Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policy makers, and performers
Speaker 1: to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions
Speaker 1: change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. My guest
Speaker 1: today is Antonio Uhas, a journalist and activist who wrote
Speaker 1: an article in the June issue of Harper's Magazine about
Speaker 1: the two thousand ten BP oil spill in the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico. The article is more than an investigation into
Speaker 1: that monumental disaster, it's a highlight in a career dedicated
Speaker 1: to investigating the oil industry. For the past fifteen years,
Speaker 1: Uhas has been following oil, the companies that are entrusted
Speaker 1: with it, the executives who make the decisions about it,
Speaker 1: and the workers who get the oil out of the ground.
Speaker 1: People who work within the oil industry are lifers. They
Speaker 1: start out young, they work their way up through the company.
Speaker 1: Most of the heads of these companies are people who
Speaker 1: spent their entire lifetimes within the same companies, and they
Speaker 1: believe that they are doing the dirty, hard work that
Speaker 1: someone has to do. Someone has to go out there
Speaker 1: and go through the muck and go through the mud
Speaker 1: and do the harm and do all the things that
Speaker 1: need to happen so that we can drive our lovely cars.
Speaker 1: And they're the ones who are doing it. They also
Speaker 1: make a lot of money, and from the perspective of
Speaker 1: working their companies, they're doing a great job. X On
Speaker 1: Mobile is the most profitable corporation the world has ever known,
Speaker 1: over and over and over and over again. So if
Speaker 1: you work in x on Mobile, you're saying, one, I'm
Speaker 1: doing the hard, tough work that no one else wants
Speaker 1: to do. And two, I'm making more money than any
Speaker 1: company has ever made in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: So how can you possibly tell me I'm doing a
Speaker 1: bad job. So when you ask them, when you think
Speaker 1: about the what about you know the fact that the
Speaker 1: United Nations says that of fossil fuels have to stay
Speaker 1: in the ground if we're going to avert the worst
Speaker 1: of climate crisis, you know, what are you doing as
Speaker 1: a company. What they say is, while we're dependent on
Speaker 1: oil and fossil fuels, and we are, you need us
Speaker 1: to do our job. And then sometimes they say I
Speaker 1: don't want to get short, and sometimes they say, if
Speaker 1: you watch their commercials and we are doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: Look at all the money we're spending on solar and wind,
Speaker 1: and look at all the money we spend on human rights.
Speaker 1: And you know, Chevron has commercials all the time. So
Speaker 1: I did an investigation of this because you know, this
Speaker 1: is their clay and UM I did a piece for
Speaker 1: this in Rolling Stone, and you know, the truth is
Speaker 1: that the oil industry has been UM dramatically moving its
Speaker 1: way out of alternative energy investments, if it ever really
Speaker 1: was invested. The best company was at best, very generous
Speaker 1: four percent of total UM their total expenditures, and that
Speaker 1: was BP at its height, and I think that was
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, but they don't have the year memorized,
Speaker 1: and that was the best. So the other companies were
Speaker 1: point two percent, point one percent. XN basically never even
Speaker 1: pretended to invest in alternative energy and really hasn't UM
Speaker 1: And a lot of that money was actually in bio fuels,
Speaker 1: not even in you know, wind or solar. But now
Speaker 1: the companies have all like, yeah, they count that, they
Speaker 1: count ethanol, so you know, and all the problems attendant
Speaker 1: with that, but they've basically removed themselves from from those
Speaker 1: sectors as well, so now it's almost nothing. And actually,
Speaker 1: even speaking of ethanol, VP, which is now almost completely
Speaker 1: divested from solar and wind, announced the closing of facilities
Speaker 1: in Louisiana and in San Diego for making sell elastic biofuels,
Speaker 1: So they're even now moving out of UM the biofuel sector,
Speaker 1: which is you know, probably good and actually from my
Speaker 1: perspective to be honest, you know, oil is a natural resource,
Speaker 1: just like UM, the sun, and the wind. There are
Speaker 1: places like the bottom of the ocean where naturally releasing
Speaker 1: oil actually lives over thousands of years in harmony with
Speaker 1: the environment. What this industry has done is taken a
Speaker 1: natural resource and turned it into a weapon of mass destruction.
Speaker 1: So I say, do we really want them to now
Speaker 1: because they've done such a bang up job with oil?
Speaker 1: Do we really want to give them the wind and
Speaker 1: the sun? Do we really want them doing alternative energy?
