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97–534 PDF 2015

S. HRG. 114–116 

FIVE YEARS AFTER DEEPWATER HORIZON: 

IMPROVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES 

IN PREVENTION AND RESPONSE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, 

SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

APRIL 29, 2015 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation 

( 

(II) 

SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JOHN THUNE, South Dakota, Chairman 

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

TED CRUZ, Texas 

DEB FISCHER, Nebraska 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

DEAN HELLER, Nevada 

CORY GARDNER, Colorado 

STEVE DAINES, Montana 

BILL NELSON, Florida, Ranking 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii 

EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts 

CORY BOOKER, New Jersey 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia 

GARY PETERS, Michigan 

DAVID SCHWIETERT, Staff Director 

NICK ROSSI, Deputy Staff Director 

REBECCA SEIDEL, General Counsel 

JASON VAN BEEK, Deputy General Counsel 

KIM LIPSKY, Democratic Staff Director 

CHRIS DAY, Democratic Deputy Staff Director 

CLINT ODOM, Democratic General Counsel and Policy Director 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on April 29, 2015 .............................................................................. 1 

Statement of Senator Thune ................................................................................... 1 

Statement of Senator Ayotte ................................................................................... 2 

Statement of Senator Nelson .................................................................................. 30 

Statement of Senator Peters ................................................................................... 35 

Statement of Senator Klobuchar ............................................................................ 37 

Statement of Senator Markey ................................................................................. 39 

Statement of Senator Sullivan ............................................................................... 42 

Statement of Senator Rubio .................................................................................... 45 

Statement of Senator Blumenthal .......................................................................... 45 

WITNESSES

Charles (Charlie) Williams II, Executive Director, Center for Offshore Safety . 2 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 4 

Nancy E. Kinner, Ph.D., Co-Director, Coastal Response Research Center; 

Director, Center for Spills in the Environment; Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New Hampshire ................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 9 

Christopher M. Reddy, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) ...... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 14 

Samantha B. Joye, Ph.D., Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of 

Arts and Sciences, Professor of Marine Sciences, University of Georgia ........ 18 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 20 

APPENDIX

Response to written question submitted by Hon. Marco Rubio to: 

Charles (Charlie) Williams II .......................................................................... 55 

Christopher M. Reddy, Ph.D. .......................................................................... 55 

(1) 

FIVE YEARS AFTER DEEPWATER HORIZON: 

IMPROVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES 

IN PREVENTION AND RESPONSE 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 2015 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:39 a.m. in room SR– 

253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. John Thune, Chairman 

of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Thune [presiding], Wicker, Blunt, Rubio, 

Ayotte, Fischer, Sullivan, Gardner; Nelson, Klobuchar, Blumenthal, 

Markey, Booker, and Peters. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN THUNE, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA 

The CHAIRMAN. This hearing will come to order. If you all would 

come up, all the panelists, we will introduce you in just a minute. 

Thank you, and welcome, it is great to have you here. 

Domestic energy production, whether it is in the form of crude 

oil in the Gulf of Mexico or North Dakota, hydropower in the Pacific Northwest or wind energy in South Dakota, is an important 

way of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil while creating 

jobs and decreasing energy costs. 

This energy production, as vital as it is, must be accomplished 

in the safest way possible. A major failure in safety occurred on 

April 20, 2010 when 11 crewmen lost their lives in an explosion on 

the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The resulting oil spill was the 

largest ever recorded in U.S. waters with widespread environmental and economic damages across the Gulf. 

In the past 5 years, we have attempted to learn from this tragedy and to find solutions that will improve the speed of clean up 

efforts, minimize the potential for future spills, and save lives. 

In 2012, Congress passed the bipartisan RESTORE Act, which 

allocated funds to the Gulf states for restoration activities. In addition, Federal, state, industry, and academic scientists and engineers have been working together in unprecedented ways to find 

solutions to prevent and minimize oil spills in the future. 

Today we are going to be hearing from some of these scientists. 

I look forward to learning about the progress they have made. 

Senator Nelson will be here momentarily, I think. Until he arrives, we will get underway, and we will introduce our witnesses. 

2 

One of our panelists today is from the state of New Hampshire, 

and I will turn to our colleague from New Hampshire, Senator 

Ayotte, and allow her to introduce that witness. 

STATEMENT OF HON. KELLY AYOTTE, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE 

Senator AYOTTE. I want to thank the Chairman. I am really honored today to have with us Dr. Nancy Kinner. Dr. Kinner is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of 

New Hampshire. She also is Co-Director of the Coastal Response 

Research Center and Director of the Center for Spills in the Environment at the University of New Hampshire. 

I am very proud of the work that the Coastal Response Research 

Center and the Center for Spills is doing, not only on important 

scientific research on how to prevent spills, how to best address 

them. I just recently visited the Center. I think you will find the 

testimony today about the work being done at the University of 

New Hampshire as led by Dr. Kinner very important on how we 

work together to not only prevent future spills but also make sure 

we have the proper environmental response when we hope they do 

not occur, they do occur. 

I am honored to have Dr. Kinner here, and so glad UNH is such 

an important part of this discussion. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Ayotte. Dr. Kinner, it is nice 

to have you here. We look forward to hearing about your research. 

We also have with us Mr. Charlie Williams. He is the Executive 

Director for the Center for Offshore Safety. He will be discussing 

improvements in safety and prevention in the offshore oil and gas 

industry since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. 

Dr. Christopher Reddy is the Director of the Coastal Ocean Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dr. Reddy is one 

of the top cited and published scientists studying oil spill effects for 

mediation methods and petroleum microbiology. 

Dr. Samantha Joye is a Professor of Marine Science at the University of Georgia. I look forward to learning about her multidisciplinary work in chemistry, microbiology, and geology. 

It is a great panel. We are delighted to have you all here this 

morning. We will start on my left and your right with Mr. Williams. Please proceed with your opening remarks, and if you could 

confine them to as close to five minutes as possible, we will do our 

best to get our questions in. I think a number of members have to 

depart for an event that we have coming up a little later this morning. 

