What N.L. could learn from the worst offshore oil disaster in U.S. history

Marine scientistDonald Boesch says thecontroversy fuelled by recent oil spills off Canada's East Coast has some "fairly interesting and striking comparisons"to his past work examining howthe offshore industry is managed, as part of a U.S. inquiry intothe Deepwater Horizon disaster.

"Some of the recommendations we had in our commission report are appropriate make sure you're putting sufficient space between the economic decisions to advance oil production, and so on, from those that have to manage safety and protect the environment," he told CBC News.

Boesch, a professor at the University of Maryland, was one of seven people appointed to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling by President Barack Obama in 2010.

A massive explosion on the rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 people and set off the largest marine oil spill in American history.

Boesch says one of the most critical lessons the commissionlearned is that the U.S. agency overseeing offshore oil in the gulf had a conflict of interest built into its mandate.

The Minerals Management Service oversaw development as well as safety and environmental regulations in the offshore.

Boesch said development demands were found to take priority, and that was "pretty clearly one of the things that went wrong."

"Finding some way to provide some space and protection [for] true, earnest attention to safety and environmental protection is critical," he said.

Obama broke up the Minerals Management Service on the commission's recommendation.

Boesch also points to the 1988 explosion on the Piper Alpha platform in the North Sea that killed 167crew members and forced a similar reckoning in the U.K.

"In each case, and usually often following these major accidents, investigations led to the identification of that need for a clear separation of responsibility and the independence of the mission to ensure safety and to protect the environment," he said.

Critics have accused the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB)of having a similar conflict. The province's offshore regulator is in charge of bothmaximizing oil recovery and value, and overseeing safety and environmental issues.

In 2010, an inquiry following the Cougar helicopter crash that killed 17 people heading to the Hibernia platform recommended a standalone safety regulator. That didn't happen, although there is now an autonomous safety division within the C-NLOPB.

And as spills accumulate in the Newfoundland offshore there have been threein the past 10 months, releasing a total of 264,200 litres of oil into the North Atlanticenvironmental groups and the provincial NDP have renewedtheir calls for an independent, standalone safety and environmental regulator.

"We have four installations offshore.As we grow, that might be something that we want to consider to have," Siobhan Coady, the province's minister of natural resources, recently told CBC News.

Commission found overreliance on industry

Boeschsaid he can't speak specifically to the regulatory situation in Newfoundland and Labrador.

But, in general terms, he said, the province might alsolearn from the commission's findings about how much a regulator can rely on industry.

"I think we've learned that there's some dangers in overreliance on industry self-regulation, self-reporting, that has global relevance, not just in the Gulf of Mexico," he said.

The largest spill in the history of the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore occurred last fall, when Husky Energy was trying to start up production on the SeaRose vesselin 8.4-metre waves during the tail end of one of the worst storms to pummel the province in years.

The C-NLOPB said Husky didn't need its blessing to hit the switch, drawing renewed criticismof the regulator's reliance on operators to make their own plans.

Deepwater brings 'surprises'

Last year, the Newfoundland and Labrador government announced an agreement to develop its first deepwater project with Norway-basedEquinor, in waters nearly as deep as the Deepwater Horizon site.

Boesch says oil companies have made huge technological advances to take on and manage the added risk and uncertainties with deepwater drilling, and they deserve credit for that.

But he also cautions that with any deepwater project,"You're going to have some surprises."

A small risk, but a high cost

Environmental assessment documentsfiled to the federal government by a number of operators in the offshore including Equinor, the company behind the $6.8-billion deepwater Bay du Nord project, say it could take 18 to 36 days to bring the capping technology developed to stop the DeepwaterHorizon blowout to Newfoundland waters.

Those documents emphasizethat the chance of a major blowout is remote.

"We were blithely assured, 'This blowout could never happen, so we're not going to try to develop the standby technology that controls it.' Well, it happened," Boesch said of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

"It might be a very small risk, but it's a very high cost. You need to put it in that context."

In those environmental assessment documents, Equinor said it would likely have a capping stack shipped in from Norway or Brazil, and that having a stack on standby in Eastern Canada would not cut down on the overall time need to install it.

But withNewfoundland and Labrador gunning to double oil production by 2030, Boesch said it mightmake sense to revisit thatidea.

"If the industry expands ... ifthere's a lot of deepwater drilling, I would think the regulators would be remiss without having the requirementsto have that containment capacity."

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