Speaker 1: So my answer is no, And what I would rather
Speaker 1: say is they haven't done a bang up job with
Speaker 1: the resource they've been given. So while we are dependent
Speaker 1: on their resource, they could do a much much much
Speaker 1: better job of providing it in ways that are much
Speaker 1: more environmentally and socially and economically beneficial. The two thousand
Speaker 1: ten explosion aboard the deep Water Horizon oil rig killed
Speaker 1: eleven people and lead to a powerful seafloor oil gusher
Speaker 1: that lasted eighty seven day is According to the ONSEEN
Speaker 1: Coordinator report, over two hundred million gallons of oil leaked
Speaker 1: into the Gulf of Mexico, and Tonio Uhas investigated the
Speaker 1: multiple causes of the disaster later. But on that first
Speaker 1: day April, she was far away a ten and I
Speaker 1: was in San Francisco following oil in the same way
Speaker 1: that I do, and I saw sort of a blip
Speaker 1: come across the screen about an explosion in the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico. And honestly, at first it didn't bring a
Speaker 1: lot of bells because, in fact, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: offshore oil spills, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico. They
Speaker 1: happened fairly routinely. We don't necessarily pay a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to them, and there weren't any pictures or anything.
Speaker 1: You know, this is very far out when you say
Speaker 1: offshore oil spills that are routine. Routine means they don't
Speaker 1: blow up, and there's a lot of flames bellowing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we didn't know that, so you know at first.
Speaker 1: Um So, the more routine ones don't in of explosions
Speaker 1: and flames, right, not not something erupts and whale goes
Speaker 1: into the into the water. Oil spills happen often. Small
Speaker 1: explosions happen often. Um So there are and there is,
Speaker 1: um you know a lot of problems that happened with
Speaker 1: Riggs out in the Gulf. As the days unfolded, though,
Speaker 1: it became clearer and clearer that this was a significant incident,
Speaker 1: much larger than I had originally thought. And what seemed
Speaker 1: also clear as the days were moving on was that
Speaker 1: it wasn't something that was going to be stopped anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Um So. I was actually contacted by the Guardian to
Speaker 1: do a piece looking mostly at because they still didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of information. It's still early on. You know.
Speaker 1: Now I know why there was an information, but at
Speaker 1: the time I just assumed, you know, we're just sort
Speaker 1: of learning a little bit at a time because it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily that big of a deal. I contact by
Speaker 1: the Guardian to do a piece and the piece is
Speaker 1: mostly focusing on is it a surprise that it's BP
Speaker 1: so you know this happens to a company as a
Speaker 1: surprised the VP as the company because BP had just
Speaker 1: been through UM the Texas City refinery disaster, which is
Speaker 1: was prior to this one of the worst workplace disasters
Speaker 1: in US history and the oil sector fifteen refinery workers dead,
Speaker 1: UM a hundred and fifty injured. UM the Alaska pipeline
Speaker 1: spill had happened, which was a BP pipeline m not
Speaker 1: a good time for BP, and Tony Hayward, who was
Speaker 1: the CEO at the time, had also been and happened
Speaker 1: for many years facing takeover rumors, and one of the
Speaker 1: reasons for the takeover rumors which continue to this day,
Speaker 1: was that BP it had a very low reserve replacement ratio,
Speaker 1: which means that it wasn't replacing oil at the same
Speaker 1: speed that it was producing it getting out of the ground,
Speaker 1: and that makes it a weak company. So he was
Speaker 1: being very adventurous in finding new fields, new finds and
Speaker 1: being able to book them, which means that UM, you
Speaker 1: can prove that you can actually produce the oil exactly
Speaker 1: as you're taking oil or extracting oil out of the ground.
Speaker 1: You want to know there's more out there. That you
Speaker 1: that's yours exactly exactly, and investors want to know that
Speaker 1: there's a half that you can replace UM. And so
Speaker 1: he was extremely adventurous and also seemed to be more
Speaker 1: willing than others to UM, you know, put time and
Speaker 1: money and profit ahead of other concerns. So when I
Speaker 1: was first looking at this incident, I said, you know, no,
Speaker 1: it's not a surprise that it's BP. But then and
Speaker 1: so that was the That was the first sort of
Speaker 1: look that I The first look was just the company.
Speaker 1: Then it kept unfolding, and so then by May I
Speaker 1: was down went down to the Gulf coast and did
Speaker 1: a tour of the Gulf coast and started interviewing people.
Speaker 1: UM started interviewing UM fisherman's and fisher folks, started interviewing
Speaker 1: elected officials, started to really try and us out what's
Speaker 1: unfolding here. And then that made it increasingly clear because
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, the spill is now UM
Speaker 1: twenty days in, it's not ending any time soon, It
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it's any ending any time soon. That
Speaker 1: not only is this a serious disaster, but there is
Speaker 1: a huge, untold story here of why it happened. UM,
Speaker 1: what's what if anything is going to be able to
Speaker 1: solve the problem, and what if anything is going to
Speaker 1: be changed in the future. And at that point I
Speaker 1: decided to write a book. And I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: what I'm going to need to do. It's an article.
Speaker 1: Isn't going to do it? This can't be a short
Speaker 1: one off, and I Yeah, there's just way too much.
Speaker 1: There's just way too much going on um way too
Speaker 1: many unknowns. And so I begin the process of writing
Speaker 1: a book and continue to write articles at the same time.
Speaker 1: But the book is Black Tied the devastating impact of
Speaker 1: the Golf oil spill, and that came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, and I continued while still covering other issues,
Speaker 1: including traveling to Afghanistan to cover the role of oil
Speaker 1: and gas in the war in Afghanistan and other things. Now,
Speaker 1: when does when does Atlantis Alvin of the stuff that's
Speaker 1: in the Harper's article, When does that enter your windshield?