Mr. Williams, please proceed. 

STATEMENT OF CHARLES (CHARLIE) WILLIAMS II, EXECUTIVE 

DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR OFFSHORE SAFETY 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to members of 

the Committee for this opportunity. 

America’s oil and natural gas industry is safer than ever before. 

Safety is a core value to the industry and an imperative. Our goal 

is and always will be zero spills and zero accidents. 

What has changed? A renewed and sustained commitment to collaborating, learning, and delivering together through committing 

3 

the resources needed to do this. How this has come is with new industry standards, a new sub-sea containment system, increased 

clean up capability, and the Center for Offshore Safety. 

The Center for Offshore Safety was created based on an industry 

study team recommendation but also on the Presidential Commission recommendation that there be a for the industry and by the 

industry organization totally focused on safety. 

We are that organization and I am proud to lead the Center. We 

work every day, all day, on safety, using many teams of industry 

volunteers dedicated to our mission and the industry mission, 

which is one and the same. 

We are also an important stakeholder in enabling all the work 

of the BSEE regulation that all the operators have a safety and environmental management system. An example of this is recommended Practice 75. The regulation and what we work on is not 

safety as most people know it. It is not about personal and personnel safety, such as hardhats and safety shoes, even though this 

is critically important. The industry has actually done a great job 

on personnel safety. 

What we work on is safety and environmental management systems. What is SEMS and why is it so critical? SEMS is about having good procedures and standards, skills, a knowledgeable workforce, and good project design and execution processes including 

such things as hazard identification, planning, and very importantly, management of change. 

SEMS is foundational to safety culture and must have a strong 

and clear leadership, and this strong and clear leadership develops 

SEMS into a sustained safety culture. 

SEMS is a key barrier to major incidents, and in that way it is 

different from staff safety. How can this be? It is because SEMS 

is a sustainable and continuous learning process that manages 

safety with the same principles of planning and organization, implementation, and controls that you would expect from any other 

business function. 

It fully embeds and integrates safety into the business. All planning and management of change are done in support of maintaining safety. 

What else is different? SEMS is a performance-based system and 

not a rules-based system. People have to develop the system to best 

fit their business within the elements that are defined, and then 

it is measured through auditing that the performance of SEMS is 

effective and the performance is good. 

The Center for Offshore Safety is making a difference in many 

ways. First, we are the place where the industry comes together 

and is totally focused on SEMS and how to make SEMS more effective. As a member, you commit yourself to high standards of safety. 

An example of this is we committed to doing third-party audits 

before it was part of the regulation. We have also ensured good 

SEMS’ audits through audit tools like audit procedures, auditor 

training, actually auditing in the accreditation of auditors. That is 

the primary way SEMS’ audits and performance is assessed. This 

feedback is also used for learning and improvement purposes. 

4 

COS has established other measures that are continuous and forward looking and give us much more information about SEMS and 

how to improve its effectiveness as we go forward. 

These tools include safety performance indicators and learning 

from incidents which help us learn about the safety and cultural 

elements of incidents and how those incidents will be prevented in 

the future, and it also has forward-looking measures like managing 

maintenance on your critical systems that helps you look and see 

that your safety and environmental management systems are effective going forward, and give you early indications. 

A good example of what we do is we collect all this information 

and develop an annual report, and then develop a plan to have 

good standards and have good practices to help improve SEMS 

when we find places that need improvement. 

A good example of what is our leadership site visit guideline, 

which helps leaders improve safety and safety culture by what they 

say when they are on the work site. 

In closing, I want to leave you with two concepts that are key 

to SEMS. The first is barrier management. A key part of SEMS is 

identifying hazards and establishing barriers, maintaining those 

barriers, and ensuring those barriers stay in place to prevent major 

incidents, and using barriers to measure the effectiveness of the 

management systems. 

The last one is skills and knowledge. We have to go beyond classroom training, and we have to have people that are knowledgeable, 

have experiences in all kinds of scenario’s and are able to think 

about and respond to those. 

Every incident is one too many and a powerful incentive for COS 

to redouble our efforts to learn and improve. Our thoughts will always be with those that lost their lives and their families. The industry is doing better, even the companies that had good SEMS are 

doing better through the Center for Offshore Safety in being able 

to share and work together. 

Our strong culture of safety continues to grow along with advances in technology and standards. As long as there is room for 

improvement, COS’ work is never complete. This is my livelihood 

and passion, and I will never stop improving safety management. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Williams follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHARLES (CHARLIE) WILLIAMS II, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

CENTER FOR OFFSHORE SAFETY

America’s offshore oil and natural gas industry is safer than before, but our goal 

will always be zero accidents and zero spills. 

A significant enhancement in safety and environmental protection in the oil and 

natural gas industry post-Macondo was the creation and on-going work of the Center for Offshore Safety (COS). COS was created by the industry for the industry, 

and is devoted entirely to continually assessing, learning about, and improving the 

safety and environmental management systems (SEMS) implemented by operators 

in the OCS. 

SEMS has the following benefits: 

• Shifts execution and oversight strategy from a prescriptive rule-based approach 

to one that is proactive and performance-based 

• Manages safety with the same principles of planning, organization, implementation, and controls that we expect from other business functions 

5 

• Drives both Process and Personal accountability up and down the organizational structure 

SEMS requires mechanisms that: 

1—Specify what is needed for safe operation 

2—Check to see that these specifications are being followed 

3—Build competency by developing individual knowledge and skill 

COS is entirely focused on Safety and Environmental Management Systems 

(SEMS) and how their effectiveness can be continually evaluated and enhanced. 

SEMS is intended as an active-learning safety and environmental management 

system that establishes and manages barriers, takes a systematic approach to all 

parts of offshore safety, has active monitoring via safety performance and other indicators, uses independent verification via third-party auditors, and focuses continually on operationalizing and enhancing safety and environmental management. 

Most significantly, SEMS focuses on the importance of leadership and the interaction of management with staff to deliver a positive safety culture. 

