Put Gulf Safety First: Tell Obama To Shut Down the BP Atlantis
Wenonah Hauter is the executive director of the national consumer organization Food & Water Watch.
Right now, almost 90 days into the spill that devastated the Gulf of Mexico, BP Atlantis—the largest oil and natural gas platform in the world—remains in operation.
BP Atlantis isn’t just any offshore facility. Located 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana and drilling at a depth of 7,000 feet, the BP Atlantis is the largest oil and natural gas platform in the world.
And, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Last year, Food & Water Watch learned from a whistleblower that BP lacked proper up-to-date and engineer-approved safety documentation for Atlantis—a situation that could cause “catastrophic Operator error,” according to one manager at BP.
In other words, in the case of an emergency like the one that befell the Deepwater Horizon before it exploded, workers on the production facility would be without the proper operating manuals—or road maps of how components of the facility actually worked—to prevent the emergency from escalating to disaster-like proportions.
We began informing policy makers and regulators about the situation on Atlantis more than a year ago, when we first asked for the facility to be shut down until the safety documentation could be produced. It took the Minerals Management Service (MMS) six months to agree to even meet with us.
We ramped up our efforts after the Deepwater Horizon exploded. Surely this would be a cause for action on Atlantis. Surely something would be done to prevent a similar—or worse—disaster.
But almost 90 days into the spill, all the MMS has done is stonewall, deflect, and delay. Instead of simply checking to see if the documentation is currently in order, a process that should take mere days, in June they responded that an investigation of Atlantis would take three months to complete. In the meantime, the facility continues to produce 200,000 barrels of oil a day. It appears the cozy relationships that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar vowed to battle appear to continue even after the spill.
And while over 24 Congressmen and women have urged president Obama to shut down Atlantis, some Congressmen in the Gulf continue to do nothing. Representative Joseph Cao (D-La.) most recently turned a deaf ear to constituents who asked him to shut down Atlantis. Perhaps it was because his largest campaign contributor in 2009-2010 was Edison Chouest Offshore, which leases an onshore support facility for Atlantis to BP.
It’s time to tell Obama that when it comes to the Gulf, safety should finally trump influence. Tell Obama to shut down BP Atlantis until proven safe. Please sign our petition here to prevent this disaster.
Photo Credit: Food and Water Watch
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