Speaker 1: So one of the first people I contact to find
Speaker 1: out what is the significance of this oil spill, which
Speaker 1: ultimately becomes the largest offshore oil spill in world history,
Speaker 1: is Dr Samantha Joy, a bio geochemist at the University
Speaker 1: of Georgia, who everyone tells me from the very beginning
Speaker 1: is the person to talk to about oil and gas
Speaker 1: in the Gulf of Mexico because she is the person
Speaker 1: who has um done the most investigations in the field
Speaker 1: trying to just understand honest investigations. Patsy for the oil
Speaker 1: cups at all. You meet her, I meet her, I
Speaker 1: start interviewing her right away. And she's been in the
Speaker 1: Alvin before, so she's the only person to have led
Speaker 1: a previous ALVIN mission to the site of the oil
Speaker 1: spill after the oil spend, so she went in December
Speaker 1: two thou and ten that year that year. So it's
Speaker 1: just for people who were listening to the Atlantis is
Speaker 1: the ship and the Alvin is And who owns the ship?
Speaker 1: The U. S. Navy um the Yeah, the Navy owns
Speaker 1: this fleet of scientific research vessels. It's a ship, and
Speaker 1: the Alvin the submarine, and the Album which is the
Speaker 1: submersible they own exactly. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution manages all
Speaker 1: of a subcontractor. And the Alvin Submarine is the only
Speaker 1: human occupied research submarine that exists in the United States anymore.
Speaker 1: It was the first and now it's the last it's
Speaker 1: been around for fifty years. UM. It explored the Titanic.
Speaker 1: It found a nuke that got lost in the Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know the hydrogen bomb. I can't remember, um,
Speaker 1: but it was lost and they she booked that trip
Speaker 1: for you, and you went out when so um Alvin
Speaker 1: goes under forty million dollars worth of refurbishing, it finally
Speaker 1: gets to go out again. And when she finds out
Speaker 1: that she's going to get to do the the first
Speaker 1: mission back to the side of the BP oil spill,
Speaker 1: she wants there to be a journalist with her, and
Speaker 1: she lets me know that I get to be the
Speaker 1: one to say the least thing blows a rth while
Speaker 1: I'm down there. They just refurbished it. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it turns out, let me see that bill for that
Speaker 1: refurbishing of the Alvin exactly. Somehow, the refurbishing did not
Speaker 1: include restroom facilities. Those in need were forced to use
Speaker 1: a bottle. You can listen to earlier episodes of Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing by visiting our archives, like my conversation with
Speaker 1: Dr Robert Lustig, who talked to me about the growing
Speaker 1: obesity pandemic and its link to a very different energy source.
Speaker 1: And we've learned that the higher insulin goes, the hungry
Speaker 1: you get. Hungry you are, So the sugar is an appetite,
Speaker 1: stimulant in a sense, celerant, whatever you want to call
Speaker 1: you can call it that right. Absolutely, take a listen
Speaker 1: at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing to better understand
Speaker 1: the impact of the two thousand ten beep the oil
Speaker 1: spill and tonio U has joined bio geochemist Samantha Joy
Speaker 1: last year in a submersible that traveled over five thousand
Speaker 1: feet down to reach the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: It took two hours to get down. The total trip
Speaker 1: was the tool trip in the album was eight, so
Speaker 1: five hours on the bottom. She were five hours down
Speaker 1: there with her. We've been there before. Yes, what did
Speaker 1: she say to you? She said, you know, Um, the
Speaker 1: first time she went down, there was nothing. All the
Speaker 1: sea life that could get away from the oil got
Speaker 1: away from the oil, and everything that couldn't, in her words,
Speaker 1: was nooked. It just got pummeled. We come back down.
Speaker 1: Refugee sea life, refugee sea life, UM and basically what
Speaker 1: I see is a moonscape. It's basically there's nothing. There's
Speaker 1: basically nothing down there. No, I mean normally you would
Speaker 1: see um, coral, sea fans, fish, even sharks and whales.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like an underwater amazon. This is
Speaker 1: the deep dark bottom exactly. But you know, there would
Speaker 1: have been a lot more life. There should have been
Speaker 1: a lot more like nothing. There was. What we saw
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a change. So there's was
Speaker 1: the occasional sea life that came through, and so that
Speaker 1: was positive. There were giant isopods, which are basically foot
Speaker 1: long cockroaches. That was exciting to see flow by. I
Speaker 1: saw a couple of those. Um it's a fish that
Speaker 1: resembles a cockroach. It is an underwater cockroache. It's it's
Speaker 1: called an isopod. Yeah, who knew they existed? And I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure that. I'm happy to know that exactly,
Speaker 1: so that the giant cockroach has survived. We also saw,
Speaker 1: which was amazing, um one vampire squid, which is this
Speaker 1: um long squid that has a red head and it
Speaker 1: went zooming by and um that thrilled doctor Joy because
Speaker 1: those are incredibly rare to see. We saw the occasional
Speaker 1: eel and occasional crab, little teeny um like blue and
Speaker 1: pink fish, but mostly it was nothing. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was the occasional occurrence and maybe something that had wandered
Speaker 1: in their accident and they just have made their way,
Speaker 1: you know, in what we should have seen, we should
Speaker 1: have seen a lot more. But what is not good
Speaker 1: is that what was also out there is um three
Speaker 1: thousand miles worth of oil. I want to nail these
Speaker 1: facts down for people. You said, did you say it
Speaker 1: was an inch or too thick? The bed at most
Speaker 1: it's greatest steps. It's two inches thick, so it's greatest steps.