The COS mission is promoting the highest level of safety for offshore operations 

through effective leadership, communication, teamwork, use of disciplined management systems and independent third-party auditing and certification. Sharing data 

and lessons learned throughout the industry is an essential part of the work COS 

does to continually enhance safety. 

Through the COS, industry members are committed to improving SEMS performance by subscribing to the following principles: 

• Industry leaders demonstrate a visible commitment to safety 

• Operators, contractors, and suppliers work together to create a culture of safety 

• Decision making at all levels will not compromise safety. Safety processes, 

equipment, training and technology undergo continual examination and improvement 

• Members share learnings and apply industry standards, good practices and promote continual improvement 

COS broadly represents the oil and natural gas business on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf with members from all aspects of the upstream offshore oil and natural 

gas industry including operators, drilling contractors, equipment manufacturers and 

service contractors. The COS has a full-time staff that works in conjunction with 

industry task groups to address specific SEMS issues. In addition, COS has a governing board made up of senior management of the industry member companies. 

The COS is responsible for: 

• Assuring that third-party Audit Service Providers and their auditors meet the 

goals, objectives and requirements for conducting SEMS audits 

• Compiling and analyzing SEMS data and other safety metrics to find areas for 

enhancement 

• Creating Good Practices to close gaps found through the safety data analysis 

• Coordinating COS-sponsored functions designed to facilitate sharing and learning processes regarding SEMS and good practices 

• Identifying and promoting opportunities for industry to continually improve 

SEMS and safety 

• Developing outreach programs to facilitate communicating with government and 

external stakeholders regarding SEMS 

COS has developed processes and documents in the following areas: 

• COS SEMS Toolkit—SEMS Audit Protocols, Operator-Contractor interface documents, staff Knowledge & Skills worksheets, and other products for SEMS. 

• SEMS Audit Service Provider (ASP) Documents, protocols, and guides 

• COS Auditor Qualification and Training, SEMS Certification for Operators and 

Contractors, and ASP Accreditation Documents—Suite of documents that outline the qualification and training requirements for third-party auditors performing COS SEMS audits, COS SEMS certification requirements, accreditation 

requirements for ASP performing third-party audits and COS Standard Audit 

Report worksheets and template. 

• Skills and Knowledge Management System Guideline (SKMS)—Tools and techniques to provide industry with a common process for the verification and development of employee and contractor skills and knowledge 

6 

• Leadership Site Engagement—Good practice guidance for senior managers and 

leaders to demonstrate visible safety and environmental commitment during 

visits to offshore operating sites, as well as enhancing accountability and safety 

culture 

COS is actively working in the following areas: 

• Audit Service Provider Accreditation—Develop an enhanced set of COS-endorsed standards for accrediting Audit Service Providers and their auditors to 

support the COS SEMS certification program 

• SEMS Certification Program-Operator Certification—Certification of operator 

SEMS programs via accredited third-party audit. 

• SEMS Certification Program-Contractor Certification—third-party SEMS Certification of drilling contractors and offshore service/supply companies in order 

to provide assurance to operators and regulators that a system is in place which 

meets applicable requirements and demonstrates contractor workers have skills 

and knowledge to follow safe work practices. 

• Safety Performance Indicators (SPI) Program—Clearly defined indicators to 

evaluate safety performance and aid in identifying safety trends. This includes 

new leading indicators of SEMS effectiveness. 

• Learning from Incidents (LFI) Program—A process and methodology to identify, 

assess and communicate high value learning incidents to promote cross-industry 

learning. This includes identifying SEMS elements that were ineffective and 

contributed to the incident and how the possibility of the incident will be minimized in the future. 

• Information and Knowledge Management—An information and knowledge management framework to gather, manage and share information to enable the industry to continually improve SEMS performance. 

• COS Safety Events—Plan, develop and coordinate annual COS Safety Forum, 

Offshore Technology Conference Technical Sessions, SEMS Audit Workshops, 

and other events to facilitate sharing knowledge and promoting opportunities 

to continually improve SEMS and safety. 

COS has recently published its first Annual Performance Report detailing the initial round of data and lessons learned from the Safety Performance Indicator Program, Learning from Incidents Program and SEMS audits described above. This report is available via the COS website. 

The oil and natural gas industry is committed to operating in a safe and responsible manner while minimizing our impact on the environment. Protecting the 

health and safety of our workers, our contractors and our neighbors is a moral imperative and core value of our industry. 

No incident is acceptable. Our industry takes every incident seriously. Continued 

vigilance is essential in helping to prevent future incidents. 

In the five years since the Macondo incident, the oil and natural gas industry has 

methodically examined every aspect of offshore safety measures and operations to 

identify potential improvements in safety management. COS was established by the 

industry to ensure that this continues and is effective, that there is a single group 

exclusively focused on SEMS, and that there is a group responsive to supporting a 

culture of safety. 

We worked with the U.S. Department of Interior, the Presidential Oil Spill Commission, other Government Organizations, and industry experts as we developed the 

mission, programs, and tools of COS. But COS did not start from scratch. Offshore 

exploration and production has long been focused on safety and delivering remarkably safe and successful technology and operations. The industry is committed to ensuring that SEMS is continually enhanced and that the COS organization is in place 

to focus on this and share industry knowledge of SEMS and safety. 

Despite industry’s history of safety dedication and performance, it was understood 

that the balance between personnel safety and prevention of major incidents had 

to be enhanced and the focus on continual SEMS learning, as well as 

operationalizing those learnings, must be maintained. The oil and natural gas industry has dedicated the past five years to using the lessons learned from Macondo 

to enhance safety and operational practices. 

Our strong culture of safety continues to grow along with advances in technology 

and industry standards. So long as there is any room for improvement, our work 

at COS will never be complete. This is our livelihood, and our work is critical to 

America’s new energy renaissance. 

Every incident is both one too many and a powerful incentive for COS and industry to improve SEMS, the learning process, skills and knowledge, operating proceVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:52 Nov 13, 2015 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\97534.TXT JACKIE
7 

dures and standards, and effectiveness measures and audits. Our thoughts will always remain with the families of all those who lost their lives in this tragic accident. And the industry, and the industry through COS, stands ready to continue to 

work with government and regulators to improve safety. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Dr. Kinner? 

