Saudi Arabia. Due to historically high costs for
development, oil shale is not currently widely produced in the U.S., but is increasingly
being considered as a major future source of domestic oil supplies. Initial recovery work
focused on mining and above-ground processing (retorting) that consumed 2 to 5
gallons of water per gallon of refinery-ready oil (Bartis, 2005). Providing 25 percent of
U.S. oil demand would require 400 to 1000 million gallons of water per day. Because
oil shale resources are predominantly located in areas where water availability is limited
and has a high value, oil shale development may be constrained. In addition, runoff
could wash salt from shale residue into surface waters.” 96

4
For instance, even a seemingly small change toward acidity in water can leach heavy metals from
surrounding soils.
The mining of these deposits could result in considerably more water pollution.
Incidents like the 300 million gallon coal sludge spill in Kentucky in October 2000 or
the 1.1 billion gallon TVA Kingston coal ash slurry spill in Roane County Tennessee in
2008 could become even more common.

The focus of the oil and gas industry on Unconventional Shale Gas is relatively recent.
Gas production in America has traditionally been mainly from porous sandstones. Later
the government began to subsidize projects which promoted the production of low
porosity, “tite gas sands” which required the creation of artificial fractures to enhance
permeability and connect the tiny pores to the well so that the gas could flow in.
It is only in the last 5 years that the Supergiant gas field potential of these widespread
organic rich shales has been realized. The result has been a “boom mentality” with tens of
thousands of wells either drilling or planned97 for the near future. The map below outlines
the enormous extent of these shale gas plays. Many of these targets have only been
economically attractive recently due to a combination of improved horizontal drilling
technologies, new hydraulic fracturing chemical procedures “hydrofracs” and higher gas
prices.

Figure 96: Shale Gas Plays in U.S.

Throughout my career, geologists knew that shales contained huge quantities of gas in
place, but no one dreamed that a significant percentage of these resources (perhaps 10%)
would become legitimate drilling targets. That is because shales were previously thought
of primarily as source rocks for hydrocarbons not reservoir rocks. Furthermore, all of
these shale gas plays show important differences from each other and it is not yet clear
whether a common petroleum framework and exploration strategy can be utilized in
different areas of the country. Most importantly, we still do not know what the economic
life-span of these artificially stimulated wells might be in the broad development plan.
Some of these wells with relatively high initial production rates could peter out in just a
few years but this has not deterred the small entrepreneurial companies which are leading
the charge for shale gas.
One of the hottest gas exploration trends in the U.S. today is the Marcellus Shale Gas
Play shown on map below98. The Marcellus Shale was deposited slowly as an organic
rich mud in a shallow sea roughly 350 million years ago in the Devonian period. Later,
shifting rivers deposited thick delta sediments on top which caused the section to sink and
get hotter. By 300 million years ago, the shales were hot enough to generate
hydrocarbons, but these hydrocarbons had no easy pathways to escape and so much of
the oil was eventually converted to gas which remained trapped in the shales.

Figure 97: Thickness of Marcellus Shale Map

The Marcellus Shale has been called the “Saudi Arabia of Gas” but it underlies
America’s largest unfiltered watershed which provides drinking water to over 16 million
people. The areas considered most valuable for gas exploitation are located where the
black shale is about a mile deep, but is relatively thick (from 50 to more than 100 feet
thick.) In these areas lease values have jumped from a few dollars per acre to over $3000
per acre, often accompanied by a 12 % royalty. At these prices, it is easy to see how
concerns for the water resources and worries about health and safety have taken a back
seat to gas development.

In Jan 2010 documentary filmmaker Josh Fox premiered his “Gasland” film at the
Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize for best documentary. This film
depicted the impacts of shale gas extraction on families in Pennsylvania, New York,
West Virginia and Ohio. It showed a resident setting fire to the water coming out of his
kitchen faucet and described chronic health complaints from residents in other older gas
extraction areas in Wyoming, Colorado, Texas and Utah. The film was first shown on
HBO on June 21st 2010 and it will be available there on demand until 2012. A DVD
release is expected in December this year.

In the film, Fox claimed that hydraulic fracturing fluids were largely exempted from the
2005 Safe Drinking Water Act in what was called the “Halliburton loophole.” As a result
the industry does not have to disclose the composition of the more than 80 tons of
chemicals it uses in each well. One of these chemicals is known to be 2 Butoxyethanol,
the same toxic ingredient found in the dispersant COREXIT 9527. The exemption is
vigorously denied by Energy In Depth (EID,) an oil and gas industry lobbying group.
EID argued on their webpage “Debunking Gasland,” that fracs have been used for 60
years without problems and it is impossible for induced fractures to migrate far from the
horizontal well bores. This ignores the fact that many more wells are being frac’d now
using higher volumes of frac fluids at higher pressures. These could certainly result in
more cement and casing failures leading to contamination of the water supplies.
EID ignores the fact that the Marcellus and overlying shales are already sliced by
naturally occurring hydraulic fractures created by hydrocarbons trying to force their way
along the cracks as pressures build. Professors Terry Engelder and Gary Lash (credited
with first recognizing the enormous gas potential of the Marcellus Shale resource)
documented more than 65 pressure cycles of opening and closing of these fractures which
propagated far beyond the bed thicknesses They photographed in outcrop these natural
gas chimneys99 of escaping methane spanning hundreds of feet above the black shales.
Repressurizing these existing natural fractures and propping them open could create
extensive vertical migration pathways for the frac fluids, but these potential pathways
have not yet been studied. This is just one possible explanation for the contaminated
water supplies. Of, course it could be as simple as frac fluids leaking from pits and
seeping into the aquifers.
 Source: Engelder and Lash 2008
Figure 98: Photo of Natural Gas Chimneys in Gray Shale
The Gaslands Film joins a group of recent documentaries about the business of extracting
gas. “Split Estate” directed by Debra Anderson tells the story of residents in rural
Colorado and New Mexico who learned that they did not own the mineral rights beneath
their properties. As a result, gas companies could drill for shale gas at will and they could
not control the well spacing or total wells drilled. Anderson shows a discharge stream
being set on fire and discusses health impacts on the local people. A third film,
“Haynesville, a Nation’s Hunt for Energy” also tells how the lives of three people in
West Louisiana are changed by shale gas development.

Fraccing operations require huge amounts of water (up to 7 million gallons of water for
each frac job) and some horizontal wells may need to be frac’d as many as 18 times.
After the water comes in contact with the fraccing chemicals and hydrocarbons it
becomes Produced Water and must be disposed of. Treatment systems have been shown
to be largely ineffective in removing these chemicals and many evaporation ponds have
developed leaks. In addition the highly saline produced water frequently contains
concentrations of inorganic constituents, such as arsenic, barium, other heavy metals, and
radionuclides that often significantly exceed drinking water standards. Reports of high
salinity in some Appalachian rivers have been linked to the disposal of Marcellus Shale
Produced Water.

The risks to the environment are ever present as reported in the Pittsburgh Tribune-
Review. (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_684495.html)
On June 3, 2010, a Marcellus gas well blew out in Clearfield Co. Pennsylvania and
sprayed gas and Produced Water for 16 hours. The well owned by EOG Resources
(formerly, Enron Oil and Gas, my old company) discharged a million gallons of
Produced Water concentrated brines along with gas in a geyser 75 feet high. The well
was in a remote area more than a mile from the nearest home and luckily no one was
injured. However, if the escaping gas had found a spark, the well could have created a
large forest fire. The blowout resulted in a call by local representatives for passage of the
“Frac Act” to identify all of the materials used in hydraulic fracturing. EOG which
operates 265 active wells in Pennsylvania, agreed to a 7 day halt to its drilling activities
while it investigated the cause of the blowout. Nearly half of its well activity in the state
is in the Marcellus Shale.

