Psy 460 – Bp Oil Spill Congressional Hearing AnalysisAnalysis of a Congressional HearingThe After Affects of the BP Oil SpillPSY/460February 6,2012Simone F. Senhouse, PhDThe After Affects of the BP Oil SpillMost experience disasters through movies, books, news broadcasts and newspapers that often paint a picture demonstrating heroism and giving us glimpses of lives and events of real life drama as it unfolds. However; rarely do we see the long term effects such as social and mental disorders associated with the prolonged exposure splashed across the headlines and screens. Although the effects of a disaster appear to be almost instantaneous the initial impact is not the end of the impact felt by all. All too often the long range effects on wildlife, economy, ecology, health and more importantly the psychology of those affected is forgotten or left by the wayside as they tend to lose that luster so desired by our media hounds.
A shining example of this type of response can be seen in the BP Oil Spill. This manmade disaster affected thousands of individuals and businesses in the Gulf Coast region as well as creating a cascade affect in ecological, healthcare and economical stability throughout the United States. Like ripples created in a pond when a tiny pebble is thrown in the after affects; experienced by the individual as well as the communities; generated from the original event are similar though they may be experienced at lesser degrees nationwide.
The BP Oil Spill news reads like a Steven Segal movie script. It begins on a beautiful spring day (April 20th) with a failed preventer and ends with mass destruction of the surrounding environment and a way of life for those live in the Gulf area. According to the timeline published by the Guardian; a website produced by Guardian Research out of the UK; the environmental disaster began with the failure of a man made blowout preventer. Its sole purpose is to prevent crude oil from escaping the pipeline in the event of mechanical failure or damage to the rig (Guardian, 2010).
After the preventer failed the rig capsized and sank an amazing 5,000 feet and produces an oil slick five miles long in the Gulf of Mexico. By April 25th the search for survivors is suspended as the realization that the blow out preventer has failed and is now spewing approximately 1,000 barrels of crude into the ocean per day. With no seemingly intelligent ideas left the Coast Guard is charged with setting fire to the oil in order to slow its expansion and the MMS plans for two relief wells to stop the leak. On April 27th the US Government recognizes the potential impact and releases this statement “Release of crude oil, natural gas and diesel fuel poses a high risk of environmental contamination in the Gulf of Mexico (Guardian, 2010).”
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has never been more important. The US government has a role to play and a responsibility to protect marine life. On April 17th, Governor de Sousa announced the evacuation of the coast guard and state fisheries and air traffic control station; a federal law enforcement investigation was ongoing (Brett Moulton, Department of Natural Resources, Department of Homeland Security, Dept. of Agriculture, USDA), the first major federal environmental enforcement order in years to be issued to the area since 1992.
Since 2002, California-based CAA has conducted its own comprehensive environmental control on and cleanup of the affected areas, including the first environmental impact plan on the entire Gulf of Mexico (Moltenham, and Schutman, 2008). As of June 2008, CAA’s Environmental Protection Division had issued a complete environmental impact statement (EPA, 2007). As of March 2010, the state of Texas was among the largest U.S. state-based environmental partners in terms of its Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in terms of the combined capacity to clean up as much of California as the entire US continental shelf. In addition to EPA and CAA, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EISL)—a set of environmental impacts analyses showing that in 2008 the oil affected areas were not responsible for 15% (Moltenham et al., 2013). In 2009, the EPA concluded that CAA had exceeded its environmental monitoring requirement, resulting in the cancellation of 1,000 commercial drilling rigs in California to clean up the Gulf of Mexico (CDC, 2012). Despite CAA’s public advocacy for the cleanup (see the press release at the end of this article), the American Petroleum Institute (API) has long insisted that its work for the Gulf of Mexico is voluntary. It has been long argued that the oil in the Gulf of Mexico remains so toxic, and the industry insists that such a statement is a non-starter. A recent Associated Press analysis has found that on average there are more than 5 million toxic spills involving the oil in the Gulf of Mexico each year. As a result, in the recent past the U.S. was not only clean but was also a major player in exporting US oil to Saudi Arabia, a country that produces much of the oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico (The Washington Post, 2012). The spill was the first in the Gulf’s history to cause serious environmental damage. The spill also took the oil off of nearby estuarine streams, creating an area known collectively as the San Andreas Fault known as the Gulf of Mexico. The situation has been known for many years now: the oil in the Gulf of Mexico was dumped in such a way as to cause severe, and often deadly, damage to aquatic life such as the Great Gulf Snake and to seabirds and the Mississippi Delta (Eugene, et al., 2008; De Sous