STATEMENT OF NANCY E. KINNER, PH.D., CO-DIRECTOR, 

COASTAL RESPONSE RESEARCH CENTER; DIRECTOR, 

CENTER FOR SPILLS IN THE ENVIRONMENT; PROFESSOR, 

CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING, 

UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE 

Dr. KINNER. Chairman Thune, Ranking Member Nelson, and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for giving me the 

opportunity to appear before you today. 

I am a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the 

University of New Hampshire, and as Senator Ayotte mentioned, 

I am also the UNH Co-Director of the Coastal Response Research 

Center, a NOAA-funded partnership, and Director of the Center for 

Spills in the Environment, a center that expands the scope of interaction to other governmental agencies, the private sector, and 

NGOs. 

The mission of the centers is to conduct and oversee response on 

spill response, assessment, and restoration, and make sure that research is transformed into practice. In addition, we serve as a hub 

for spill research and facilitate collaboration among all stakeholders in the response community, including those affiliated with 

industry, government, academia, and NGOs. 

The centers were created in 2004 because many research and development needs existed with respect to spills. It may seem unusual that a spill response center is located in New Hampshire, but 

that makes sense when the goal is to have an independent and 

highly credible voice that can speak freely during a crisis and mediate difficult discussions among diverse stakeholders. 

For example, we were asked to facilitate a discussion during the 

Deepwater Horizon spill among 50 renown scientists to evaluate 

whether dispersants should continue to be used. 

After examining the available data and the science regarding the 

potential impact of dispersant use on the environment, the conclusion of those scientists was that use of dispersants and the effects 

of dispersing the oil were generally less harmful than allowing the 

oil to migrate into sensitive wetlands and near shore habitats, and 

therefore, dispersant use should continue at that time. 

When oil is spilled, there is no single silver bullet response technology that provides an universal solution. As I like to tell my students, oil spills are bad and they cause very bad things to happen. 

The goal of response is to minimize as much as possible the damage. Hence, the challenge is to translate the results of the oil spill 

research into better response. 

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon, there has been a large influx of money into research, and there are many oil spill related 

papers being published each month as a direct result of this funding. 

8 

The question is how much of this research will result in improvements in oil spill response. Unfortunately, the answer might be not 

very much. Why not? 

First, the research that needs to be done to improve response is 

often not conducted because researchers rarely interact with responders. They do not go to the same parties. Second, it is difficult 

for scientists to simulate the real environment. 

For example, to answer questions as to whether chemical 

dispersants should be added to a blowout, scientists need to simulate the mixing that occurs at a deep wellhead where many, many 

gallons of oil and gas are billowing out rapidly at very high pressure. That is to say the least a very challenging environment to 

simulate in the laboratory, small test tank, or with mathematical 

modeling. 

Third, scientific journals rarely publish papers where experiments do not show any measurable changes. Yet, research that 

shows no effects can be very useful. 

For example, if we added oil to very cold seawater that contained 

naturally occurring microorganisms and that oil concentration did 

not change over time, the results would probably be difficult to 

publish. Yet, responders fighting a spill in the Arctic Ocean would 

want to know that the oil might not be degraded as rapidly as in 

warmer water. 

How can we address these challenges? We can bring responders 

and scientists together in a partnership to develop research needs 

and design and conduct experiments to address those needs. 

Even if we started that process today, the results of the research 

would not be available for several years. In the interim, we can 

sort through the large amount of research published to determine 

if and how it can improve response. 

Here is one example of how our centers in partnership with 

NOAA and EPA are doing this. We have convened 70 scientists, 

two of whom are sitting to my left, to review the literature and determine what is known and what is uncertain about the state of 

the science of dispersants and dispersed oil in spill response, especially as it applies to the Arctic. 

My job is to facilitate those discussions, which as you might 

imagine can be quite interesting. What never ceases to amaze me 

is how a diverse group of researchers and response scientists can 

come to consensus when the focus is on the details of the science. 

I see this approach as a path forward on many thorny issues. 

In summary, there are many questions that must be addressed 

to improve response when oil is spilled, especially as we consider 

drilling in outer continental shelf regions and face the energy renaissance in the U.S. We must take advantage of the current and 

future investments in research, translating them into better response. 

I believe we can accomplish this by bringing responders and scientists together in a partnership to determine what is known and 

what is uncertain with respect to response science. 

Once identified, those uncertainties can be used to define research needs and design experiences whose results can be translated into improved response decisionmaking, and that does mean 

a better job of minimizing the damage spills cause. 

9 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Kinner follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF NANCY E. KINNER, PH.D., CO-DIRECTOR, COASTAL

RESPONSE RESEARCH CENTER; DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR SPILLS IN THE

ENVIRONMENT; PROFESSOR, CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY

OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Chairman Thune, Ranking Member Nelson and distinguished members of the 

Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. My 

name is Nancy E. Kinner and I am a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New Hampshire. I am the UNH Co-Director of the 

Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC), a NOAA-funded center, and the Director 

of the Center for Spills in the Environment (CSE), a center that expands the scope 

of interaction to other governmental agencies, the private sector and NGOs. 

1.0 The Coastal Response Research Center and The Center for Spills in the 

Environment 

The mission of the two UNH Centers, CRRC and CSE, is to conduct and oversee 

research on spill response, assessment and restoration and make sure that research 

is transformed into practice. In addition, we serve as a hub for spill research and 

development (R&D), and facilitate collaboration among all stakeholders in the spill 

community including governmental agencies, NGOs, academia, and industry, both 

in the U.S. and globally. Since the Centers’ inceptions in 2004, we have overseen 

34 funded research projects, conducted 48 workshops, and currently manage five 

working groups on topics such as dispersants and dispersed oil, data management 

during environmental disasters, modeling and submerged oil response. 

The Centers were started because NOAA and UNH, which is known for its strong 

programs in marine science and ocean and environmental engineering, knew that 

many R&D needs existed with respect to oil spill preparedness, response and restoration. Further, we realized that oil and chemical spills are always occurring and, 

that despite popular belief, there would continue to be major oil spills in the U.S. 

