In its first six months, the Gulf Monitoring Consortium uncovered systematic problems with the reporting of oil pollution in the Gulf of Mexico. These problems include the failure of responsible parties to report oil spills, underreporting of spills, and inconsistencies in the collection and publication of spill reports by the federal National Response Center. You can read more about our Key Findings here or read our full report.
Gulf Monitoring Consortium members use a variety of methods to document and evaluate oil spill events: continuously monitoring official oil and hazardous materials spill reports collected and distributed by the National Response Center (NRC), processing and analyzing satellite images, conducting aerial overflights to acquire photographs and video, launching “sea-truth” expeditions on the water for direct observation and sampling, and analyzing other available data using GIS and interactive mapping tools. Using this innovative combination of techniques, Consortium members have discovered deficiencies in the process created to hold parties responsible for oil pollution accountable, and minimize the frequency and severity of oil pollution in the Nation’s waters:
Lack of reporting of oil spills by responsible parties
Many of the pollution reports submitted to the NRC come directly from industry as they are the ones most likely to be near offshore oil infrastructure when an oil spill occurs and because polluters are required by law to report their spills. However, two of the spills we investigated were not reported to the NRC. This strongly suggests that oil spills occur more frequently than regulators and the public realize.
Underreporting by responsible parties
In addition to the lack of reporting, chronic underreporting of oil spills makes it impossible for the public and decision makers to understand the true scope of pollution caused by oil and gas exploration and production. NRC reports lacking estimates of the amount of oil spilled are common. Between October 1, 2010 and September 30, 2011 a total of 2903 oil or refined petroleum (e.g. diesel fuel) spills were reported in the Gulf region. Seventy-seven percent (2221) of those reports did not include an estimate of the quantity of oil spilled. Forty-five percent (1311) identify a suspected responsible party – a strong indicator that those reports were submitted by the actual polluters – and of those, nearly half (620) do not include any spill amount.
Inconsistencies in National Response Center collection and publication of oil spill reports
In two cases that we are aware of, information provided to the NRC by members of the public was incompletely or incorrectly captured in the resulting NRC reports. In the first case, a passenger aboard a SouthWings overflight of the Gulf on June 10, 2011 reported an oil slick emanating from a wellhead in Breton Sound. The resulting NRC report (#97928) published that same day includes an incorrect latitude coordinate and is missing critical information about the suspected source of the leak, describing the incident only as follows: “Caller stated that there is an unknown sheen in the water, the cause is unknown.” Comparison of the lack of information in the NRC report with the fairly detailed information and photos published by the passenger in his blog on June 13 suggests that the NRC may not be accurately capturing important information provided by concerned citizens. In the second case, a local resident observed tarballs and oil on several occasions on the beaches near Pensacola. She filed several reports with the NRC, providing precise latitude-longitude location coordinates obtained with a handheld GPS unit in decimal degrees. The NRC mistakenly interpreted the coordinates as degrees-minutes-seconds, resulting in very inaccurate locations for the reported sightings of oil. These reports (for example, #990418, which gives an incorrect location far onshore, about 15 miles from the correct location provided by the caller) would be useless to responders.