According to geologists Daniel Soeder and William Kappe, (USGS Fact Sheet 2009-
3032) Water resources and the Marcellus Shale gas extraction are closely linked. Avail at
http://geology.com/usgs/marcellus-shale. They argue that before the gas can flow much
of the water and chemicals must be recovered and disposed of properly. They identified
two other water resource concerns: how to supply water for well construction without
impacting local water resources, and how to avoid degradation of small watersheds and
streams as heavy equipment and supplies are moved around on rural roads. Transport and
construction causes erosion and storage could lead to leaks and spills. They conclude:

“While the technology of drilling directional boreholes, and the use of sophisticated
hydraulic fracturing processes to extract gas resources from tight rock have improved
over the past few decades, the knowledge of how this extraction might affect water
resources has not kept pace. Agencies that manage and protect water resources could
benefit from a better understanding of the impacts that drilling and stimulating
Marcellus Shale wells might have on water supplies, and a clearer idea of the options
for wastewater disposal.”

It is well-known that less than 3% of the water on the earth is fresh water. Most of it has
been bound up in ice at the poles leaving less than 1% of the planet’s entire water
supply available for use. As we have seen, the oil industry has historically abused its
water privileges and has discharged contaminated Produced Water whenever and
wherever governments would allow. According to a 2006 “Guide to Practical
Management of Produced Water from Oil and Gas Operations in the United States,”
prepared by the National Petroleum Technology Office for the U.S. Dept of Energy:

“When compared to the annual oil and gas production across the United States, the
argument could be made that the oil and gas produced would be more appropriately
identified as a byproduct to production of water.”100

Is it possible the oil companies didn’t know that Produced Water was toxic even though
it was more abundant than crude oil? This doesn’t explain the dead birds, plants, and
animals that invariably pile up around these Produced Water ponds. Nor does it explain
the decades of complaints lodged by nearby residents of many giant oil fields around the
world. Nor does it explain oil company arguments, mentioned in the foreword of this
book, against federal regulation in the United States. They did not, they said, see the
need for such regulation because they were already aware of the dangers and
irresponsible handling of the waste would simply be unthinkable.101
What should the companies have done? First of all, they should have used their
enormous profits to minimize or eliminate Produced Water discharges from every oil
and gas field operation. Next, they should have discouraged (not encouraged) people
from relocating their homes and families to the vicinity of giant fields and they should
have offered to relocate all those who lived in the area where these fields were
discovered.

They should have built hospitals and clinics in the provinces where these fields were
found in anticipation of negative health impacts. They should have collected detailed
medical histories from people in the region and tracked their disease incidence from the
date of first production to abandonment of the fields. Finally, they should have offered
fair compensation to people whose lives and families were permanently disrupted by
Produced Water pollution. All these things should be done now.

Daniel Yergin won a Pulitzer Prize, for his book “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil,
Money, and Power” tracing the history of the oil and gas industry country by country
from one giant field discovery to the next.102 If we look beyond the Prize to this century,
we see that there is a price to be paid for the prize and these corporate riches. It is never
paid by those who received the benefits. That price has been and continues to be the
degradation of the environment and the deterioration of the health of all those too poor
and to uneducated to move out of the path of the oil giants.

Governments and trade organizations also have a role to play. The corporations will
continue to conduct irresponsible oil and gas operations wherever they are allowed to
hide behind euphemisms like “Produced Water.” Until they are held fully accountable
for the damages they have wrought to sensitive ecosystems, they will continue to chase
the latest discoveries to the Polar Regions, ANWR, East Africa, or Outer Mongolia.
Until they are charged for the damages, the companies will continue to leave behind
devastated ecosystems, and people who have been permanently scarred.

Yet the oil companies themselves might be willing to adhere to stricter regulations, so
long as they are all held to high standards. Many of the companies might even find
profit in adhering to higher environmental standards so long as their competitors are
held to the same standards. The companies, many of which earn their money under so-
called “service agreements” with host nations, would simply be performing additional
services. But no company selling oil can afford to have its prices undercut when others
are allowed to cut corners.

The earth cannot continue to support these harmful impact zones around giant oil and
gas fields. This is not to say that oil development cannot continue to be enormously
profitable. It is simply that the cost of doing business in the future must include proper
treatment and subsurface disposal of Produced Water before oil and gas production can
begin. Every producing country and every country or state which hopes to establish oil
and gas production must first conduct a thorough inventory of their water resources.
They must realistically assess the long-term impacts of Produced Water on their wildlife
and populations. They must then develop a comprehensive water resources plan of
monitoring, testing, analysis, and enforcement to ensure preservation of their water
quality. And they must hold everyone to the same high standards.

Governments should not be lulled by empty environmental promises, green advertising

and hollow guarantees for the future. They should demand proof that companies have
accepted full responsibility for their past environmental performance. They must
document that companies have taken significant steps to clean-up the giant fields they
left behind and tried to make whole those lives they have shattered. Only then can we
begin to trust that oil companies will operate in the best-interests of the people and deal
with water resources in a responsible manner. In the end, it can only be with the
understanding that a company will forfeit all leases, rights and privileges if they break
that trust that we will know that the earth’s water resources and its people are
adequately protected
Appendix 1 – Components and Environmental Impacts
of Produced Water
Many readers may initially be surprised at the full extent of environmental impacts from
produced water which is documented below. This is perhaps due to several causes, not
the least of which is that the oil companies benefit enormously from this lack of public
awareness. As I have shown, from the beginnings of the oil boom in each region, the
industry has promoted the notion that produced water is just salt water from the ground
and nothing to be particularly concerned about. The companies pretty much set their
own standards for “grease and oil” contaminants, but this literally only skimmed the
surface of the pollution problem. Furthermore, the companies and their lobbyists have
been adamant about exempting produced water from water pollution legislation such as
the Clean Water Act, NEPA, etc. and routinely have redefined pollution practices to
meet their own needs

Oil and Grease

Produced water contains some dissolved hydrocarbons and dispersed oil in the form of
droplets. These often remain after separation and have most of the higher molecular
weight, less soluble saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons

Oil and grease is a key constituent in produced water and it is regulated in nearly all
permits authorizing produced water discharges. It is not a single chemical compound,
but an "indicator pollutant" which is a measure of many different types of organic
materials that respond to a particular analytical procedure. Different analytical methods
will measure different organic fractions and compounds. Therefore, the specific
analytical method used is important in determining the magnitude of an oil and grease
measurement.

Since the EPA’s oil and grease limit is the first hurdle which an operator must cross
before Produced Water is legally discharged we should begin with the definition and
recommended procedures.

A 1998 training manual by Houston Consultant, Dan Caudle of Sound Environmental

Solutions goes into specific details and hints at how the procedures could have been
illegally manipulated or circumvented. He states that by definition “Oil and grease is
any material which remains to be weighed after a solvent (like Freon or Hexane) is
evaporated.” Caudle points out that “Most of the organic materials in produced water
are not oil and grease because they are either insoluble in the extracting solvent (Freon
or hexane) or they are so volatile that they boil off with the solvent during analysis. At
that time, oil and grease measurements were mainly done in the lab and field estimates
were done by indirect infrared measurements calibrated to the EPA standard. He
cautions against the use of the field methods to screen samples for later analysis as any
atypical or non-representative analysis could result in criminal penalties.103

We can only wonder how frequently the EPA enforced this punishment or whether any
developing countries included this penalty. Furthermore he lists several conditions
which could result in incorrect measurements of oil and grease such as:

 Inadequate mixing due to not enough energy being used and not enough mixing
time (you did not shake the sample hard enough or long enough),

 Inaccurate volume measurements for both water sample and solvent,

 Too much or too little evaporation (depending on the method being used), and

 Dirty equipment.

Another concern is that not all produced waters contain the same constituents even if
they have the same oil and grease content. Oil and grease is made up of at least three
forms:

 Free oil (this is in the form of large droplets that are most easily removed by gravity
separation methods),

 Dispersed oil (this is in the form of small droplets that are more difficult to remove),
and

 Dissolved oil (these are hydrocarbons and other similar materials that are dissolved in
the water stream; they are often difficult or nearly impossible to remove.

The chart below indicates the kind of technology necessary to remove the various
particle sizes.