It may seem unusual that an oil spill center would be located in New Hampshire, 

a state that lacks any petroleum-based resources, but that fact makes sense when 

the goal is to have an independent and highly credible voice that can speak freely 

during a crisis and mediate difficult discussions among the diversity of stakeholders. 

The Centers have focused on R&D in a few key areas: dispersants and dispersed 

oil, toxic and sublethal effects of oil on organisms, Arctic spill response and restoration, human dimensions of spills, and environmental data management. As one example, the CRRC was asked to convene a meeting in May 2010, during the DWH, 

of a diverse group of renowned scientists to evaluate whether dispersants should 

continue to be used. Fifty scientists, some of whom were diametrically opposed to 

dispersant use, met for two days to examine the data and state-of-the-science, regarding the potential impact of dispersant use on the environment. The overwhelming consensus of the group was that, while removing the oil from the environment using mechanical recovery is preferred, it was not always effective because of 

environmental conditions such as the wind and waves in the Gulf. Further, the scientists concluded that up to that point, use of dispersants and effects of dispersing 

oil into the water column had been generally less environmentally harmful than allowing that oil to migrate on the surface into the sensitive wetlands and nearshore 

coastal habitats. 

In 2014, CRRC conducted a unique Forum on the campus of the University of New 

Hampshire on the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (EVOS) in Alaska 

and the 5th anniversary of the DWH. This forum brought together academicians, 

oil spill practitioners, industry representatives and Federal and state agency personnel to discuss the lessons learned from EVOS and DWH that could help improve 

future oil spill response (e.g., the Arctic, pipelines and rail transport). Several initiatives came from the Forum which has set some new directions for CRRC/CSE. 

• Expand the role of academic science in improving spill and environmental disaster response, assessment and restoration; 

• Identify strategies and actions to improve governmental communication with 

the public and ensure journalists the information they need prior and during 

spills; 

• Improve outreach to Congress on spill and environmental disaster science and 

response. 

10 

CRRC/CSE has begun to move forward with some of these new initiatives. CSE 

provided an initial briefing on oil spill response since the DWH for Senate staffers 

on April 21, 2015, sponsored by New Hampshire Senators Shaheen and Ayotte. In 

addition, in conjunction with Capitol Hill Ocean’s Week 2015, we will host a forum 

with responders and journalists to discuss how to improve communication and provide information more effectively to the public. 

2.0 Research Response Since DWH 

Since the DWH, there has been a large influx of funds into oil spill R&D: most 

notably BP’s $500 million over 10 years to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative 

(GoMRI), and the $500 million over 30 years given to the National Academy of 

Sciences for Gulf of Mexico and other Outer Continental Shelf R&D. Industry 

through the American Petroleum Institute (API), and other international petroleum 

associations (e.g., IOGP/IPIECA), has also funded a significant amount of new research. There are also some Federal (e.g., BSEE) and state (e.g., Texas, California) 

R&D programs, though these tend to be funded at lower levels. This influx of funding for research has focused on a number of issues important to future oil spill response including: 

• Short and Long Term Spill Impacts in the Gulf of Mexico as a Result of DWH; 

• Studies of the Chemical and Physical Behavior of Oil Released in the Environment; 

• Efficacy and Effectiveness of Various Response Actions; 

• Public Health Impacts; and 

• Social and Economic Impacts of Spills. 

Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative 

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), one of the major new oil spill 

research institutions, was formed to investigate the impacts of the oil, dispersed oil, 

and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and affected coastal states 

in a broad context of improving fundamental understanding of the dynamics of such 

events and their environmental stresses and public health implications. Another 

focus of GoMRI is developing improved spill mitigation, oil and gas detection, characterization and remediation technologies. 

The ultimate goal of GoMRI will be to improve society’s ability to understand, respond to and mitigate the impacts of petroleum pollution and related stressors of 

the marine and coastal ecosystems, with an emphasis on conditions found in the 

Gulf of Mexico. Knowledge accrued will be applied to restoration and to improving 

the long-term environmental health of the Gulf of Mexico. GoMRI has issued numerous RFPs for consortia and individual investigators. 

National Academy of Sciences 

As part of legal settlements associated with the DWH, the National Academy of 

Sciences (NAS) established a Gulf Research Program to fund and conduct activities 

to enhance oil system safety, human health, and environmental resources in the 

Gulf of Mexico and other U.S. outer continental shelf regions that support oil and 

gas production. The Program will work to enhance oil system safety and the protection of human health and the environment in the Gulf of Mexico and other U.S. 

outer continental shelf areas by seeking to improve understanding of the region’s 

interconnecting human, environmental, and energy systems and fostering application of these insights to benefit Gulf communities, ecosystems, and the nation, safety, human health, and environmental resources. Given this context, the Program 

will address three interconnected goals: 

• Goal 1: Foster innovative improvements to safety technologies, safety culture, 

and environmental protection systems associated with offshore oil and gas development; 

• Goal 2: Improve understanding of the connections between human health and 

the environment to support the development of healthy and resilient Gulf communities; and 

• Goal 3: Advance understanding of the Gulf of Mexico region as a dynamic system with complex, interconnecting human and environmental systems, functions, and processes to inform the protection and restoration of ecosystem services. 

The Program will fund studies, projects, and other activities using three broad approaches specified in the legal settlements: research and development, education 

and training, and environmental monitoring. 

11 

ICCOPR 

The Interagency Coordinating Committee on Oil Spill Research (ICCOPR) was cre- ated by Congress in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90). ICCOPR is charged with 

two general responsibilities to: (1) prepare a comprehensive, coordinated Federal oil 

pollution research and development plan; and (2) promote cooperation with industry, 

universities, research institutions, state governments, and other nations through information sharing, coordinated planning, and joint funding of projects. ICCOPR reports on its activities to Congress every two years. It is comprised of 15 Federal 

independent agencies, departments, and department components. The USCG chairs 

ICCOPR with NOAA, BSEE, and EPA rotating assignments as the vice-chair every 

two years. 

