A pipeline break from the Port of Long Beach to an offshore oil platform known as Elly has spilled an estimated 144,000 gallons of crude oil into southern California coastal waters.
Dogo news reports that the spill on October 1 is believed to have come from a fracture in an underwater pipe connected to an oil drilling platform almost 18 miles offshore. The oil that reached the coastal marshes threatened fish and wildlife, caused several beach closures and endangered ecologically sensitive wetlands. Officials considered this latest oil spill as an environmental disaster.
Initial investigations have revealed that a ship anchor hooking an oil pipeline pulling it like a string may have caused the spill. Authorities said that a “4,000-foot section of the pipeline was displaced laterally about 105 feet and had a 13-inch split that was likely the source of the spill” (Holcombe, Levenson, & Vera, 2021).
This latest oil spill incident’s considerable economic and environmental damage also points to another problem – America’s aging offshore and gas infrastructure, which is increasingly becoming vulnerable to accidents, natural disasters, and hurricanes.
“Out of sight, out of mind.”
Otto J. Lynch, president, and CEO of Power Line Systems, says that “Pipeline infrastructure is “old, it’s aging as we all know, just like everything else…we don’t drive on them, we don’t see them until there’s a problem. We don’t know there’s a problem until there’s a problem” (Nilsen & Stark, 2021).
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) rating of C- of the country’s overall infrastructure also reflects the country’s aging infrastructure. Lynch, the co-author of the Energy chapter of the report, notes that oil and gas would also receive the same grade.
In their article on CNN, Nilsen & Stark (2021) mentions that, of the total 2.8 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, 8600 are in the Gulf of Mexico, and 208 miles are off the Pacific Coast. They further said:
- The government has banned new offshore drilling permits along the Pacific Coast since 1984, and the current ones are operating under the leases before the ban.
- Pacific Coast’s underwater pipelines are older than those of the Gulf of Mexico, but their inspections are more stringent than the Gulf, which requires a subsea inspection of active pipelines. The Gulf’s oil infrastructure is not as old but is prone to extreme events like hurricanes.
- Then there is the matter of decommissioned or abandoned pipelines. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has allowed them to remain on the seafloor since the 1960s.
- Climate change causing more extreme events to become more frequent and intense combined with the tangled web of decommissioned pipelines presents a high risk for those still in operation. For example, Hurricane Katrina dragged nine miles of buried pipelines across the seafloor, while the recent Hurricane Ida that hit the Gulf has caused 55 oil spills, a record one caused by a single storm.
The Giving Compass article “California’s Latest Offshore Oil Spill Could Fuel Pressure To End Oil Production Statewide” says that the oil spill could intensify pressure to end offshore oil drilling. California is no stranger to oil spills as it has experienced multiple spills over the past 50 plus years. The largest was the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill which sent more than 3 million gallons of oil into local beaches.
A recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California shows that 72% percent of Californians oppose offshore drilling. At the same time, most of them are concerned with the effects of climate change.
Gov. Gavin Newson has ordered that by 2035, all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California must be zero-emissions vehicles. He also asked California Air Resource Board to assess how to phase out oil extraction state-wide by 2045.
But the current global energy shortage and high prices of fossil fuels due to the economic recovery from the pandemic (Horowitz, 2021) can complicate Governor Newsom’s plan to tackle climate change.
What to do with these aging oil infrastructures?
Nilsen & Stark (2021) says that the government has no immediate push to replace aging oil and gas infrastructure. President Biden’s infrastructure bills do not allow funding to update these infrastructures. At the same time, the House Budget wants to ban offshore drilling.
But as some of these offshore oil infrastructures are still operational, improving their reliability and reducing risk is not optional as failures or breaks in infrastructure can lead to devastating results. To improve pipeline reliability, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ report recommends a thorough and frequent inspection focusing on “robust risk mitigation.”
According to Lynch, the lifecycle of pipelines should also be considered when repairing or replacing infrastructure. And when it comes to building new infrastructure. He highlights the importance of starting right (Nilsen & Stark, 2021).
Lynch further says that “If you’re going to do it, do it right. If you’re going to build something that’s not right upfront, you’re going to have to replace it in 20 years. Let’s build it, thinking about long-term costs. It may cost just a bit more to do it today, but it’s going to last 100 years. And if we had done that back in the ’50s and ’60s, we wouldn’t be having these problems today.”
Deborah Gordon, a senior principal at RMI, emphasizes the need to upgrade physical infrastructure and human infrastructures – better diagnostics of accidents, releases, or upsets, and advancements in satellite technology that can detect spills and natural gas emissions quickly and efficiently.
Robust, long-term analysis and management of infrastructure asset life cycles will pay considerable dividends in enhancing the protection of the environment and ensuring other risks are well managed.
Source Citation:
Levy, K. (2021, October 11). Oil Spill off The Coast of California Closes Beaches And Threatens Wildlife. DOGO news. Retrieved from https://www.dogonews.com/2021/10/11/oil-spill-off-the-coast-of-california-closes-beaches-and-threatens-wildlife
California’s Latest Offshore Oil Spill Could Fuel Pressure to End Oil Production Statewide. (2021, October 11). Giving Compass. Retrieved from https://givingcompass.org/article/california-s-latest-offshore-oil-spill-could-fuel-pressure-to-end-oil-production-statewide/
Nilsen, E. & Stark, L. (2021 October 5). America’s offshore oil infrastructure is aging. ‘We don’t know there’s a problem until there’s a problem.’ CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/05/us/oil-spill-aging-fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate/index.html
Holcombe, M., Levenson, E., & Vera, A. (A ship anchor hooking the pipeline may have caused the California oil spill, federal agency says. CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/05/us/california-oil-spill-tuesday/index.html
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