Particle Size Removal Capabilities

Removal Capacity by Particle Size
Technology
(Units in Microns)
API gravity separator 150
Corrugated plate separator 40
Induced gas flotation without chemical addition 25
Induced gas flotation with chemical addition 3-5
Hydrocyclone 10-15
Mesh coalesce 5
Media filter 5
Centrifuge 2
Membrane filter 0.01

Source: Frankiewicz (2001)

Figure 99: Table showing the Particle Size Removal of Various Treatment Technologies

Given the less than pristine conditions found in most, if not all oil fields, consistent and
reliable measurements of grease and oil in the field would be nearly impossible to
achieve. This could have been a contributing factor to the phase-out of discharges
onshore in the United States.

So of what value are solvent soluble grease and oil constituents for toxicity
assessments? Not much, since they are a poor indicator of overall chronic toxicity.

Metals

Produced water also contains a large number of metals in solution with the type and
concentration varying with the geology and age of the formations. The most frequently
found are barium, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, nickel, and zinc. Some of
these will precipitate out as oxides when the produced water is brought to the surface
and exposed to air.

Concentrations of some heavy metals, such as Cd, Pb, Fe and Ba, are enriched in
produced water from the Gulf of Mexico relative to ambient seawater by factors of
about 10 to >10,000.

Nearly all of the detailed studies on metal toxicity are done in marine waters and most
of these have focused on the Gulf of Mexico. This is unfortunate, because given the
levels of anthropogenic influences on discharges into the Gulf; it is difficult to establish
a reliable baseline for toxicity studies. This has been complicated by long-term studies
of non-representative fields such as the Buccaneer Field. This field offshore Texas is
actually a gas field with far less Produced Water discharges than are normal for this size
of platform.
 Source DFO 2001
Figure 100: Global comparisons of Heavy Metal Concentrations in Produced Waters

Toxicity tests of metals from Produced Water have yielded mixed results. This is
possibly due to changes in bioavailability over time. A recent paper by Fisheries and
Oceans Canada (Azetsu- Scott 2007)104found that Produced water undergoes changes in
its physical chemistry including precipitation of heavy metals after being discharged and
mixed with ambient water. Potential impacts of the precipitation of heavy metals on
their transport and toxicity were studied using samples from offshore oil production
sites on the Scotian Shelf off eastern Canada. Concentrations of aluminum, cadmium,
chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, manganese, nickel, and zinc were measured in
total, particulate, and dissolved fractions together with Microtox® tests for assessment of
toxicity.

Heavy metals in produced water were transformed from dissolved to particulate phase in
a period of hours under oxygenated conditions, and aggregated to larger particles that
settle rapidly (>100m/day) over a few days. In addition, there was production of
buoyant particles comprised of heavy metal precipitates sequestered onto oil
droplets that were transported to the surface. The particulate fraction was generally
more toxic than the dissolved fraction. This was evident at the mixing interface between
produced water and seawater where elevated particulate and toxicity levels were
observed.

Laboratory studies suggest an increase in the toxicity of discharged Produced Water

over time. Time-series experiments showed a sustained toxic response for more than a
week following the oxidation of freshly discharged produced water that initially elicited
little or no toxic response in the Microtox® test. Several metals that are present at
elevated concentrations in some produced waters are toxic to very toxic to marine
animals (LC50 less than 10 mg/l (ppm)). These include arsenic, beryllium, cadmium,
chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, silver, and zinc. At moderately low pH and
Eh, several of these metals will be in forms that are moderately soluble and bioavailable.

In 2001, scientists at the Coastal Marine Institute at Louisiana University investigated a

loss of genetic diversity in marine copepods sampled at Produced Water discharge sites.
The two C. deitersi lineages tested were both highly tolerant to metals; however,
survivorship differed among lineages. Survivorship in both lineages to metal exposure
was high until about 70 h. After 70 h, survivorship in type I individuals (all collected
from the Alabama brine seep) decreased markedly to slightly less than 50% of the total
while survivorship in the type II individuals (all collected from a Louisiana salt marsh)
remained above 75%. Type I and type II survivorship differed after 96 h; fewer type I
individuals survived. They concluded that the loss of species at contaminated sites, and
a reduction in species diversity is a generally acknowledged consequence of
contamination in benthic communities105

PAHs

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons are of concern due to their reported carcinogenic

effects and bioaccumulation in the food chain. Some researchers claim that pregnant
women are at risk from eating fish exposed to Produced Water discharges. Higher
molecular weight aromatics are not acutely toxic to aquatic organisms due to their
solubility. However, some of these, such as benz (a)anthracene and benzo(a)pyrene may
produce chronic effects such as cancer. Middleditch (1981) reported concentrations of
benzo(a)pyrene up to 5 ppm in produced water from the Buccaneer field.106
Unfortunately, other polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and sulfur heterocyclics
apparently were not quantified in the Produced Water.

VOCs & BTEX

Volatile organic compounds including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene

(BTEX) related compounds are of concern due to their ability to be absorbed through
skin tissue, gills, and their known or suspected carcinogenicity. Concentrations of low
molecular weight volatile hydrocarbons (C1–C14) in the water column of the
northwestern Gulf of Mexico are an order of magnitude higher than in unpolluted open
ocean waters107. These hydrocarbons are thought to have been derived from underwater
venting of waste gas and discharge of Produced Water. Sediments about 50 ft (15 m)
downcurrent from a produced water discharge in Trinity Bay, Texas, contained high
concentrations of C10– C28 alkanes and aromatic hydrocarbons from C3-benzenes to
C3-phenanthrenes.108 Extending away from the discharge in all directions for up 15,000
ft (about 5000 m) there was a gradient of decreasing sediment naphthalenes
concentrations. . The concentration of light aromatic hydrocarbons (i.e. naphthalenes,
phenanthrenes and benzenes) in the crude oil water soluble fraction largely determines
the toxicity to marine organisms109. As solubility decreases and molecular weight
increases the acute toxicity of aromatic hydrocarbons to marine plants and animals
increases)110. For aquatic organisms, generally only the higher weight range aromatic
hydrocarbons from benzene to pyrene are acutely toxic

Source: CAPP 2001

Figure 101: Comparison of organic compounds found in Produced Waters

According to the USGS, (Rowe et al. 2007) elevated levels of VOCs have begun
showing up in water wells providing drinking water for many in the United States111.
Many of these high values correspond to areas which have been subjected to massive
Produced Water disposal. The map below shows the distribution of VOCs in the United
States.
 Source: USGS 2007
Figure 102: Map showing concentrations of VOCs found in US Domestic well water

Phenols & EDCs

According to the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP), “There is
little published information on the eco-toxicity of phenols, since the substance is not
particularly toxic to marine organisms112.” However, some phenols have been of special
concern to scientists due to their ability to be absorbed through skin tissue and suspected
long term internal organ toxicity effects. Alkyl phenols in particular are of increasing
concern due to their similarity to estrogen and other hormones. It has also been reported
that low levels of C4-C7 alkyl phenols had a negative hormonal effect on cod fish and
some alkyl phenols are reportedly capable of feminizing male fish.

Recently, most of the studies on the biological impacts of phenols in Produced Water
have originated in Norway based on data from North Sea Platforms. The focus has been
on endocrine disruptor compounds (EDCs) which could alter the reproductive systems.
Alkylphenols have been of special concern, owing to their estrogenic effects on fish,
causing endocrine disruption.

"The discharge of produced water in the North Sea is now more than 300-mm
tpy, [about 2.3 billion barrels/yr]" … "It's really a very substantial amount. And
the amount of alkylphenols is something like 20 tons [about 150 barrels] in
total." Even after produced water is dispersed at sea, says Dr Misund, such large, total
volumes "might be enough to potentially have a harmful effect 113."

In 2002, approximately 31.4 kg (69 pounds/day) of alkyl phenols were discharged per
day from the Troll and Oseberg and Statfjord field areas of the North Sea. Alkylphenols
have been of special concern, owing to their estrogenic effects on fish, causing
endocrine disruption. These recent studies show that despite the assurances of the OGP,
phenols are a significant concern for the environment.

In 2007, Meier et al. reported on Atlantic cod fed alkylphenols in a paste. Their results
revealed that female first time spawners had impaired oocyte development, reduced
estrogen levels, and exposure delayed the estimated time of spawning by 17-28 days. In
male fish, exposure reduced testosterone concentrations, impaired testicular
development, with an increase in the amount of spermatogonia and a reduction in the
amount of spermatozoa present. They suggested that alkylphenols released into the sea
via produced water may have a negative influence on the overall reproductive fitness of
cod populations114.