ICCOPR is currently preparing, with the assistance of CRRC/CSE, an Oil Spill 

Research and Technology Plan (OSRTP) that will set the priorities for oil spill research for the next six years. The OSRTP will be completed in 2015. 

Industry 

In the wake of the DWH spill, the petroleum industry, API and IOGP/IPIECA, 

launched four Joint Industry Task Forces (JITFs) to critically assess capabilities 

and performance. Each JITF brought forth subject matter experts to identify best 

practices in offshore drilling operations and oil spill response and to share that 

knowledge across industry. The goal is to ensure environmental protection through 

enhanced safety. 

The Oil Spill Preparedness and Response JITF is examining industry’s ability to 

respond to a ‘‘Spill of National Significance (SONS)’’ or other large spills. 

The program is developing guidance and planning documents, recommended practices, training and exercise guidelines, technology evaluations, and developing a 

database for research activities. As part of the overall research program, industry 

is developing communications/outreach and decision making tools. Topics include: 

• Spill response planning; 

• Oil sensing and tracking; 

• Dispersants; 

• In situ burning; 

• Mechanical recovery 

• Shoreline protection and 

• Alternate response technologies. 

3.0 Impediments to Transforming Research into Improved Response 

The combined effort of all these programs has resulted in a significant body of 

information. It is difficult to remain current on all the papers being published related to oil spills. Each month, several new papers appear in journals and there are 

two to three major conferences each year solely dedicated to oil spill research. The 

question is, how much of this research will result in improvements to oil spill response? Unfortunately, the answer might be, not very much. There are several reasons for this. 

A primary reason is that researchers and responders do not have much opportunity to interact and coordinate research. They usually do not attend the same 

meetings. Most researchers are not familiar with what occurs during a response: the 

pace at which decisions must be made and the types of trade-offs considered during 

a spill. Conversely, responders are often not familiar with the latest experimental 

techniques which scientists have at their disposal to assist in response decisionmaking. 

Another significant problem is that it is very difficult to simulate the environment 

in a laboratory or small test tank or with mathematical modeling. For example, 

even though a solution of 200 ppm of dispersants can be created in water to test 

its toxicity on organisms, the findings may not be translated into what would happen in the field where concentrations of dispersants are likely to be at least 10 times 

lower. In addition, it is incredibly difficult to simulate the mixing that occurs at a 

deep well blowout where many gallons of oil and gas are billowing out of a pipe rapidly at very high pressure. Yet this is exactly what must be done to determine 

whether dispersants prevented oil from reaching the surface of the GOM during the 

DWH. 

Finally scientific journals almost always publish papers that show effects: where 

the research shows that the experimental conditions resulted in a measurable 

change in some parameter. If no change is observed, a so-called ‘‘null’’ result, the 

paper will rarely be published even if that null result occurs many times. For example, if an experiment was conducted where oil was added to very cold seawater that 

12 

contained naturally occurring microbes and the oil concentration did not change 

over time, the results would probably not be published. However, responders fighting an oil spill in the Arctic would want to know this information. You can see the 

implicit bias that might result when examining the scientific literature for possible 

response options that might improve spill response. 

4.0 A Path Forward 

So how can we effectively sort through the research that has been published since 

the DWH and the older, relevant research? First, we can bring responders and scientists together to develop research needs and design and conduct experiments to 

address those needs. One way we have done this at the Centers is to have responders and response scientists act as liaisons during the development of request for proposals (RFPs), selection of projects, design of experiments, and translation of results 

into practice. This approach was used very effectively in developing the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA®) which was used as the Common Operating Picture (COP) during the DWH and provided the public easy access 

to information about the spill. 

However, even if we start bringing responders and scientists together in this manner today, the results of the research would not be available for years. In the interim, we need to sort through the large amount of research published to determine 

if, and how, it can improve response. One example of how this might be done is a 

partnership between our Centers, NOAA and EPA. We have convened more than 

70 scientists, representing a diversity of perspectives and expertise in the research 

and response communities, to read all of the applicable literature and determine the 

state-of-the-science of dispersants and dispersed oil in spill response especially as 

it applies to the Arctic. The scientists are asked to determine: (1) what is known; 

and (2) what is uncertain. Over 500 peer-reviewed papers and reports have been 

amassed in a database covering the period June 2008 to the present and this is been 

combined with an existing database of dispersant research from 1962 to 2008. The 

scientists have read the articles within their area of expertise and have been discussing whether each paper simulates the environment, has the necessary controls, 

and is statistically sound. What we have observed through our facilitated discussions is that a group of scientists can come to consensus when they focus on the 

details of the science. The results of the state-of-the-science discussions on 

dispersants and dispersed oil should be available later this year. I see this process 

as a way forward on many of the thorny issues of applying oil spill R&D to practice. 

5.0 Summary 

When oil is spilled, there is no single ‘‘silver bullet’’ response technology that provides a universal solution. Oil spills are bad, and cause very bad things to happen. 

The goal of response is to minimize, as much as possible, the damage. Hence, the 

challenge is to translate the results of oil spill research and development into better 

response. 

In summary, there are many questions that must be addressed to improve response when oil is spilled, especially as we consider drilling in other outer-continental shelf regions and in the face of the energy renaissance in the U.S. We must 

take advantage of current and future investments in research, translating them into 

better response. I believe we can accomplish this by bringing responders and scientists together to determine what is known and what is uncertain with respect to 

response science. Those uncertainties can be used to identify research needs and design experiments whose results can be translated into improved response decisionmaking before, during and after spills. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Kinner. Dr. Reddy? 

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER M. REDDY, Ph.D., 

SENIOR SCIENTIST, DEPARTMENT OF MARINE CHEMISTRY 

AND GEOCHEMISTRY, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC 

INSTITUTION (WHOI) 

Dr. REDDY. Chairman Thune and Ranking Member Nelson, 

members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to participate in this hearing, and I have three points to make. 

