The Need for Improved Oil Spill Response Planning

The Need for Improved Oil Spill Response Planning

¶Oil spill response planning and analysis across the government needs to be overhauled in light of the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. A common interagency approach to analyzing oil spill risks and a common understanding of the issues and impacts involved are needed and must be consistently incorporated in environmental reviews, consultations, and authorizations. Environmental review and spill planning currently occurs at different levels within the government and industry, and these reviews and plans have not been sufficiently coordinated to ensure either searching review of industry plans or adequate preparation.

¶One of the common threads that runs through many of the environmental review documents prepared for Gulf of Mexico oil and gas activities in the years leading up to the Deepwater Horizon spill was their reliance on MMS oil spill risk and impact analyses. To the extent that any of these documents contained errors or incomplete information, those gaps and errors carried through to subsequent environmental reviews by other agencies.

¶The government's spill-response planning occurs largely outside of MMS. The National Contingency Plan, mandated by the Clean Water Act, prescribes the nationwide response structure for spills of oil or releases of hazardous substances and creates a tiered planning process. Regional Response Teams include representation from federal agencies and state governments, and develop Regional Contingency Plans as well as preauthorization protocols for certain response strategies. The Area Committees, which develop Area

Contingency Plans, similarly include federal and state representatives but are led by the Coast Guard. (The Coast Guard and EPA co-chair the regional teams.) The Area Contingency Plans are the most specific and the most relied-upon during the response to a spill.

While industry spill response plans must "be consistent with the requirements of the National Contingency Plan and Area Contingency Plans,"14 those industry plans presently require only the approval of BOEMRE.15 Its regulations outline what needs to be included in these plans and direct the company to include information about a worst case scenario, including how to calculate the volume of oil, determine its trajectory, and a response strategy.16 As noted above, MMS oil spill risk and impacts modeling formed the basis of the required analysis. These response plans were not distributed to any federal agencies for review and comment outside of MMS. Additionally, only a small number of the plans developed for the Gulf were sent to the existing Office of Leasing and Environment for detailed environmental review within MMS or shared with other federal agencies with relevant expertise, such as NOAA or the Coast Guard. Finally, no provision was made for any form of public review or comment, and plans were not available to the public after they received MMS approval.

Recommendation C1: The Department of the Interior should create a rigorous, transparent, and meaningful oil spill risk analysis and planning process for the development and implementation of better oil spill response.

Several steps are needed to implement a rigorous, transparent, and meaningful oil spill risk analysis and planning process:

• Interior should review and revise its regulations and guidance for industry oil spill response plans in light of the lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon experience.
• A new process for reviewing spill response plans is needed. This process should ensure that all critical information and spill scenarios are included in the plans, including oil spill containment and control methods to ensure that operators can deliver the capabilities indicated in their response plans. In addition, the new entity within Interior that is charged with overseeing offshore safety and environmental protection will have to verify operator capability to perform according to the plans.
• Interior must ensure that adequate technical expertise exists within the staff responsible for reviewing and approving spill response plans.
• In addition to the Department of the Interior, other agencies with relevant scientific and operational expertise should play a role in evaluating spill response plans to verify that operators can conduct the response and containment operations detailed in their plans. Specifically, oil spill response plans, including source-control measures, should be subject to interagency review and approval by the Coast Guard, EPA,

and NOAA. Other parts of the federal government, such as Department of Energy national laboratories that possess relevant scientific expertise, could be consulted. This would help remedy the past failure to integrate multiple area, regional, and industry response plans, by involving the agencies with primary responsibility for government spill response planning in oversight of industry planning. Plans should also be made available for a public comment period prior to final approval and response plans should be made available to the public following their approval.

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• Interior should incorporate the "worst-case scenario" calculations from industry oil spill response plans into NEPA documents and other environmental analyses or reviews. This does not mean that Interior would be required to conduct a "worst-case scenario analysis" under NEPA, but it does mean that Interior would use industry's worst-case estimates for potential oil spill situations in its environmental analyses.