Photo by Hilda Livingstone 



Bags of oily sand during cleanup in Dare County, after a 1980 spill. 



Spills — the trouble with oil 



Marine Fisheries Service fishery- 

 biologist Gene Huntsman says the 

 cuttings and muds could bury reefs in 

 the area of drilling — reefs that support 

 substantial fisheries off North 

 Carolina. 



To protect those reefs, oil companies 

 must comply with the biological 

 stipulations attached to offshore 

 leases, says Guido De Horatiis of the 

 Minerals Management Service. As 

 part of its pre-drilling permit process, a 

 company must conduct geophysical 

 surveys to determine if the drilling site 

 is a hard bottom area. Since living 

 things such as sponges and corals often 

 attach to such hard bottoms, thereby 

 attracting a community of fish, the 

 companies must prove the discharge of 

 materials from the drilling will not af- 

 fect the area. 



Chevron's report points out that 

 companies have been drilling in the 

 Gulf of Mexico for over 20 years 

 without any significant effects from 

 mud discharges, even in the shallower 

 waters. 



If oil companies do find oil and go 

 into production, there's the problem of 

 how to get the oil to shore. Yates 

 Sorrell, a North Carolina State Uni- 

 versity Mechanical and Aerospace 

 Engineering professor, looked into the 

 problems of pipelines from offshore 

 wells to onshore. 



Sorrell says it's important to place 

 the amount of potential impact in 

 perspective. "Shrimp trawling in 

 North Carolina's inside waters an- 

 nually disturbs a far greater volume of 

 sediment than would be disturbed by a 

 number of major pipelines." 



Sorrell says most of the problems 

 associated with pipelines can be 

 alleviated with careful planning. 



There's always the possibility that 

 oil companies won't find commercial 

 quantities of oil. Even if they don't, 

 Vernon says nothing will be lost. He 

 recalls a previous sale off the coast of 

 Georgia. "Everything was geared up, 

 everybody was ready to go and they 

 just didn't find anything. They drilled 

 six holes and they were all dry and 

 they abandoned their efforts," he says. 



He adds that the process took three 

 years once the lease sale had been con- 

 ducted. Vernon predicts North 

 Carolina may be in for a similar wait 

 before we know for sure what will be 

 the impacts of offshore oil drilling in 

 this state. 



— Nancy Davis 



Oil spill. The words are so married 

 by consonance as to make the event 

 they describe seem practically in- 

 evitable. Where you have oil, you'll 

 have spills — right? 



Not according to the petroleum in- 

 dustry. In public meetings up and 

 down the coast, oil company 

 spokesmen have been assuring North 

 Carolinians that we will probably 

 never see oil spilled from a rig offshore. 

 The gist of their argument is: First of 

 all, it is highly unlikely that oil will 

 turn up in quantities sufficient to at- 

 tract much drilling off North Carolina. 

 It is even more unlikely that any oil 

 would spill, should the drilling com- 

 mence. And, even if there is a spill, it is 

 unlikely to approach the coast. And, 

 even if it did, cleanup teams would 

 mop it up before it came ashore. 



So with unlikelihood piled upon un- 

 likelihood, the companies argue, risks 

 of a destructive oil spill reaching our 

 beaches or marshes from drilling 

 offshore are "extremely remote." 



But are they? Research has not en- 

 tirely settled the questions about oil 

 spills, but studies do help show some of 

 the factors involved — the speeds and 

 directions of currents, the sensitivity 

 of marshes and beaches to oil damage, 

 the so-called "fate" of oil in the en- 

 vironment. 



Len Pietrafesa, an oceanographer at 

 North Carolina State University, has 

 conducted a set of research projects, 



funded by Sea Grant and others, in 

 which he studied the paths of currents 

 off North Carolina, recording data on 

 winds, sea level, temperature and 

 salinity. In a research supported by 

 the Bureau of Land Management, he 

 compiled such information for the 

 outer continental shelf from Cape Hat- 

 teras to Cape Canaveral. Pietrafesa's 

 reports have drawn no conclusions 

 about the oil-drilling process, but his 

 work has been cited by state officials 

 concerned about leasing tracts nearest 

 the coast. 



Pietrafesa says that the chance of a 

 spill reaching shore depends upon 

 where offshore the spill occurs, the 

 time of year, and where in the water 

 column the oil is released. "For in- 

 stance, if you were to have a spill from, 

 say, September through February, if 

 the spill were near Cape Lookout and 

 at the surface, there would be a ninety- 

 five percent chance of oil reaching the 

 beach," he says, as long as the spill is 

 within twenty miles of the coast. "In 

 other areas, say twenty miles off Cape 

 Hatteras during April, oil would have 

 a twenty percent chance of reaching 

 the beach." 



Pietrafesa says that if a spill oc- 

 curred in the Gulf Stream, it wouldn't 

 necessarily flow north and miss the 

 state. Every week and a half or so, 

 waves from the Gulf Stream (called 

 Gulf Stream frontal events) push a 



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