That same year, the effects on the gene expression of zebrafish from produced water at
Oceberg C Platform in Norway (Olsvik 2006) were studied. The results indicated that
27 genes in the gills and 55 genes in the liver show significantly altered expression
(greater than two-fold change). Not surprisingly, CYP1A, an indicator of environmental
toxicity, was up-regulated to the highest degree in gills of zebrafish exposed to
Produced Water115.

Later, Boitsov, working at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway together with
scientists at the Norwegian Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture Research Norway
identified estrogen-like alkylphenols in Produced Water from offshore oil installations
which interfere with the normal function of estrogen binding proteins116. Tollefson and
others further reported that endocrine receptors and antagonistic androgen receptors
were detected in both the dissolved and oil associated phase from produced waters
offshore Norway representing a significant input into the marine environment that exert
a known biological effect117.

Mussels have also been affected by Produced Water causing changes in their
expressions of genes and proteins, but this was only recently confirmed using the tools
of proteomics. Bjornstad and others reported in the Journal of Toxicology and Health on
filter-feeding mussels (Mytilus edulis) that were exposed continuously for 3 weeks to
oil, or oil spiked with alkylphenols and extra PAHs. The spike was made to reflect the
composition of the 52 alkylphenols and the PAHs known to occur in Produced Water
from offshore platforms and installations in the North Sea oil fields. Their results
indicated that exposure to spiked oil had a more significant effect on protein expression
than oil alone in male fish118.

Salinity
Produced water salinities range from a few parts per thousand to saturated brine (~ 300
ppt). Most produced waters have salinities that exceed that of seawater (~ 35 ppt) (Neff,
1997). The majority of produced waters from the Gulf of Mexico have salinities in the
50 ppt – 150-ppt range119.

The USGS has investigated spillage and improper disposal of saline Produced Water
from oil wells which has caused environmental damage at thousands of sites in the
United States. They have conducted a multidisciplinary project at two oil production
sites near Skiatook Lake, Oklahoma. As a part of this effort, the hydrology and
subsurface transport of brine at OSPER site “A”, a tank battery and pit complex that was
abandoned in 1973, was investigated. Based on data from 41 new boreholes that were
cored and completed with monitoring wells, a large (200 m × 200 m × 20 m) plume of
saline ground water was mapped about the length of two football fields. The main
dissolved species are Na and Cl, with TDS in the plume ranging as high as 30,000 mg/L
(ppm).

Past disposal of oil-field brine at the surface has caused substantial contamination of
water resources in Kansas. Although regulations preventing escape of saltwater from oil
wells were first passed in Kansas in 1935, much oil and gas brine was disposed on the
surface through the 1940s. Hydrogeologic characteristics of the areas with past surface
disposal of oil brine differ appreciably and result in large differences in the ratio of
saltwater transported in streams or ground water. Much of the brine disposed during the
1910s to 1940s in an area of silty clay soils overlying shale and limestone bedrock in
south-central Kansas soon ran off or was flushed from the surface by rain into streams.
Chloride concentration in the rivers draining this area often exceeded 1000 mg/L (ppm)
after the start of oil production up to the 1950s. Chloride content in the rivers then
generally declined to about 100 mg/L (ppm) or less in recent low flows. Oil brine was
also disposed in surface ponds overlying the unconsolidated High Plains aquifer in
south-central Kansas from the latter 1920s into the 1940s. Most of the surface-disposed
brine infiltrated to the underlying aquifer. Where the High Plains aquifer is thin,
saltwater has migrated along the top of clay layers or the underlying shaly bedrock and
either discharged into small streams or flowed into thicker parts of the aquifer. Where
the aquifer is thick, surface-disposed oil brine moved downward until reaching clay
lenses, migrated latterly to the edge of the clay, and again moved downward if still
dense enough. Water-level declines from pumping have increased the lateral migration
rate of the saltwater contamination in the aquifer towards water-supply wells. The
period of flushing most of the surface-disposed saltwater from the area of shale and
limestone bedrock is on the order of many decades, but is at least many centuries for the
deeper parts of the High Plains aquifer.

NORMS
Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material or NORMS such as radium radionuclides in
Produced Water are of particular interest. Radium tends to concentrate in bones and in
the calcified exoskeleton of marine invertebrates. Of special interest for Produced Water
are the natural radionuclides 226Ra and 228Ra. Radium is considered a bone-seeking
element and tends to accumulate preferentially in the calcified exoskeleton of marine
invertebrates (van der Borght, 1963; Moore et al.1973) and also bones of fish 120. In a
freshwater stream contaminated with uranium mill wastes, Anderson et al. (1963)
reported 226 Ra bioaccumulation factors of 500–1000 for fish skeleton, about 100 in
fish muscle. Further research on radium bioaccumulation is needed.121

NORMS are easily spread by pipe scale which accumulates in pipes used for Produced
Water. In 1999 the USGS produced a map of NORMS across the United States which
showed the large areas of South Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Southeast Texas
had greater than five times the median background level for all sites122.
Appendix 2 – Enhanced Oil Recovery
Waterflooding and Enhanced Oil Recovery

During primary production the average oil field produces 30 percent of the oil in the reservoir
by the natural reservoir drive. Other engineering techniques may be used to recover some of the
remaining oil. A waterflood is often tried first. During waterflooding, new injection wells are
drilled into the depleted oil reservoir or old wells are converted into injection wells. Water is
pumped down the injection wells and pushes some of the remaining oil through the pores of the
reservoir rock toward producing wells. A waterflood can produce up to 25% of the original oil
in the reservoir but still leaves at least 50% of the oil in the subsurface reservoir.

Enhanced oil-recovery methods are often tried after the waterflood. These include gas injection,
chemical flood, steam flood, or fire flood. During inert-gas injection, carbon dioxide or nitrogen
gas is pumped down injection wells to move some of the remaining oil in the reservoir toward
producing wells. In a chemical flood, chemicals similar to detergents are pumped down
injection wells to wash some of the remaining oil from the pores of the reservoir rock. A steam
flood is used when the oil in the subsurface reservoir is too viscous to flow though the pores of
the reservoir rock. Steam is pumped down injection wells to heat the heavy oil in order to make
it more fluid. The steam also pushes the oil through the subsurface reservoir toward producing
wells. In a fire flood some of the subsurface oil remaining in the reservoir is set afire. Air must
then be pumped down injection wells to keep the subsurface fire going. The fire heats the oil in
the reservoir, making it more fluid. The gases generated by the fire push the heated, fluid oil
toward producing wells.

Waterfloods and enhanced oil-recovery projects are very expensive and are not profitable when
the price of oil is low. Wells that produce just enough oil to make a profit over operating costs
are called stripper wells. When the well becomes unprofitable, it is abandoned. The well is
plugged by pouring cement down it and putting a cap on the top.

In a steam flood, sometimes known as steam drive, some wells are used as steam injection wells
and other wells produce from them. The idea is the same as with water flooding, the oil is
meant to be pushed to the production wells. While more steam is needed for this method, it is
typically more effective at recovering a larger portion of the oil. However, since steam is lighter
and more mobile than oil, gravity differences and channeling of the steam through the most
permeable parts of the reservoir can create sweep-efficiency problems during steam-injection
processes leaving behind the oil and increasing the percentage of Produced Water.