For the record, I am a senior scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic 

Institution. I have extensive experience studying oil spills, which 

13 

are detailed in my written testimony, including the Deepwater Horizon, as well as the Exxon Valdez, and in the last year, I have responded to three oil spills, one in Bangladesh, Galveston Bay, 

Texas, and Yellowstone River. 

In September 2010, I was asked to join the Unified Command, 

essentially the oil spill headquarters to the Deepwater Horizon in 

New Orleans, to serve as a liaison between Federal officials, industry, and the academic community. 

At that time, there was a disconnect and some unsettling tensions. I can tell you very happily that things have changed for the 

better, that the unprecedented Deepwater Horizon disaster created 

an unprecedented intersection of stakeholders, and the silver lining 

to the Deepwater Horizon disaster is it compelled previously disparate cultures, scientists and responders, much like Dr. Kinner 

just mentioned, to introduce themselves and join forces. 

I would be remiss without giving great credit to my Senator from 

Massachusetts, Senator Markey, who ran as United States Congressman in 2010, demanded the increased transparency and availability of information from the responders so academia could contribute. 

I believe this has led to the silver lining that I just discussed, 

and I also just wrote about this in the Huffington Post last week. 

My second point is I got asked a lot of questions about the Deepwater Horizon in the last month or so, coming up to the fifth anniversary. The one that is asked often is how bad is the Gulf today. 

There were many studies that have been done, documenting 

damages, simulating them in the lab, and you likely heard about 

many of these results, but I would advise you to read the fine print. 

I would advise you to think about where these studies were, what 

time they were done after the spill, where they were in the broader 

context, and even follow up and say how certain are you with these 

results. 

Let me give you an example from some work I have done. I published a paper in November 2014 examining the evidence of contamination on the sea floor near a damaged well. It was a massive 

effort. Our upper end estimate was that 16 percent of the total oil 

discharged during the accident fell within a 1,250 square mile 

patch on the deep floor. 

What was not often mentioned was our lower end estimate, that 

we might only think there is 2 percent on the bottom of the sea 

floor. That is a pretty big range, and that is the fine print, and that 

is the uncertainty that we have to ask and push for. 

Moreover, that research that got a lot of press was based on 

studies that ended in 2012. Today, I cannot say how much oil is 

still on the Gulf of Mexico floor. I cannot say how toxic it is, and 

I cannot say whether or not it is negatively affecting the Gulf. 

How is the Gulf today? It is far from the graveyard predicted by 

some experts in the throes of the spill, but it is not a picture of 

health. What we hear most about are damages that are compartmentalized and localized, and the story is not complete, as studies 

are still underway. 

It is probably frustrating to you that you are not going to get all 

the answers you want, and the rub is we cannot put the Gulf of 

Mexico in an MRI. It would have been great if we had some 

14 

physicals on the Gulf of Mexico and MRI scans in 2008, 2009, 2010, 

and as of yesterday. It would be a much easier presentation today 

to show those MRI scans of the Gulf. We do not have that. 

My advice right now is to let science take its course and allow 

for all the pieces to be placed together, and then we can provide 

a full accounting. 

My last point is the one I am most passionate about, about 

dispersants. I think the media coverage of dispersants has been 

lopsided, and we regularly hear that dispersants amplified damage 

in the Deepwater Horizon and are continuing to harm marine life. 

These are the negatives, and there is certainly no doubt there 

are negatives with the use of dispersants, but they are benefits, 

which is precisely why dispersants were authorized and part of 

that discussion that Dr. Kinner mentioned. 

When sprayed on an oil slick, the resulting micro size droplets 

freely mix into water effectively breaking apart the coating and diluting oil over a greater volume. Both effects can be beneficial. 

Dilution and also a chance that we are going to reduce oiling on 

the coast line. What is also lost, and unfortunately, is not available, 

is anecdotal evidence that the air quality of responders near the 

well was better when the dispersants were used subsurface. That 

means if we did not use dispersants, there is a chance that it might 

have taken more than 87 days to shut it down. 

What we hear about in the media are only the negatives. What 

is not discussed are the benefits. I think the question that really 

needs to be asked is what if we did not use dispersants? By weighing this question, we can weigh the negatives against the benefits 

to know if dispersant use caused more harm than good. 

If I can leave you with just one take away this morning, it is the 

pressing need to perform an objective, thorough, and comprehensive post-Deepwater Horizon analysis on the net usage, was it good 

or was it bad. 

This is a non-trivial exercise. It will take a lot of time, but it is 

worthy of the attention. It touches upon several of the recommendations of the President’s Commission, it will settle many of 

the concerns about the Deepwater Horizon, and it will be critical 

to how spills are tackled in the future. 

To me, the absence of a study that looks at the overall net benefit analysis, which is a huge study, is the elephant in the room. 

It is so big that we cannot ignore it, and I would recommend Congress endorse such a study by the National Academy of Science. 

Thank you for your attention. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Reddy follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER M. REDDY, PH.D., SENIOR SCIENTIST, 

DEPARTMENT OF MARINE CHEMISTRY AND GEOCHEMISTRY, WOODS HOLE

OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION (WHOI) 

Chairman Thune and Ranking Member Nelson and Members of the Committee: 

Thank you for the invitation to participate in the hearing, ‘‘Five Years After the 

Deepwater Horizon: Improvements and Challenges in Prevention and Response.’’ It’s 

an honor to provide my observations and recommendations on future oil spill response, in particularly from ‘‘lessons learned’’ in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) disaster. This statement reflects my personal professional views and 

does not represent those of my institution, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 

15 

For the record, I am a Senior Scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry 

and Geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods 

Hole, Mass., principally investigating marine pollution. I have published more 

than140 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and several book chapters on the 

chemistry of oil, how it interacts with the natural environment, and related subjects. I have studied or am currently studying the aftermaths of oil spills that occurred in 1969, 1974, 1996, 2003, two in 2007, and also the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. 

More recently, I have been involved the Galveston Bay, Texas, spill in March 2014, 

the Bangladesh spill in December 2014, and the Yellowstone River oil spill in January 2015. 

