Deepwater Horizon oil spill: The real cause is peak oil

The devastating report from the presidential commission on the Deepwater disaster spells out the reasons for the gigantic oil spill and the deaths of 11 men but not the root cause: the looming threat of peak oil. The report, to be released in full on Tuesday, is utterly damning. The safety failures of BP and its contractors Haliburton and Transocean were “systemic”, due to a “failure of management” and, without reform, a repeat accident “may well occur”.


Worse, these are the best operators in the global industry and BP was led by Tony Hayward who, on his appointment as CEO in 2007, said: “I promise to focus like a laser on safe and reliable operations.” That followed another fatal accident at a BP refinery in Texas City in 2005, as well as a hushed-up blowout in Azerbaijan in 2008.
So the best operators, focusing laser-like on safety, caused the worst offshore oil spill in US history. You can see the problem. But how did we get here?
The world runs on oil, a point made most succinctly by George W Bush of all people, when he described the US’s “addiction to oil.” That addiction takes us to the ends of the Earth and the bottom of the ocean in search of the next fix.
Drilling in deep oceans for oil and gas is one symptom, from Brazil’s massive pre-salt reserves to the west of Shetland. The filthy squeezing of the black gold from the tar sands of Canada is another, as is the global surge is fracking of oil shales, another dirty business.
Surely the higher risks and impacts involved in strangling the dregs of oil and gas out of the Earth would make other, renewable, options preferable? No, because the costs of the euphemistically dubbed “unconventional” sources of fossil fuel are not borne by those who produce or consume them.
BP may end up paying back billions to the US government, but only after years of legal fighting. In the UK, the situation could be worse. A report from MPs today shows that the British taxpayer is likely to be on the hook for the clean-up of a deep water spill.
So what to do? Better regulation is an obvious answer, given the craven behaviour of the now-abolished US Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management , Regulation and Enforcement. But regulators are inherently prone to capture by industry as are politicians, particularly in the US.
The only long-term answer is to wean ourselves off oil before the post-peak trouble really starts. It is not easy. It’s amazing stuff: energy-dense and easily transported. But alternatives exist, from electric vehicles to biofuels to fuels generated from sunlight. These need investment, but would we really rather spend billions on clean-up operations and lawyers? I hope not.