Speaker 1: This carpet, carpet of oil, of oil near the site
Speaker 1: is three thousand square miles sixty miles by or whatever.
Speaker 1: Whether it's shaped like an American flag or it's the
Speaker 1: size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. So this isn't
Speaker 1: just around the site. This is a huge carpet of
Speaker 1: oil that has been there for four years. No, No,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a couple of questions based
Speaker 1: on that. So there's a lot of myth making here
Speaker 1: and an urban legend, if you will, The myth that
Speaker 1: got circulated, was it all the oil was gone because
Speaker 1: the bugs ate it, right, that's circulated, or we're going
Speaker 1: to eat it? And that was well circulated. It was
Speaker 1: circulated by a scientist who was funded by BP to
Speaker 1: come up with that information. And scientist and I should
Speaker 1: know his name, and I'm forgetting it right now. That's bad.
Speaker 1: So a scientist funded by BP said, eventually the bugs
Speaker 1: are going to eat the oil. I mean he said
Speaker 1: initially that they've eaten most you know, most of it
Speaker 1: and um, and they've they've eaten most of it. I'm
Speaker 1: not positive that he said they're going to continue eating,
Speaker 1: but he definitely said they've eaten most of it. Now,
Speaker 1: what happens to oil that bonds, if it does bond.
Speaker 1: What happens to oil that corregs it is applied to
Speaker 1: because as most people know who were listening to this program,
Speaker 1: they know that the gulf was sprayed uh in my uh,
Speaker 1: my friend has a great phrase in my conspira noia
Speaker 1: reality that I live in. Um. The my friends said
Speaker 1: that they sprayed the corregit on there to get the
Speaker 1: oil out of the way so that the media couldn't
Speaker 1: see it. That was my probably my greatest disappointment in
Speaker 1: Obama that he allowed them to not have the press
Speaker 1: come and photograph and videotape and reports. Honestly, what happened
Speaker 1: that though all the press had to stay away from this,
Speaker 1: I thought that was the most disgraceful thing that Obama
Speaker 1: ever did in his administration. I mean, we were I
Speaker 1: was regularly threatened by police for trying to go to
Speaker 1: beaches to cover spill sites. Um. People who wanted to
Speaker 1: volunteer to take us out in boats were told that
Speaker 1: they would be fine sixty tho dollars for doing so
Speaker 1: and be sent to jail. Um. Fortunately, some people were
Speaker 1: so concerned with getting the truth out that they still
Speaker 1: brought myself another journalist out into the water. UM, I
Speaker 1: don't I mean, I don't know, hopefully not not. The
Speaker 1: ones that were kind enough to help me and people
Speaker 1: you know were paid, So it was, you know, they
Speaker 1: were desperate for for income and they were risking, you know,
Speaker 1: a dollar in the hand for the threat of a
Speaker 1: six fine because they were desperate and needed it. But
Speaker 1: I mean, the the obstacles were great in trying to
Speaker 1: cover this story. So what happens to the correct applied
Speaker 1: to so two million gallons of corrects that are applied.
Speaker 1: So part of the story here of dispersing it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a chemical disperse it. Part of the
Speaker 1: story is that the only thing that BP had prepared for,
Speaker 1: and that actually any oil company operating the Gulf prepared for,
Speaker 1: was oil on the surface of the ocean. And it's
Speaker 1: very common to apply a little bit of corrects it
Speaker 1: to a little bit of oil on the surface. The
Speaker 1: idea is to that you do want to break it
Speaker 1: up because you don't want animals to get cotton it.
Speaker 1: You also don't want it floating to shore. Oil is toxic,
Speaker 1: you don't want humans coming into contact with it. And
Speaker 1: the idea is that, you know, you apply a little
Speaker 1: at the top and it's some harm to the water,
Speaker 1: but it's worth it. But this was a totally impressed
Speaker 1: hended oil spill in size and scope and depth, and
Speaker 1: for the first time ever, the correct sit because they
Speaker 1: only plan for something at the top, not expecting a
Speaker 1: three month long oil spill, although they should have. They
Speaker 1: applied at the bottom of the ocean, so they sprayed
Speaker 1: it at the side of the spill. So you have
Speaker 1: this huge cocktail toxic cocktail of the toxic correct sit
Speaker 1: combined with the toxic oil, and what studies have found
Speaker 1: is that in fact, the combination of the two is
Speaker 1: at least more toxic than either alone. And the only
Speaker 1: thing that the correct It is supposed to do is disperse.