Appendix 3 – List of Figures

Index of Figures
Macondo Reservoir Well Log......................................................................................................................6
Macondo Drillers Log..................................................................................................................................8
Macondo Mudlog........................................................................................................................................9
Kill Line Pressure Buildup Integrity Test..................................................................................................10
Macondo Casing Diagram.........................................................................................................................11
Macondo Seismic Line with Relief Wells..................................................................................................12
Daily production onshore and offshore of global Produced Water............................................................18
Signal Hill, CA. ca 1932............................................................................................................................22
Santa Fe Springs Field ca 1932..................................................................................................................23
Santa Barbara Harbor showing oil spill 2/14/69.......................................................................................24
Santa Fe Springs Field ca 1960..................................................................................................................26
Aerial photo of Santa Fe Springs field.......................................................................................................28
Produced Water ponds NW of Coalinga. The sites shown had large agricultural sprinklers which were
used to discharge Produced Water piped to the facility from the Chevron oil fields..................................30
Image of Coalinga Field NW area showing open space.............................................................................31
Photo of a production island over Long Beach oil field showing THUMS Island, ...................................35
Colors show relative apparent motion of surface, with the yellow and red areas moving away,................36
Garden Island Bay GoogleEarth image 2010.............................................................................................38
The Bird’s Foot Delta before and after Hurricane Katrina .....................................................................39
The Chandeleur Islands before Hurricane Katrina.....................................................................................40
The Chandeleur Islands after Hurricane Katrina........................................................................................41
Map showing some of the more than 150,000 wells which .......................................................................42
Measured subsidence between 1918 and 1926 around Goose Creek oilfield. Lines .................................45
Subsidence occurring between 1905 and 1978 in the Houston-Galveston region......................................46
LIDAR image of the Houston area with faults and salt domes depicted....................................................47
Map of Oil and Gas Fields in the Northern Gulf Coast..............................................................................48
Typical subsea BOP stack..........................................................................................................................50
Deepwater Horizon Rig on fire..................................................................................................................52
Lower Marine Riser Assembly and BOP...................................................................................................54
Simultaneous Well Control Operations.....................................................................................................56
Shear Ram blades......................................................................................................................................57
Terra Satellite MODIS Image of BP oil Slick in May 2010.......................................................................58
Model for Development of Hypoxic Conditions........................................................................................69
MODIS Image of N Gulf of Mexico Jan 2003...........................................................................................70
Seasonal Change of Dead Zones in 2004...................................................................................................70
Catch rates of Shrimp and Fish relative to Dissolved Oxygen...................................................................71
Annual Area of Hypoxic Zones.................................................................................................................72
Dissolved Oxygen, Temperature and Salinity from S. Louisiana 1992......................................................75
Vertical Distribution of Oxygen in Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean...........................................................77
Index Map of Mexico...............................................................................................................................81
2008 image of Monterrey showing box canyons.......................................................................................82
Chart of Mexico’s crude oil types..............................................................................................................83
Graph of Mexico’s oil production by region (thousands of barrels per day)..............................................84
Index map of coastal Mexico.....................................................................................................................85
Poza Rica production complex..................................................................................................................86
Poza Rica tanks and ponds.........................................................................................................................86
Close-up of Poza Rica lagoons and streams...............................................................................................87
Google Earth Index Map of Ixtoc 1...........................................................................................................89
Sedco 135 rig before sinking.....................................................................................................................90
Aerial View of IXTOC 1 oil slick and fire.................................................................................................90
Aerial view of IXTOC 1 Wellhead Fire.....................................................................................................91
IXTOC 1 "Sombrero" Collector................................................................................................................92
Impacted shoreline, South Texas1980.......................................................................................................93
The Athabasca River delta is the largest fresh water delta in the world ....................................................98
Canadian Oil Production and Consumption...............................................................................................98
Organic Chemicals in Produced Water from Hibernia Development Project..........................................100
Cumulative Production from Canadian Offshore Platforms to 2000........................................................100
Index Map of the Alberta oil sands areas.................................................................................................101
A recent Google Earth image shows a distant view of Alberta’s oil sands .............................................102
A recent Google Earth image shows the extent of oil sands development...............................................103
Recent Google Earth image showing a single oil sand strip-mine at Fort McMurray. ............................104
Chart Comparing Water Oil Ratios in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Worldwide.......................................105
Chart showing the Daily Oil Production for SE Alberta..........................................................................105
Chart showing the Produced Water-to-oil ratio for SE Alberta................................................................106
Chart showing the Produced Water Production in SE Alberta.................................................................106
Syncrude upgrader...................................................................................................................................108
Recent satellite image of Produced water pond next to the river. ............................................................109
–Aerial photo of Syncrude’s oil sands facility at Mildred Lake...............................................................110
Suncor millennium mine..........................................................................................................................111
NASA Enhanced 2005 satellite image of Produced water ponds and the adjacent river..........................112
Low-angle recent satellite image of Ft. McMurray Produced Water Ponds ............................................113
Aerial view of the Suncor oil sands plant in northeastern Alberta.......................................................114
Concentrations of PAHs in Athabasca River sediments 2001-2006.........................................................115
Graph of Alaska North Slope oil production and forecast........................................................................118
Map of Alaskan North Slope Production Facilities and Pipelines in 2006...............................................119
Extent of North Slope oil fields in 2001..................................................................................................120
A recent Google Earth image shows a well site on the North Slope........................................................120
The map shows the 2005 distribution of oil and gas fields on the Cook Inlet. ........................................123
Cook Inlet Production and Forecast to 2025............................................................................................123
Swanson River Field Produced Water Disposal Rate and Cumulative Disposal......................................124
Recent Google Earth image showing the Kenai Peninsula between the Swanson River Field area and
Kenai Alaska............................................................................................................................................126
Google Earth image of Swanson River Field area..................................................................................127
Recent image of the refinery and loading terminal at Nikiski .................................................................127
Prudhoe Bay Oil Rig................................................................................................................................128
Prudhoe Bay Processing Facility.............................................................................................................129
Prudhoe Bay Unit Daily Production showing Produced Water Rate in Blue...........................................129
Aerial photo of 2006 Pipeline Spill..........................................................................................................130
Close-up of a pipeline in the Prudhoe Bay area showing obvious evidence of previous spills................131
Recent image of pipelines in the Prudhoe Bay - Kuparuk Area ..............................................................132
Index map of Kuparuk field.....................................................................................................................133
Recent image showing the Kuparuk River Field area .............................................................................134
Recent image showing the roads and pads surrounding the meltwater lakes...........................................135
A recent close-up image shows the production facility in the Kuparuk field area...................................135
Index Map of ANWR and 1002 area.......................................................................................................137
1990 photo of the KIC exploratory well drilled in 1985..........................................................................138
Hypothetical Petroleum Development Plan of the 1002 area...................................................................139
Shale Gas Plays in U.S............................................................................................................................143
Thickness of Marcellus Shale Map..........................................................................................................144
Photo of Natural Gas Chimneys in Gray Shale........................................................................................146
Table showing the Particle Size Removal of Various Treatment Technologies.......................................152
Global comparisons of Heavy Metal Concentrations in Produced Waters...............................................153
Comparison of organic compounds found in Produced Waters...............................................................155
Map showing concentrations of VOCs found in US Domestic well water...............................................156
1
Notes
FOREWORD

BP Testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee June 14, 2010 Available at
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100614/BP-Production.Casing.TA.Options-
Liner.Preferred.Short.Version.pdf
2
Halliburton Testimony to House Energy and Commerce Committee May 12, 2010 Avail at
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100512/Halliburton-Last.Two.Hours.Chart.pdf
3
BP Draft Incident Report of May 24, 2010 Avail at
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100527/BP.Presentation.pdf
4
Kent Wells Technical Briefing July 21, 2010 Available at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6775

5
Dept of Energy Deepwater Horizon website at
http://www.energy.gov/open/documents/3.1_Item_2_Macondo_Well_07_Jun_1900.pdf
6
Kent Wells Technical Briefing press slides June 28, 2010 available at
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING
/local_assets/downloads_pdfs/Kent_wells_technical_briefing_press_call_slides_28062010.pdf
7
INTRODUCTION: H2Oil

Argonne National Laboratory, “Development of a Resource for Produced Water Data and Analysis,”
http://www.ead.anl.gov/project/images/pa/70_Development%20of%20a%20Resource%20.pdf
.
8
. Peter Rogers, “Facing the Freshwater Crisis,” Scientific American, July 23, 2008.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=facing-the-freshwater-crisis&print=true
.
9
. Peter Rogers, “Facing the Freshwater Crisis,” Scientific American (July 23, 2008), 5.
http://ohm.ecce.admu.edu.ph/wiki/pub/Main/ResearchProjects/Facing_the_Freshwater_Crisis_Scientifi
c_American.pdf
.
10
.United Nations, “Millennium Report of the Secretary General: We the Peoples; the Role of
the United Nations in the 21st Century” 2000, full report chapter V. Points 277 & 278 <
http://www.un.org/millennium/sg/report/full.htm
>
11
. World Wildlife Federation, “Living Planet Index,”
http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/living_planet_report/living_planet_index/
.
12
K. C. Clarke and Jeffrey J. Hemphill (2002) The Santa Barbara Oil Spill, A Retrospective.
Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Editor Darrick Danta, University of Hawaii
Press, vol. 64, pp. 157-162.
at http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~kclarke/Papers/SBOilSpill1969.pdf
13
NOAA Incident News “Santa Barbara Oil Well blowout”
at http://www.incidentnews.gov/incident/6206
14
. “Union Oil Spill Disaster Sparks a Movement,” Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association,
January 2006, http://www.farallones.org/e_newsletter/2006-01/UnionOilspill.htm

. See also “Environment: Tragedy in Oil,” Time,

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900613-3,00.html.

