Oil Now and in the Long Haul

It’s clear that the risks of pursuing offshore oil matter more to Americans the closer the petroleum deposits are to American camera crews. There were a lot of proponents of offshore drilling, including President Obama, when the spills were half a world away. Even the prospect of drilling off Alaska’s Arctic coast has largely been an abstraction; after all, that exploratory work is to take place in icy waters that few Americans will ever see.

Now, suddenly, there’s a sea change, with pro-drilling newspaper columnists and telegenic governors admitting they blew it and shifting their stances on sub-sea oil extraction in the face of weeks (which will become months) of withering headlines and video clips.

The oil leak ticker below, developed by the Newshour program at PBS, gives an estimated running tally of oil released. I’ll be on the new PBS program Need to Know tonight around 8:30 p.m. discussing the evolving situation in the Gulf.

Basically, the nature of the risk that accompanies the rewards from offshore oil has become vividly evident. It’s the kind of risk humans don’t have a good history of addressing — the kind experts call “low probability, high consequence events.”

Even with thousands of oil and gas wells operating relatively cleanly and safely for decades in the Gulf, all it takes is one exception to spawn a disaster — if all the elements of chaos theory align in precisely the wrong way and supposed fail-safe contingencies fail. With a deep-sea blowout, unlike a spill on land or in a bay, the liberated oil can spread over thousands of square miles. (And just wait until hurricane season to see just how far the oil might travel.)

So what policy options make sense, in the short term and the long haul, for a country deeply dependent on oil for its mobility (and for me, like many Northeasterners, for winter heat)?

That dependence, by almost any projection, will take decades to overcome even if the country, and individual citizens, get serious about shifting norms. (I pondered a geothermal system when we needed to replace the rusting oil tanks in the basement of our 1930s-vintage house, but the five-figure price tag was way too steep.)

There are plenty of immediate questions to explore in the coming days — including assessing the options BP and its partners have chosen for stanching the leak and choices facing the Obama administration for tightening regulations and federal agency responses to limit chances of a repeat down the line.

One question is why the containment structure had to be manufactured from scratch, losing at least a week, if not more, with oil gushing at some 200,000 gallons a day? Anyone doing a basic worst-case scenario for deep wells would have to consider having a plan should a blowout preventer fail.

But then there’s the lack of oversight that might have prompted such a question in advance:

One of the clearest needs is for an overhaul of the Minerals Management Service within the Department of Interior, which many environmental campaigners have pilloried not only for its approval of this project without a detailed environmental review, but for a far too cozy relationship with the extractive industries it’s supposed to oversee.

The White House in February sent out draft guidance to the Department of Interior and other government agencies urging them to reassess how they dispense “categorical exclusions” that allow many projects, including the Deepwater Horizon’s ill-fated drilling effort, to avoid having to undertake detailed environmental impact reports required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The right idea, sadly too late in this instance.

But there’s also the broadest, and most important, question: In the wake of this unfolding calamity, what is the best approach to building an energy policy for the long haul that fosters economic progress (as distinct from simple economic growth) while limiting environmental risks ranging from tainted beaches and fisheries to global warming?

On Wednesday, Daniel B. Botkin, an ecologist and author with a new book on America’s energy choices, weighed in here with his prescription, focused on aggressive sustained deployment of wind and solar power systems. But his is just one of a wide range of reasoned views of the energy challenge, and opportunity, facing this country in a century where old energy paths lead to rising risks, ranging from climate change to resource wars. I’ll be posting more such contributions in coming days.

To my mind, an end to exploration and development of oil resources in the seas, including United States waters, is untenable politically. There is no way President Obama will be able to close a deal on an energy (and climate) bill without such a provision, even with the Gulf mess.

But there are several teachable moments at hand that, so far, President Obama hasn’t sought to embrace. One is that it is a patriotic duty to use oil more sparingly, that the price at the pump does not come close to reflecting the real costs, that extractive industries have been insufficiently policed.

Another is that the Gulf disaster offers the country the opportunity to embrace its oil habit (for the time being) and thus fully accept the responsibilities that come with it. Kind of like the first steps in a 12-step program. “I am an alcoholic.” Big hug.

Awhile back, I drew attention to the views of Peter Maass, hardly an oil-industry defender, who said it would be more ethical for the United States to drill in home waters and by doing so to take full responsibility for managing the risks attending our unrelenting oil appetite. Now we know the risks. Now we need to figure out a better way to manage them.

The destruction of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the unabated gusher on the seabed provide a vivid illustration of just what that responsibility entails if the country wants ample oil (from any sea) and unsullied coasts. Oil extraction in the seas requires extraordinary levels of proactive preparation for every known contingency and also for the “unk unks,” in Pentagon-speak. That did not happen in the Gulf.

But even as a revised approach to offshore drilling evolves, it can only do so if paired with an aggressive commitment to step forward, for so many reasons — environmental, social, ethical, financial — in the energy quest required to chart a smooth path for humanity as its growth spurt crests in the next two generations.