Speaker 1: That's all it's even meant to do. So what you're
Speaker 1: choosing to do Nearrell Co manufacturers corrects It, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: they for a very long time refused to release all
Speaker 1: of the chemical components of correct It, and they also
Speaker 1: refused to I think they have sense, And they also
Speaker 1: refused to make it available to scientists to do their
Speaker 1: own research on to be able to study the impacts.
Speaker 1: And I believe that has also since ended. But what
Speaker 1: they did was basically intentionally sacrifice the ocean in an
Speaker 1: attempt to protect the shore. But of course they failed
Speaker 1: it both because they also hadn't prepared to protect the shore.
Speaker 1: So not only did they apply all of this chemical
Speaker 1: to the ocean, but the oil also did of course
Speaker 1: make its way to the shore, as did now the
Speaker 1: chemical lye infused corrects It infused oil make it to shore.
Speaker 1: When you talk about corexit, you said oil is leaking
Speaker 1: into the Gulf as a matter of course, constantly, and
Speaker 1: the system has survived and even at its most uh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say pristine, but at it's most
Speaker 1: natural and it's least impacted. There's still some oil coming
Speaker 1: out of the bottom of the gulf, because there's oil
Speaker 1: all over the gulf, and that just is how the
Speaker 1: ecosystem operates and exists. But correct is it is not
Speaker 1: something that comes out of the ground. Corrects It is
Speaker 1: a toxic chemical that's applied. Two million gallons of this
Speaker 1: substance poured into the Gulf of Mexico on top of
Speaker 1: that site. Is I'm going to guess that's spit in
Speaker 1: the ocean in terms of how it breaks down into
Speaker 1: the into the body of water. But has there been
Speaker 1: any research done to determine what corrects it itself has
Speaker 1: done to wildlife into the So is that two inch
Speaker 1: layer there because you said that they commingled the correctit
Speaker 1: with it at the site they shot it into the
Speaker 1: stream of oil at the site corrected at that's the
Speaker 1: wellhead and when they did that, is that layer of
Speaker 1: oil on the ground. Is that bonded with correct it?
Speaker 1: Is anybody to any tests about that? Yeah? There is
Speaker 1: um correct, sit correct. It and the oil have both
Speaker 1: stayed and are likely to stay forever because the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean is a dark, cold place. It's like
Speaker 1: the best freezer in the world, and so it's not
Speaker 1: going anywhere. But also um what's left of the oil essentially,
Speaker 1: so there there are um microbes that have developed over
Speaker 1: millennia that have feasted on this And just to make
Speaker 1: this clear, very teeny teeny tiny amount of naturally releasing
Speaker 1: oil that comes out of the Gulf of Mexico and
Speaker 1: very very small amounts, and over millennia, communities have developed
Speaker 1: around this oil and they have thrived because it's small
Speaker 1: and it's a natural occurrence and there's time for the
Speaker 1: species to commingle with the oil. So there are these
Speaker 1: naturally occurring microbes that do eat the oil, but they
Speaker 1: ate as much as they could, and it was only
Speaker 1: a small amount. But also they only ate what they could,
Speaker 1: so what they left behind is also the most toxic
Speaker 1: parts of the oil. It's what they didn't want to eat.
Speaker 1: And these are called polycyclic aero aeromaic hydrocarbons, which are
Speaker 1: um the most toxic part of the oil. Carcinogens known
Speaker 1: to be cancer causing human is at the bottom with
Speaker 1: the correct Now, how would you characterize BPS response to
Speaker 1: this what you've observed initially end down the road. We
Speaker 1: know now through the court case that um BP, first
Speaker 1: of all lied when it said that it was prepared
Speaker 1: for a blowout, for a deep water blowout. It actually
Speaker 1: had said in its exploration plan to drill that it
Speaker 1: could handle a blowout almost three times as large as
Speaker 1: the oil spill that actually ended up happening, and it
Speaker 1: was in fact totally unprepared. It also then lied about
Speaker 1: how much oil was being released every day from the
Speaker 1: oil well. It also had said that it could handle
Speaker 1: the oil spill, which to me, which also implies that
Speaker 1: it could stop the oil spill. But it turns out
Speaker 1: that the only method that it had available for stopping
Speaker 1: the oil spill, it in every other oil company, by
Speaker 1: the way, operating in the Gulf of Mexico, was the
Speaker 1: only thing they already knew how to do, which is
Speaker 1: also the most dangerous thing, which is drill another well.
