Hurricanes Caused 8 Million Gallons of Oil to Spill in State

By MARK BALLARD

The two recent hurricanes caused 336 spills that poured an estimated 8 million gallons of oil into Louisiana marshes, coastal waters and residential neighborhoods, state lawmakers were told Thursday.

“And they all happened at the same time,” Roland Guidry, the state’s oil spill coordinator, told a joint legislative committee on the environment. “It’s been a real test.”The Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office reported to the Legislature that 3.1 million gallons had been recovered and 3.7 million gallons of the 8 million gallons had evaporated. By comparison, in America’s largest oil spill, the Exxon Valdez dumped 11 million gallons into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

Sixteen of the storm spills are classified as significant, in which about 7 million gallons of oil escaped. The U.S. Coast Guard and state officials are supervising the cleanups, he said.

More than 800 people are working to clean up oil spills across the state.

The spill that has attracted the most attention – 420,000 gallons of oil from Murphy Oil in Meraux – is not the largest. Crude oil leaked from the refinery into flood waters and spread through a suburban neighborhood.

“It’s the most visible,” Guidry said. “What makes the difference is you have people who can point at the oil in their house.”The Coast Guard has sanded the roads and the state is flushing the sewer system, he said.

State Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Michael McDaniel said St. Bernard Parish homes may have structural problems after soaking in oil-laced flood waters for weeks, and that could keep people from returning.

“But nothing environmental that represents a health threat would preclude re-habitation,” he said.

The largest spill was at a Bass Enterprises facility in the coastal marshes near Empire. Hurricane Katrina ruptured two partially filled storage tanks that were 16 feet high and 290 feet across.

“Twenty-eight feet of water smashed into those tanks, picked them up and moved them 300 feet,” said Guidry, pantomiming the strain of picking up huge tanks filled with heavy crude oil.

Mopping up that amount of oil has proven difficult because the facility is inaccessible. Workers had to drive two hours, then travel by boat for another two hours to reach the site.

The federal government found a ship to serve as a dorm for the workers at the site, Guidry said. “They can work 10, 12 hours a day now where used they used to could manage only five or six hours,” he said.

Despite the size and number of oil spills, Guidry said, he now is more concerned about the loss of oil rigs offshore. Of the 4,000 platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico, about 3,050 were in the path of at least one of the two hurricanes.

The Minerals Management Service, part of the U.S. Department of Interior, said in a statement that it had counted 108 platforms destroyed and 53 suffering significant damage. Some of the platforms had storage tanks, and others were connected to pipelines.

Largest crude oil spills

Bass Enterprises facility, Empire, 3.7 million gallons

Chevron Corp’s Empire Terminal, 1.4 million gallons

Shell Oil Co., tank facility, Pilot-town, 1 million gallons

Murphy Oil Co., refinery, Meraux, 420,000 gallons

Chevron Corp’s storange, Port Fourchon, 50,400 gallons

Source: Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office