GROWN IN CALIFORNIA
15
. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Region 9: Superfund: Waste Disposal, Inc.,”
http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/7508188dd3c99a2a8825742600743735/5e5db014c58fd
78088257007005e9419!OpenDocument
.
16
. U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Los Angeles Rainfall, 1877-2005,”
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/lox/climate/Los%20Angeles%20Yearly%20Rainfall%20-
%20jo_8822_image001.gif.
17
. Arthur McGarr, “On A Possible Connection Between Three Major Earthquakes in
Californian and Oil Production,” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 81 (1991), 948.
18
. Gerald W. Bawden, Wayne Thatcher, Ross S. Stein, Ken W. Hudnut & Gilles Peltzer,
“Tectonic contraction across Los Angeles after removal of groundwater pumping effects.” Nature 412,
812-815 (23 August 2001) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6849/full/412812a0.html
.
19
. McGarr, “On A Possible Connection Between Three Major Earthquakes in California and
Oil Production.”
20
. “Testimony of John A. Veil, Argonne National Laboratory: Before The House Committee
On Science And Technology Subcommittee On Energy And Environment,” Argonne National
Laboratory
(October 30, 2007), http://www.evs.anl.gov/pub/doc/testimony_veil_final.pdf
.
21
. Eric Fielding and others, “Rapid subsidence over oil fields measured by SAR
interferometry,” Geophysical Research Letters, 25, no. 17, 3215–18 (September 1, 19980, http://www-
radar.jpl.nasa.gov/s323/IntSARapps/LH-Belridge_GRL.html
.

LOUISIANA —SINKING IN THE GULF

22
. U.S. Department of Commerce, “Rates of Vertical Displacement at Benchmarks in the
Lower Mississippi Valley and the Northern Gulf Coast,” NOAA Technical Report NOS/NGS 50 (July
2004). http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/heightmod/NOAANOSNGSTRS50.pdf
.
23
. Arthur E. Berman, “The Debate Over Subsidence in Coastal Louisiana and Texas,” Houston
Geological Society (Nov 24, 2005), http://www.hgs.org/en/art/?691
.
24
. Cain Burdeau, “Did Oil Canals Worsen Katrina’s Effects?” Mangrove Action Project,
http://www.mangroveactionproject.org/news/current_headlines/did-oil-canals-worsen-katrinas-effects/
.
 25
. Lionel D. Lyles and Fulbert Namwamba, “Louisiana Coastal Zone Erosion: 100+ Years of
Land Use and Land Loss Using GIS and Remote Sensing,” (unpublished study, Southern University,
Baton Rouge, 2004), http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/educ05/papers/pap1222.pdf
.
26
. Jim Porter, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, quoted in
Burdeau, see note 42.
27
. Oil industry television advertising quoted in Burdeau.
28
. Rex Tillerson, chief executive of ExxonMobil talking to the American Petroleum Institute,
quoted in Burdeau, see note 42.
29
. Robert A. Morton and others, “Rapid Subsidence and Historical Wetland Loss in the
Mississippi Delta Plain: Likely Causes and Future Implications” (U.S. Geological Survey, Open File
Report 2005-1216), 1, http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1216/ofr-2005-1216.pdf
.
30
. Robert A. Morton and others, “Evidence of Regional Subsidence and Associated Interior
Wetland Loss Induced by Hydrocarbon Production, Gulf Coast Region, USA" (U.S. Geological
Survey, 2006), http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/gc-subsidence/regional_subsidence.pdf
.
31
. NASA, “Subsidence in New Orleans,” Earth Observatory (Sept 22, 2008),
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6623
.
32
. The history of Goose Creek oil field is described in “Managing Coastal Subsidence,”
Houston-Galveston, Texas (U.S. Geological Survey, 2007),
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/circ1182/pdf/07Houston.pdf
.
33
. D. Kosloff and others, “Finite element simulation of Wilmington oil field subsidence: I.
Linear modeling,” Tectonophysics, 65, no. 3-4, 339–68
.
34
. Eric Fielding and Ronald Blom, “Subsidence Monitoring at Lost Hills Oil Field with SAR
Interferometry and Other Remote Technologies,” a project under Solid Earth And Natural Hazards
Research And Applications NRA-01-OES-05, (October 2005),
http://aspires.gsfc.nasa.gov/upload/DM_proj-228_5894_SENH_InSAR_final_rpt.pdf
35
. R.L. Ireland, “Land subsidence in the San Joaquin Valley, California, as of 1980,”
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1984), http://www.getcited.org/pub/102429321.
36
Norwegian Petroleum Directorate Ekofisk Fact Sheet Available at
http://www.npd.no/engelsk/cwi/pbl/en/field/all/43506.htm accessed 6/29/2010
37
. Juan Murria, “Subsidence Due to Oil Production in Western Venezuela: Engineering
Problems and Solutions,” IAHS Publ. no, 200 (1991),
http://cig.ensmp.fr/~iahs/redbooks/a200/iahs_200_0129.pdf
.
38
Map of US Gulf Coast Well/Boreholes (May 2010)
; at http://robslink.com/SAS/democd33/borehole.htm with USGS database at
http://coastalmap.marine.usgs.gov/regional/contusa/gomex/gloria/data.html
39
According to documents obtained by the New York Times the failure rate of Blowout Preventers has
been found to be as high as 45% in deep water conditions. http://documents.nytimes.com/documents-
on-the-oil-spill#document/p25/a19
40
Letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward from the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations dated June 14,2010
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100614/Hayward.BP.2010.6.14.pdf
41
Deepwater Horizon Response – The Official Site of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command website; at
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/site/2931/
42
NASA- satellite imagery of the Gulf Oil Spill
; at http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/oilspill/index.html
NASA Earth Observatory- satellite images -Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
Aqua and Terra ; at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/event.php?id=43733

Dispersants
43
EPA 2010 DISPERSANTS WEBSITE ; at
http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/dispersants.html#q011
44
NALCO 2010 COREXIT 9500 MSDS ; at
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/posted/2931/Corexit_EC9500A_MSDS.539287.pdf
NALCO 2010 COREXIT 9527 MSDS ; at
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/posted/2931/Corexit_EC9527A_MSDS.539295.pdf
45
Environment Reporter “Bioremediation Effective in Cleanup of Exxon Valdez Spill, Company
Reports”
Environment Reporter, Vol. 23, No. 51, p3168 (April 16, 1993). ; at
http://www.valdezlink.com/inipol/pages/bna.htm
46
Riki Ott, 2010 “Lessons from the Exxon Valdez Spill”
at http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2010/05/02/lessons-from-the-exxon-valdez-spill/.
47
EPA 2010 COREXIT Composition ; at
http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/dispersants.html#chemicals
48
ATSDR – 2BE Tox Facts ; at
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts118.html
49
CDC Oil Spill Response Dispersants ; at
http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/oil_spill/dispersants_and_your_health.htm
50
New Jersey Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet on 2-butoxyethanol
; at http://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/0275.pdf

51
NTIS Publication No. PB-94-195047:
Documentation for Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health Concentrations (IDLH)
at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/idlh-1.html
52
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/butoxyethanol/
53
Santa Cruz, Nicole Cruz and Julie Cart, “Oil cleanup workers report illness”
Los Angeles Times May 26, 2010 ; at
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/05/oil-cleanup-workers-report-illness.html
54
NASA Dead Zones at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/dead_zone.html