Speaker 1: It took a hundred and fifty two days to drill
Speaker 1: another well. That's the only thing that permanently stopped the
Speaker 1: well pour. The sand in the First, they did the
Speaker 1: thing where they tried the um the top hat, which
Speaker 1: was throwing When we saw this on jokes made about
Speaker 1: it on TV because it was laughable. It's things that
Speaker 1: work in shallow water four feet. This was five thousand feet,
Speaker 1: so throwing golf balls and and tire and rubber rubber
Speaker 1: from tires onto it. What should they have done? Where
Speaker 1: have you seen examples of this going? Obviously not to
Speaker 1: that level because the deep water horizon is an anomaly
Speaker 1: I'm assuming correct in terms of scope. But where you've
Speaker 1: seen these kinds of things? Where have you seen something
Speaker 1: effective that's worked? It's not golf balls, but what do
Speaker 1: they do? So what's come out since is that there
Speaker 1: is another temporary method that they should have known about
Speaker 1: and should have had ready. They and every other company. Again,
Speaker 1: this isn't just BP. So I went into this story
Speaker 1: thinkings of company that really they were the unlucky ones.
Speaker 1: It could have happened to any of them. It could
Speaker 1: and still could. Yeah, they were exactly exactly. But I
Speaker 1: want to get back to this thing, which is where
Speaker 1: have you seen this? Because it's one thing to say
Speaker 1: there's something that they should have known after the fact,
Speaker 1: but at the time that it happened, what information did
Speaker 1: they have, because I want to be fair to them
Speaker 1: as well, at the time that had happened, what information
Speaker 1: did they have Where you've seen other people do this better,
Speaker 1: that someone's done it better. There isn't an example what
Speaker 1: they all did know. However, there are very clear examples.
Speaker 1: So um, what they all knew. All the companies knew
Speaker 1: was that the thing that they're depending on the most,
Speaker 1: which is something called the blowout preventer, which is the
Speaker 1: huge piece of equipment that sits on top of a
Speaker 1: well that's supposed to when there is a blowout prevented
Speaker 1: by shutting the well, and so it's called the blow preventer.
Speaker 1: That these pieces of equipment only had about a fifty
Speaker 1: success rate. This is the last line of defense they
Speaker 1: also should have, and this is something that is just them.
Speaker 1: They should have had it running as properly as it
Speaker 1: could have. So one of the things we also know
Speaker 1: is that they had allowed the batteries on the blowout
Speaker 1: preventer to run out. Literally it had old batteries. Does
Speaker 1: that affect them in court? Did they pay for them
Speaker 1: in court? So then you get their hands chopped off
Speaker 1: for that they were, so, so I guess there's there's
Speaker 1: there's three pieces of the litigation. The first, BP was
Speaker 1: found grossly negligent and definitely got in trouble by the
Speaker 1: judge for, in the judge's words, putting profits above everything else,
Speaker 1: and that was in what led to the blowout. So
Speaker 1: BP made decision after decision after decision on the rig
Speaker 1: and I guess in this circumstance, yes, there there are
Speaker 1: things that other companies have done better, that they could
Speaker 1: have done better, where they were trying to save time,
Speaker 1: trying to save money and just making um, you know,
Speaker 1: very very very poor decisions time and time again that
Speaker 1: contributed that made the blow out happen. And so for
Speaker 1: that the judge found them grossly negligent. But everything that
Speaker 1: came after, meaning their inability to stop the blowout, their
Speaker 1: inability to clean it up, their decision to apply two
Speaker 1: million downs of Cruxit, their inability to keep it from
Speaker 1: hitting the shore and killing a hundred thousand animals. For that,
Speaker 1: the judge said, no other company knows how to do
Speaker 1: it any better than you did, which means not at all.
Speaker 1: And the government didn't require you to do it any better.
Speaker 1: So you and everybody else gets a pass on everything
Speaker 1: that came after the judge said that. So where we're
Speaker 1: now coming to is the third phase of trial, where
Speaker 1: the judge is now going to say how much b
Speaker 1: p O s. And it could be as much as
Speaker 1: almost fourteen billion dollars for all of the oil that
Speaker 1: was released into the Gulf of Mexico, but it could
Speaker 1: be as little as a hundred and forty thou dollars.
Speaker 1: So that's why this low end is very important. And
Speaker 1: that's why the fact that it's important that the judge
Speaker 1: said that BP made very poor decisions, including allowing the
Speaker 1: blot preventer to run out of batteries, um that it
Speaker 1: was grossly negligent for doing that, and as well as
Speaker 1: Haliburton and trans Ocean were also found um negligent for
Speaker 1: their parts. You know, two of the largest companies in
Speaker 1: the world, which Haliburton. I'm not positive they will find
Speaker 1: something correct. I think they reached a settlement, but I'm
Speaker 1: not positive. Yeah, I'm not positive where they're out with
Speaker 1: their case. I'm pretty sure they settled. Now, you studied
Speaker 1: these companies for quite a while. Now, you've covered this
Speaker 1: industry for fifteen years or more. You're at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the You're in this submersible, and all of the
Speaker 1: fears of that aside everything, but with your knowledge of
Speaker 1: what's going on and why and what isn't happening and why,
Speaker 1: and you're with this woman who's this colleague of your
Speaker 1: this revered colleague from the University of Georgia, Dr Joy.
