Richard Steiner, professor at the University of Alaska until 2010, specialist in marine conservation and advisor to a dozen countries on offshore drilling, has informed the Cabildo of Fuerteventura about the risk that the waters of Fuerteventuta and Lanzarote run with the Environmental Impact Statement that the Government of Spain has just approved (on May 29) for the multinational oil company Repsol.
Steiner explains that the conditions imposed in the Canary Islands project to Repsol's drilling by the Government of Spain "are in fact so rudimentary" that "the project is still too risky." And he warns that the requirements now known are "terribly insufficient."
"Everyone must understand that an exploratory drilling project in deep water is extremely dangerous. It poses a high risk of a catastrophic explosion. Such a blowout would endanger everything that defines the Canary Islands: the environment, culture and economy. We learned this lesson the hard way in the US, with the BP Deepwater Horizont disaster in 2010," recalls the Canadian specialist.
After studying the documentation provided by Repsol and now knowing the Environmental Impact Statement, Steiner points out that "he was hoping that the Government of Spain would appreciate the enormity of the risk of Repsol's drilling proposal." But "given the minimum conditions that the Government is placing on the project, the Government is apparently willing to place the Canary Islands at risk of a catastrophic oil spill. This seems very irresponsible, even grossly negligent, and could be a tragic mistake," he warns.
In this same sense, it should be remembered that the EIS disassociates the risk of accidents from the project and does not establish mandatory measures, but rather mere recommendations.
In fact, the text of the EIS itself says verbatim "In relation to the analysis of accidental events described in section B, for consideration in the substantive authorization of the project, the environmental risk for the Canary archipelago has been estimated, assuming a blowout flow of 3,000 bbl/day that, without the application of pollution control measures, could have consequences that the promoter has estimated in the environmental impact study and addenda"
The Cabildo of Fuerteventura in its statement points out that "it is astonishing that the Ministry of the Environment does not pronounce and does not evaluate the risk posed by the project, as required by law. It only refers to what was said by the promoter. The environmental body must pronounce on the risk and must adopt measures to be complied with by the promoter and not elaborate mere recommendations, as is the case here."
Richard Steiner is a professor of Marine Sciences at the University of Alaska, where he taught for 30 years (1980-2010). He played a prominent role in the response actions to the Exxon Valdez spill (1989) and has also been involved in relation to other oil accidents such as the Deepwater Horizont (2010). He has also worked in relation to oil drilling and environmental safety measures in Pakistan, China, Russia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Shetland, Central Asia, and the Gulf of Mexico. He is currently considered an international reference specialist on the dangers of deepwater drilling.
Steiner already recommended in the allegations to the Repsol EIS presented in September 2013 that risks be assessed for an accidental spill of 30,000 barrels of oil per day, compared to the 1,000 proposed by the Repsol document. However, the Government of Spain was satisfied with asking Repsol to extend the calculations for only 3,000 barrels per day, ten times less than recommended by Steiner.
Richard Steiner also participated in early 2014 in the efforts made by several citizens of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote before the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament, managing to keep open a citizen complaint (and the subsequent investigation) on oil exploration in the Canary Islands, despite attempts by the popular group to close it. The arguments presented were so forceful that the European Popular Group itself changed its opinion and agreed to keep the citizen complaint open, agreeing then unanimously.
Problems in Namibia
Richard Steiner is also aware of the recent news of the disaster that the drilling ship that Repsol will use in the Canary Islands explorations, the 'Rowan Reinaissance', was about to cause on the coast of Namibia, following two consecutive failures in two different wells, which led to abandoning the drilling.
The cementing of the upper part of the first well in Namibia (Welwitschia 1) failed on April 23 and as a result the entire wellhead collapsed under the seabed. "If this had happened when reaching the hydrocarbon pocket, it could easily have resulted in a blowout or explosion," he warned.
The installation of the control unit in the second well (Welwitschia 1A) also failed on May 1, which could also have resulted in a catastrophic blowout, if they had reached a hydrocarbon zone
Jeremy Asher, the president of the company Tower Resourcings, in charge of the drilling in Namibia commissioned by Repsol, commented as a result of these events: "it is not uncommon to have technical problems with new machinery and in particular in drilling ships like the Rowan Renaissance"