55
Nancy Rabalais, at http://www.csc.noaa.gov/products/gulfmex/html/rabalais.htm
56
Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Nutrient Task Force
http://www.epa.gov/msbasin/hypoxia101.htm
57
EPA2009, “Environmental Impact and Benefit Assessment for Proposed Effluent Limitation
Guidelines and Standards for the Airport Deicing Category”
at http://www.epa.gov/guide/airport/Airport_EIB_Proposed_2009.pdf
58
Nancy N. Rabalais, R . Eugene Turner, and William J. Wiseman, Jr.
GULF OF MEXICO HYPOXIA, A.K.A."THE DEAD ZONE"
Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 2002. 33:235-63
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/geo4xx/geos478/Resources/Rabalais02.pdf
59
Nalco Holding's shares rise after BP cleanup news
Dow Jones Newswire on May 3rd 2010:
http://www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/05/nalco-holdings-shares-rise-after-bp-cleanup-
news.html
60
NALCO ; at www.NALCO.com
NALCO Board; at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=182822&p=irol-govboard
NALCO Dispersants ; at http://www.nalco.com/news-and-events/nalco-oil-dispersant-information.htm

61
Gulf oil spill: BP grilled over choice of dispersant
LA Times May 19, 2010 | 9:30 pm ; at
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-bp-grilled-over-choice-of-
dispersant.html
62

MEXICO

. Santiago,148
.
63
. Myrna I. Santiago, The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution,
1900-1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
.
64
. Fletcher, Sam, Pemex, PDVSA, Petrobras: how strategies, results differ, Oil and Gas Journal
(Aug 3, 2009
)
 65
. Mario-César Suárez Arriaga and Fernando Samaniego Verduzco, “Geothermal Brine
Invasion In Oil Reservoirs: A 3D Generalization Of The Buckley-Leverett Model Using Non-Linear
Finite Elements,” Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford,
California, January 22-24, 2007,
http://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/pdf/IGAstandard/SGW/2007/suarez.pdf.

IXTOC 1
66
Jerry Remmers, 2010 “What BP And Pemex Oil Spills Have In Common — Scary Similarities” The
Moderate Voice ( May 14th, 2010) ; at http://themoderatevoice.com/72575/what-bp-and-pemex-oil-
spills-have-in-common-scary-similarities/
Oil Rig Disasters – Offshore Drilling Accidents – Blowouts
; at http://www.oilrigdisasters.co.uk/
,

http://www.rsc.ca/files/publications/expert_panels/BC_offshore/appendicesEN.pdf
67
NOAA - IncidentNews, Emergency Response Division, Office of Response and Restoration,
National Ocean Service. "Ixtoc I". US Department of Commerce.
; at http://www.incidentnews.gov/incident/6250. Retrieved 25 June 2010.
Countermeasures / Mitigation". Incident News. NOAA.
; at http://www.incidentnews.gov/entry/508790
.
68
Minerals Management Service 1999 Oil Spill Containment, Remote Sensing and Tracking For
Deepwater Blowouts: Status of Existing and Emerging Technologies PCCI Marine Engineering
; at http://www.mms.gov/tarprojects/311/311AA.pdf
69

Canada—Stripped to the Bone

.“International Energy Outlook 2006,” Energy Information Administration (June 2006) 32,
http://www.scag.ca.gov/rcp/pdf/publications/2006EIA-InternationalEnergyOutlook.pdf
.
70
. Robert C. Ayers and Michael Parker, “Offshore Produced Water Waste Management,”
Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (August 2001), 2001-0030,
http://www.capp.ca/Pages/DocInfo.aspx?DocID=29125
.
71
. Sonnich Meier and others, “Hormonal effects of C4-C7 alkylphenols on cod (Gadus
morhua),” Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway/Dept of Zoology, Univ of Gothenberg,
Sweden: http://www.imr.no/english/__data/page/3859/Hormonal_effects_of_C4-
C7_alkylphenols_on_cod_.pdf
.
72
. Guntis Moritis, “Pilots target bitumen,” Oil and Gas Journal (Dec 21, 2009)
73
. OECD Factbook 2005 available at
http://www.oecd.org/home/0,3305,en_2649_201185_1_1_1_1_1,00.html
]
74
. Government of Alberta, Canada: http://www.environment.alberta.ca/
75
. National Energy Board,” Canada’s Oil Sands Opportunities and Challenges to 2015,
An Energy Market Assessment” May 2004
http://www.neb.gc.ca/clf-
nsi/rnrgynfmtn/nrgyrprt/lsnd/pprtntsndchllngs20152004/pprtntsndchllngs20152004-eng.pdf
76
. MacKenzie River Basin Board, MacKenzie River Basin: State of the Aquatic Ecosystem
Report, 2003 at http://www.swa.ca/Publications/AquaticEcosystem.asp

]
77
. Kevin P. Timoney, “A Study of Water and Sediment Quality as Related to Public Health
Issues, Fort Chipewya, Alberta”, Nunee Health Board Society (November 11, 2007), 4,
http://www.borealbirds.org/resources/timoney-fortchipwater-111107.pdf.
78
. “Cancer Rate In Fort Chipewyan Cause For Alarm: Medical Examiner,” CBCNews.ca,
March 10, 2006, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2006/03/10/ed-fortchip20060310.html
.
79
. Christopher Hatch and Matt Price, “Canada’s Toxic Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth,”
Environmental Defence 2008 http://www.environmentaldefence.ca/reports/pdf/TarSands_TheReport.pdf
80

Alaska—Wasteland or Wonderland?

. Charles P. Thomas and others, comps, “Alaska North Slope Oil and Gas: A Promising Future
or an Area in Decline?” DOE/NETL 2007/1280 (2007), http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil-
gas/publications/EPreports/ANSSummaryReportFinalAugust2007.pdf.
81
. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, “Potential impacts of proposed oil and gas development on the
Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain: Historical overview and issues of concern,” Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (2001), http://alaska.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/issues1.htm.
82
. National Research Council (NRC) (2003). Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas
Activities on Alaska’s North Slope: The National Academies Press.
83
. Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Swanson River Field 2005 Pool Statistics at
http://doa.alaska.gov/ogc/annual/2004/Gas_Pools/Swanson%20River%20-%20Gas/Swanson%20River,
%20Sterling%20Undefined%20Gas/Cht_Disp.pdf
.
84
. Tiffany A. S. Parson, “Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Contaminant Assessment,” U.S. Fish
& Wildlife Service, Fisheries and Ecological Services (2001),
http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/contaminants/process_kenai.htm
85
. Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, What’s Happening to the Frogs?
http://www.fws.gov/contaminants/Documents/FrogsrefUp_SeptOct_2006.pdf
86
. Paul Davidson “Congressmen slam BP executives at Alaskan oil leak hearing”
USA TODAY Updated 9/7/2006
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-09-07-bp-hearing_x.htm

. Associated Press, “House Investigation of BP Oil Spills Finds Cost-Cutting at Fault,” Fox News,
87

May 16, 2007, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,273035,00.html

 . CSB News Release, “U.S. Chemical Safety Board Concludes ‘Organizational and Safety
88

Deficiencies at All Levels of the BP Corporation’ Caused March 2005 Texas City Disaster That Killed
15, Injured 180,” US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (March 20, 2007),
http://www.chemsafety.gov/index.cfm?folder=news_releases&page=news&NEWS_ID=355
.
89
. CSB News Release, “CSB Chairman Carolyn Merritt Tells House Subcommittee of ‘Striking
Similarities’ in Causes of BP Texas City Tragedy and Prudhoe Bay Pipeline Disaster,” US Chemical
Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (May 16, 2007), http://www.chemsafety.gov/index.cfm?
folder=news_releases&page=news&NEWS_ID=375
.
90
. Yareth Rosen, “Pipeline Leaks Oil on Alaska Tundra,” CorpWatch (April 17, 2001),
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=119.