Speaker 1: Did you think when upset you? Oh? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I would say, certainly, are you completely uh cynical about
Speaker 1: or does any of it really upset you? Oh? It
Speaker 1: always upsets me. And I you know, I can't. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you every day there's something new that I
Speaker 1: learned about this disaster that still continues to depressed me
Speaker 1: and shock me. And when I was down there, I
Speaker 1: was unbelievably depressing. I looked out of the window. Is
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the ocean. It was incredible, unthinkable opportunity.
Speaker 1: And it's a you know, basically a virtual dead zone.
Speaker 1: And not only are we down there and there's lots
Speaker 1: of time to reflect, but suddenly we see tracks in
Speaker 1: the ground which are parallel, which means that they're clearly
Speaker 1: man made, and that signals that not only is there
Speaker 1: this dead zone, but somebody's laying cable down there, which
Speaker 1: means that I later come to learn they're getting ready
Speaker 1: to drill again in the exact same area. So the
Speaker 1: federal government has divided up this lease area sold it
Speaker 1: to another company called L l o G. Without any
Speaker 1: public awareness or you know, debate. Um L l o
Speaker 1: G gets basically almost the entire lease and the rights
Speaker 1: to produce oil off of it. And and they are
Speaker 1: now and people aren't also paying attention because instead of
Speaker 1: going in in the exact same spot so you could
Speaker 1: see a rig, they're over an adjacent lease area, drilling
Speaker 1: from the adjacent lease area and then cutting horizontally under
Speaker 1: the ground into the original area. And this all they
Speaker 1: wrote a plan. It took less than a month for
Speaker 1: the Department of Interior to okay the plan. It looks
Speaker 1: remarkably and depressingly similar to the same plan that VP
Speaker 1: had drawn up originally. And everything is just um literally back,
Speaker 1: you know, back to business as usual. What hope do
Speaker 1: you think there is for accelerating renoble production in this country? Well,
Speaker 1: and first of all, the US government subsidizes the oil
Speaker 1: industry to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars
Speaker 1: every year, So there's lots of money there. They don't
Speaker 1: need it. They're the wealthiest industry the world has ever known.
Speaker 1: We can take those subsidies, those can be applied to
Speaker 1: alternative energy. UM. We can also you know, I think
Speaker 1: it absolutely is something that can be done and should
Speaker 1: be done at the local level. So if we look
Speaker 1: at local consumption, reducing local consumption of energy and providing
Speaker 1: energy at the local level, I think you'll also come
Speaker 1: up with more UM potential resources made available and partnering
Speaker 1: with government, with federal government resources. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of money out there that can be UM successfully cut
Speaker 1: out of the budget that's being used to subsidize and
Speaker 1: support the fossil fuel industry that I think almost everyone
Speaker 1: would agree is unnecessary and that money at a minimum
Speaker 1: can be directed to government. It has not the only player,
Speaker 1: but it has a role. It certainly has a role
Speaker 1: to play. Antonia you Hass article on the repercussions of
Speaker 1: BP's oil spill is in the June issue of Harper's magazine. Lately,
Speaker 1: you has has been following the protests surrounding the Polar
Speaker 1: Pioneer Shells Giant offshore oil rig for Rolling Stone. I
Speaker 1: called Antonia up to learn the latest. Um we wanted
Speaker 1: to um add a comment from you about two events
Speaker 1: that I've been tracking recently, which obviously a plane to you,
Speaker 1: And the first one is the Santa Barbara spill. When
Speaker 1: I was reading that story and following that story, it
Speaker 1: led us to corrosion in the infrastructure of those pipes,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering, is that something that that's pretty common now?
Speaker 1: Should we expect this to happen more often? Or is
Speaker 1: there the possibility is Santa Barbara an isolated incident or no?
Speaker 1: Um No, Santa Barbara isn't isolated for a number of reasons,
Speaker 1: the first being that corrosive old pipes is actually a
Speaker 1: huge problem throughout our oil and gas system. There are
Speaker 1: stills related to problems with pipelines, pipeline ruptures, including corrosion,
Speaker 1: that happened all over the United States all the time,
Speaker 1: and in fact, in two dozen and fourteen there were
Speaker 1: more of those bills than at any time and at
Speaker 1: least the last twenty years. And that's partly because we're
Speaker 1: moving more product through the pipes, but also because the
Speaker 1: pipes are, you know, just get older every year, and
Speaker 1: you know, disasters like what happened in Santa Barbara are
Speaker 1: actually unfortunately quite common. I remember when I first went
Speaker 1: to Santa Barbara to visit uh from l A. I
Speaker 1: was living in l A many many years ago, and
Speaker 1: I went up there to check it out. And when
Speaker 1: I was staying at one specific hotel, they had cleaning
Speaker 1: solvent and they had cloths that you used to take
Speaker 1: the tar balls off your and the oil blobs off
Speaker 1: your feet, because a lot of that stuff washed up
Speaker 1: periodically on the beaches. It was a very common occurrence.
