The Observer, September 2006
From the Executive Director: Prudhoe shutdown shows need for citizen oversight
When BP announced last month it planned to shut down the Prudhoe Bay oil field because of widespread pipeline corrosion problems, our phones began ringing off the hook with calls from news people around the world.
Think about that for a minute: The oil industry has another embarrassment on the North Slope and reporters call a group 800 miles away for the citizen viewpoint.
Doesn’t that seem odd? We are based in Prince William Sound, and we have no oversight power whatever on the North Slope. Our jurisdiction is the oil tankers operating in the Sound, and the Valdez terminal where they load cargo.
We take these calls from reporters as a sign that news organizations have figured out something that still eludes the oil industry and its regulators: Citizen oversight is needed on the North Slope, just like it is in Prince William Sound.
This is nothing we haven’t said before, but we feel it’s worth saying again. Citizen oversight is the all-important third leg of the stool when it comes to environmental safety.
The industry and its regulators are the other two legs. But regulators are always subject to political interference, budget squeezes, and industry lobbying. Industry, meantime, must always seek to maximize profits. These pressures can prevent them from acting in the public interest and sometimes, it would appear, even in their own interest.
The question is, why would citizen oversight be any different?
It’s simple: Citizens, unlike regulators, aren’t subject to lobbying or to political interference. And, unlike industry, citizens aren’t shackled to a bottom line. As a result, properly constituted citizen oversight is virtually immune to the pressures that so often distract industry and government from proper conduct. A citizen group’s sole mission is preventing environmental catastrophe by advising regulators and industry on how to do their jobs right and avoid the kind of neglect we’re seeing now on the North Slope, and the kind of complacency that brought us the Exxon Valdez oil spill 17 years ago.
While it’s not yet fully clear what combination of pressures produced the latest crisis at Prudhoe Bay, it does seem beyond doubt that it represents a failure of oversight by regulators, and a failure of professional diligence by BP.
One question we’ve been asked by reporters is worth repeating and answering here: Since there aren’t any citizens – i.e., permanent local residents – in the North Slope oil fields, how exactly would citizen oversight work there?
It’s true, most of the time there wouldn’t be very many citizen mukluks on the tundra at Prudhoe, Kuparuk, Milne Point and the other North Slope fields. But that doesn’t mean citizen oversight couldn’t be effective.
Take the corrosion issue, for example.
The first move of a North Slope citizen oversight group would likely be to demand that BP and the other field operators prepare and put out for review a comprehensive plan for preventing, detecting, and correcting pipeline corrosion.
Then the citizen group would go over that plan with a microscope – probably with the assistance of independent expert contractors – and recommend revisions to guarantee the plan would work.
Once the plan was put into action, the citizen group would make sure the plan was being followed.
The citizens would zealously monitor the field operators’ required regular reports on the implementation of the plan. Are required inspections – including smart-pigging –done on schedule? If they show problems, are the problems addressed promptly and aggressively? As experience exposes defects in the plan, are they promptly remedied through open and public amendment process?
The citizen group would have no power to make any of these things happen. As is the case with our organization, its only power would be to bring deficiencies to the attention of the industry, the regulators, and the public, and demand that they be corrected. That’s what we do, and it has turned out to be remarkably effective. The power of well-founded technical analysis, combined with public opinion, is nearly irresistible.
Most of this could be done without citizen overseers being physically present in the oilfields, though of course they would go there for inspections or research as specific needs and circumstances arose.
So we end on the same note we’ve sounded before: Citizen oversight is long overdue on the North Slope. Congress, regulators, and the oil industry should immediately start the process of forming an independent, multi-stakeholder, amply funded citizens’ advisory council for America’s biggest oil patch. We’d be happy to help.
• John Devens is executive director of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council.