. ADEC Prevention and Emergency Response Program database query

91

http://www.dec.state.ak.us/spar/perp/index.htm
.]
92
. Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, “ Situation Report: Kuparuk 2U Pad
Crude Oil Spill,” (December 17, 2007), http://www.dec.state.ak.us/spar/perp/re
93
. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, “Potential Impacts of Proposed Oil and Gas Development on
the Arctic Refuge's Coastal Plain: Historical Overview and Issues of Concern,” Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge (2001), http://alaska.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/issues1.htm
.
94
. ibid.

Global Perspective

John Veil and others, “A White Paper Describing Produced Water from Production of Crude
95

Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal Bed Methane,” Argonne National Laboratory (2004), http://
www.ead.anl.gov/pub/dsp_detail.cfm?PubID=1715
96
“Energy Demands on Water Resources,” Report to Congress on the Interdependency of Oil
and Water, U.S. Department of Energy (December 2006), 43, http://www.sandia.gov/energywater/
docs/121-RptToCongress-EWwEIAcomments-FINAL.pdf
97
EIA Map of Shale Gas Plays in the Lower 48 States. Available at
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/rpd/shale_gas.pdf
98
Robert C. Milici and Christopher S. Swezey 2006 U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2006-
1237 Assessment of Appalachian Basin Oil and Gas Resources:Devonian Shale–Middle and Upper
Paleozoic Total Petroleum System. Available at http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1237/
99
Terry Engelder and Gary G. Lash 2008. Marcellus Shale Play’s Vast Resource Potential Creating
Stir In Appalachia The American Oil & Gas Reporter May 2008 Available at
http://www.geosc.psu.edu/~engelder/references/link150.pdf
100
. Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission and ALL Consulting, “A Guide to Practical
Management of Produced Water from Oil and Gas Operations in the United States,” U.S.
Department of Energy National Petroleum Technology Office, (October 2006),
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil-gas/publications/EP/Guidebook_Complete.pdf
101
Richard C. Byrd, General Counsel, Interstate Oil Compact Commission, in testimony regarding the
Clean Water Act, before the U. S. Congress, 1971

Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (New York: Simon &
102

Schuster, 1991).

103
Appendix 1: Components And Environmental Impacts Of Produced Water

. Dan Caudle, “Measuring Oil and Grease in Produced Water,” Sound Environment Solutions,
(1998), http://www.wilksir.com/pdf/dcaudle.pdf
104

. Kumiko Azetsu-Scott and others, “Precipitation of heavy metals in produced water: Influence
on contaminant transport and toxicity,” Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Bedford Institute of
Oceanography (Nova Scotia, Canada 2006), http://www.sciencedirect.com/
105
W. Fleeger and David W. Foltz, “How Does Produced Water Cause a Reduction in the
Genetic Diversity of Harpacticoid Copepods?” MMS-LSU Coastal Marine Institute:
A Report of the First Six Years,1992-1998 Final Report August 2001
106
. Brian S. Middleditch, (ed,) Environmental effects of offshore oil production : the Buccaneer gas
and oil field study, 1981 pp 446 Plenum Press, NY
107
. J. M. Brooks and others, “Investigations of surficial sediments, suspended particulates, and
volatile hydrocarbons at Buccaneer gas and oil field,” in William P.Jackson and E.P.Wilkens,
eds., Environmental Assessment of the Buccaneer Gas and Oil Field in the Northwestern
Gulf of Mexico, 1975–1980 (Galveston, TX: US Dept of Commerce, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Fisheries Center,
Galveston Laboratory). See also, Theodor Sauer, Jr., “Volatile liquid hydrocarbons in waters
of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea,” Limnology and Oceanography 25(2), 1980, 338–
51, http://aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_25/issue_2/0338.pdf

H.W. Armstrong and others, “Effects of oilfield brine effluent on sediments and benthic
108

organisms in Trinity Bay, Texas,” Marine Environ. Res. 2, 1979, 55–69.

109
. J.W. Anderson and others, “Characteristics of dispersions of water-soluble extracts of crude
and refined oils and their toxicity to estuarine crustaceans and fish,” Marine Biology 27,
no.1, 75–88. See also, J. M. Neff and others, “Accumulation and release of petroleum-derived
aromatic hydrocarbons by four species of marine animals,” Mar Biol 38, no.3, 279–289.

. T. C. Hutchinson, and others, “The correlation of the toxicity to algae of hydrocarbons and
110

halogenated hydrocarbons with their physical-chemical properties,” In B.K.Afghan and

D.Mackay, eds., Hydrocarbons and Halogenated Hydrocarbons in the Aquatic Environment
(NY: Plenum Press, 1980), 577–86. See also, Jerry M. Neff, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons
in the Aquatic Environment (London: Applied Science Publishers, 1979).

Barbara L. Rowe and others, “Occurrence and Potential Human-Health Relevance of Volatile
111

OrganicCompounds in Drinking Water from Domestic Wells in the United States,” U.S.
Geological Survey, Environ Health Perspect. 115 no. 11, (Nov 2007): 1539–46.

“Fate and Effects of naturally occurring substances in produced water on the marine
112

environment,” OGP report 364, February 2005, http://www.ogp.org.uk/pubs/364.pdf

113
“Produced water from oil and gas rigs may be the newest threat,” Alexander’s Gas & Oil 7,
no. 24, http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntn25005.htm
.
114
Sonnich Meier and others, “Effects of alkylphenols on glycerophospholipids and cholesterol
in liver and brain from cod (Gadus morhua),” Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology CToxicology
& Pharmacology 145 no. 3, (2007): 420–30.

Pål A. Olsvik and others, “Gene-expression profiling in gill and liver of zebrafish exposed to
115

produced water,” International Journal of Environmental Analytical Chemistry 87 no. 3

(March 2007): 195–210.
116
Stepan Boitsov and others, “Identification of estrogen-like alkylphenols in produced water
from offshore oil installations,” Marine Environmental Research 64 (2007): 651–655.

. Knut-Erik Tollefsen and others, “Estrogen receptor (ER) agonists and androgen receptor (AR)
117

antagonists in effluents from Norwegian North Sea oil production platforms,”Marine Pollution
Bulletin 54, no. 3, (March 2007): 277–83.
118
A. Bjørnstad and others, “The potential of ecotoxicoproteomics in environmental monitoring:
biomarker profiling in mussel plasma using ProteinChip array technology,” Journal of
Toxicology and Environmental Health A, 69, nos. 1 & 2 (January 2006): 77–96.14, 1997.

119
. J.W. Anderson and others, “Characteristics of dispersions of water-soluble extracts of crude
and refined oils and their toxicity to estuarine crustaceans and fish,” Marine Biology 27,
no.1, 75–88. See also, J. M. Neff and others, “Accumulation and release of petroleum-derived
aromatic hydrocarbons by four species of marine animals,” Mar Biol 38, no.3, 279–289.

R. B. Holtzman and others, “Concentrations of the naturally occurring radionuclides 226Ra,

120

210Po in aquatic fauna.” Proc. 2nd Nat. Symp. Radioecology, U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission, Conf. 670503 (1969): 535–546.
121
. J. B. Anderson, “ Effects of uranium mill wastes on biological fauna of the Animas River
(Colorado—New Mexico),” in Vincent.Schultz and A.W.Klement, Jr., eds., Radioecology:
Proceedings (NY: Reinhold Publishing, 1963).

“Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) in Produced Water and Oil-Field

122

Equipment—An Issue for the Energy Industry,” USGS Fact Sheet FS–142–99 September
1999, http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0142-99/fs-0142-99.pdf
.
….

About the Author

David Lincoln is an Environmental Consultant and Petroleum Geologist with more than 25 years
of experience in oil and gas exploration and production operations. He holds an M.S in Geo
-Information Science (GIS) from Salem State University in Massachusetts and a B.S. in Geology
from the University of Southern Calif. He has consulted for environmental organizations such as
Sierra Club, Greenpeace and several sustainable fishing organizations. He also worked as an
Exploration Manager, Staff Geologist and Geological Consultant for numerous multinational
petroleum companies including Enron, Tenneco Oil, Occidental Petroleum Texaco and Union Oil
in more than 20 countries across 6 continents. In addition he has trained geologists,
micropaleontologists and field operators throughout the U.S.