Speaker 1: It was very regular. Now was that area still as
Speaker 1: busy and as still as productive and oil field off
Speaker 1: the coast of California? Is that still humming the way
Speaker 1: it has been for many decades now? Yeah, there's you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of oil and gas off the shores of
Speaker 1: California in general, but Santa Barbara in particular. That area
Speaker 1: is actually the birthplace of offshore oil drilling um in
Speaker 1: the United States, going back to the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: But oil spills are also unfortunately common and actually one
Speaker 1: of the largest offshore oil disasters in the United States
Speaker 1: before the deep Water Horizon happened in two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: Happened in nineteen sixty nine in Santa Barbara, and that
Speaker 1: was a huge offshore blowout that led to three million
Speaker 1: gallons of oil spills and led to a movement to
Speaker 1: put in place moratoriums against offshore oil drilling, first in
Speaker 1: the waters right off Santa Barbara. That then the moratorium
Speaker 1: spread and they affected almost everywhere except for the US
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico and parts of Alasko where drilling was
Speaker 1: allowed to continue. But the existing offshore operations off California
Speaker 1: were grandfathered in. So there's still are these platforms that
Speaker 1: we see um when you're you know, in Santa Barbara,
Speaker 1: and it's actually from one of those old grandfathered in platforms,
Speaker 1: actually two of them, one from Exxonmobile and another operated
Speaker 1: by a much smaller companies called Venico, that this oil
Speaker 1: spill actually happened because the oil is typed into shore
Speaker 1: through subsea pipelines. Then once it gets to short put
Speaker 1: into a processing facility, then it travels along the onshore pipeline,
Speaker 1: and it was along the onshore leg that the rubsture happened.
Speaker 1: The oiled then spilled onto the beach and into the ocean.
Speaker 1: Um when you mentioned Alaska. The next question becomes your
Speaker 1: thoughts about Obama permitting drilling in and I want you
Speaker 1: to name the region more specifically up in the Arctic
Speaker 1: where what is the area described for us? What is
Speaker 1: the area where in the sea where Obama has now
Speaker 1: said they can have underwater drilling. Yeah? Well, now, um
Speaker 1: in the chup Cheese Sea, which is um off of
Speaker 1: Alaska in the Arctic, a part of Alaska that's heavily
Speaker 1: inhabited by indigenous populations and a broad diversity of wildlife,
Speaker 1: including polar bears and walruses and hundreds of different bird
Speaker 1: and fish species um. And also in and also describe
Speaker 1: if you would, the conditions of the water in the
Speaker 1: dead of winter there. It's freezing water. Um. Huge blocks
Speaker 1: of ice are primarily what you find here in the
Speaker 1: in the winter. Not not really water per se, but
Speaker 1: rather you know, ice sheet um. And they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be solid. Of course, global warming is making that less common.
Speaker 1: But that's why when Obama open to this area to
Speaker 1: offshore drilling, what that meant to what's supposed to mean
Speaker 1: is at the only time that the company's can drill
Speaker 1: is a very small window when there's actually open water
Speaker 1: there for them to drill in. So that's the summer
Speaker 1: months and I'm going only as late as October is
Speaker 1: their only opportunity um for when they are allowed to drill,
Speaker 1: because it is such a cold, frozen, harsh, h really
Speaker 1: precedented type of environment to try to engage an offshore
Speaker 1: oil drilling in. But I also read somewhere with it's
Speaker 1: very rough seas up there in the winter time. Correct,
Speaker 1: That's right, very rough water, exactly rough water, very deep
Speaker 1: distances between where you know, the coast Guard is stationed,
Speaker 1: where their their pockets of you know, land, and places
Speaker 1: where people are, where emergency services might come from, where
Speaker 1: where help might come from. What do you think it
Speaker 1: was if you can say that prompted Obama to make
Speaker 1: that Rolling Shell is the largest oil company in the world.
Speaker 1: That's the oil company that's had leases in this area
Speaker 1: for a very long time, and it's been trying to
Speaker 1: develop this area for a very long time. And the
Speaker 1: reason why it hasn't is because its operations keep running
Speaker 1: into problems. That keeps trying and failing, and you know,
Speaker 1: the Obama administration is still engaged in it's incredibly dangerous
Speaker 1: what it calls to all all of the above energy strategy,
Speaker 1: which is a you know, I believe a really false
Speaker 1: belief that you can simultaneously support alternatives and bio fuels
Speaker 1: and you know, clean energy advancements and regulation at the
Speaker 1: same time is allowing the industry to go anywhere and
Speaker 1: everywhere it wants all of the time. And you know,
Speaker 1: don't take my word for it now, it takes the
Speaker 1: Pope's word for it. Um that you really can't follow
Speaker 1: both of those, both of those tabs at the same
Speaker 1: time and keep the planet inhabitable for our species. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of money in the oil industry,
Speaker 1: and I you know, think that the political influence there
Speaker 1: is ultimately what you know, wins out. And Tonia, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking my phone call, and again,
Speaker 1: thank you for being a part of our broadcast. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing, Fine,
Speaker 1: don't make the time