Today, I head the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council, set up to make sure there’s never another Exxon Valdez. But that doesn’t include oversight of the Prudhoe Bay oil field. We’re limited to oil tankers traveling the Sound and the Valdez terminal where they load.
Yet, when BP announced plans to shut Prudhoe down because of widespread pipeline corrosion, I got calls from news people around the world. Why would reporters want our perspective?
We think it’s because they understand something that still eludes the oil industry and its regulators: Citizen oversight could help prevent environmental disaster on the North Slope, too.
Industry and regulators have incentives to behave prudently. But regulators are subject to political interference, budget squeezes and industry lobbying. Industry must seek to maximize profits. These pressures can push them to disregard the public interest and sometimes, it would appear, even their own interest.
How would citizen oversight help?
Citizen volunteers, unlike regulators, aren’t subject to lobbying or political interference. Unlike industry, citizens aren’t shackled to the bottom line. A citizen group’s sole mission is to prevent environmental catastrophe by advising regulators and industry on how to do their jobs and avoid lapses like we’re seeing on the North Slope. Properly constituted citizen oversight is largely immune to the pressures that often cloud the judgment of industry and regulators.
We believe our efforts in Prince William Sound have vastly reduced the chances of a rerun of the Exxon spill and the ludicrously inept cleanup effort that ensued. A few examples: We helped persuade Congress to require double hulls on oil tankers; we led the technical studies that brought about the powerful rescue tugs that escort tankers through the Sound; and we spearheaded the development of a radar system to detect glacial icebergs that could rupture a tanker’s hull.
The Prudhoe crisis is still under investigation, but it seems evident that BP and its regulators, left largely to themselves on the remote Arctic region tundra, suffered a profound breakdown of basic standards of professional oil field oversight and operation.
Reporters have asked how citizen oversight would work on the North Slope. Unlike Prince William Sound, Prudhoe Bay has no permanent local population.
That’s true, but it’s also true the Slope is dotted with Inupiat villages whose residents take a keen interest in the oil fields.
That kind of citizen involvement, plus the technical expertise an adequately funded oversight group can bring to bear, works in the Sound and it could work at Prudhoe. Take, for example, the issue now confronting BP and its regulators.
The first move of a North Slope citizen oversight group would likely be to demand that BP develop and publish a comprehensive plan for preventing, detecting, and correcting pipeline corrosion.
The citizen group would go over the plan with a microscope and — with the help of expert consultants — recommend any revisions needed to make it work.
Once the plan was in place, the citizens would make sure it was followed, zealously monitoring mandatory reporting on its implementation. Are inspections - including smart-pigging - done on schedule? When problems show up, are they promptly addressed? As experience exposes flaws in the plan, is it quickly amended through another public process?
The citizen group, purely advisory, would have no power to make these things happen. It could only bring deficiencies to light and demand action. That’s what we do, and it has proved to be remarkably effective. The force of professional technical analysis, combined with public opinion, is nearly irresistible.
The new Congress, the oil industry, and its regulators should immediately charter an independent, amply funded, multi-stakeholder, citizen oversight group for America’s biggest oil patch.
We don’t propose that role for ourselves. We have plenty to do in our own back yard. But we’d be happy to help launch the North Slope Citizens’ Advisory Council by sharing what we’ve learned from 17 years of experience in Prince William Sound.
John Devens is executive director of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council (www.pwsrcac.org).
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