For the past five years, I have focused considerable efforts on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. I have visited the Gulf of Mexico more than twenty times, participated 

or led four open-water trips near the Macondo well and three overflights of the region, collected hundreds of oiled beach samples, published 16 peer-reviewed papers 

on DWH, consulted with government and response officials, provided countless 

interviews to the media and written several opinion pieces on the topic, including 

ones on the role of academic scientists in disaster response. In September 2010, I 

was a scientist working at the Unified Command in New Orleans, the official operating center responding to the DWH oil spill. 

In my experience, the disaster’s impact was enormously exacerbated because the 

Macondo well pipe ruptured 5000 feet deep—a depth never encountered before. 

There was little or no experience in getting a such a rupture under control or tracking its consequences at those depths. This was aqua incognita to most industry and 

oil response officials. 

But it was a familiar neighborhood for scientists at my institution, who had long 

conducted basic research in the deep sea and mustered their deep-submergence 

technology and expertise to help. In the heat of the disaster, I worked with WHOI 

scientists and engineers who had developed an instrument, an Isobaric Gas-tight 

Sampler (IGT) to sample and preserve fluids spewing from seafloor hydrothermal 

vents. We used an IGT to get a definitive sample of oil spewing right from the 

Macondo well. On the same mission, I worked with Sentry, a deep-diving autonomous underwater vehicle—used to find plumes from hydrothermal vents—to map a 

trail of hydrocarbons from the well flowing at depth through the Gulf of Mexico, 

something that had theorized but never seen before. 

In this story lies two lessons learned from Deepwater Horizon: This nation’s community of academic scientists represents an insufficiently tapped reservoir of expertise and assets that can be of great service—both during and before a disaster. 

(1) We should seize the opportunity to build on the DWH experience to improve 

the integration of academic scientific expertise in disaster planning and response. 

(2) Basic research paid off—in this case, in unanticipated ways. We should invest 

in baseline research to understand all facets of environments we want to drill 

in—before we drill, rather than after an oil spill. This increased knowledge 

will give us the capacity to recognize opportunities to prevent future damages 

and to know quickly, under crisis conditions, where and how to allocate assets 

to limit damage. 

Integration of the academic science community 

I flashback to the spring and summer of 2010 while oil was flowing unstoppably 

from the seafloor 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf. U.S. officials and industry had an impressive track record responding to the hundreds of oil spills that occurred every 

year. But those spills, unlike Deepwater Horizon, were in shallow waters. Government officials had little need to keep abreast of such things as oceanographic robots 

equipped to operate at great depths or biological communities living on the deep 

seafloor. They were generally unaware of singular and valuable assets and technology that academia had available. 

Academic scientists, on the other hand, had little incentive and few avenues to 

add their expertise. These were two cultures that infrequently met and were unaware of one another’s perspectives. 

In September 2010, I was asked to join the Unified Command to serve as a liaison 

between Federal officials and the academic community. I saw that some Federal officials were bitter toward my colleagues and me, and much of it was justified. They 

thought we did not appreciate their efforts and successes and that we were naı ̈ve 

about their shorter-term responsibilities to control the disaster. They remarked that 

academics did not understand that occasionally our highhanded comments to the 

press forced the officials to respond and took precious time away from them performing their urgent mission. 

16 

The unprecedented Deepwater Horizon disaster created an unprecedented intersection of stakeholders. A silver lining to the DWH disaster is that it compelled previously disparate cultures to introduce themselves and join forces. 

One piece of evidence for this came just a few weeks ago in a single e-mail. It 

was sent by one of the lead Federal officials responsible for responding to oil spills 

after an inquiry from one of my academic colleagues. It was sent the day after the 

April 1 explosion of a Mexican oil-processing rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 

four people and created a slick, informing the recipients what happened, what was 

known, and the chances of oil reaching U.S. waters. 

It was the recipient list that made it a milestone event. The e-mail was sent not 

only to .govs and .mils, but .edus. So not just to employees in government agencies, 

but also to several scientists from academic institutions who have been conducting 

research in the Gulf of Mexico. I would wager that the Federal official who sent the 

recent e-mail and her predecessors had written similar e-mails, faxes, and teletypes 

about past oil spills, small or large, without including academic researchers. Now 

the government official is sending the same information she gives to her own people 

to a host of academic scientists—not a watered-down version, or even worse, a carefully worded message to ‘‘stay away.’’ 

Before Deepwater Horizon, there were few meetings for much interaction among 

the federal, academic, and industry stakeholders and media to cover the results. The 

annual meeting of the new Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), funded after 

DWH, has now provided a forum for them to meet, exchange ideas, share data, and 

begin collaborations. 

I have participating in another project that is forging key relationships between 

agency responders and academic experts: the ‘‘Science Partnerships Enabling Rapid 

Response’’ (SPERR) project, coordinated by the Center for Ocean Solutions and 

ChangeLabs at Stanford University. Academic scientists and government decisionmakers from agencies such as NOAA, EPA, Coast Guard and USGS involved in this 

project have a common goal: to understand the obstacles to effective scientist-responder collaborations that emerged during Deepwater Horizon and codesign a solution to bridge the cultural divide and build trust across those communities. 

Over the last year, the SPERR project has explored the tensions that arose 

around motivations and incentives within academic research institutions and government response agencies, and their inability to collaborate before and during large 

oil spills. The project team and partners have since crafted a solution that we believe will powerfully address these tensions and catalyze the agency and academic 

partnerships and resource sharing pathways that are imperative for improving oil 

spill response in the future. 

The proposed solution, called the Science Action Network, will be a network of 

academic and professional scientists that are linked to regional government planning and response bodies—such as Regional Response Teams—to coordinate and 

streamline scientific input for decisionmaking. In the proposed Network, Regional 

Academic Liaisons in each of the ten response regions would ensure academic expertise is leveraged from universities, and government bodies such as NOAA and the 

Coast Guard have streamlined access to relevant science before and during disasters. 

As we glean lessons learned from Deepwater Horizon, there is strong consensus 

among agencies and academia alike: improved integration of science and scientific 

expertise into disaster planning and response is essential. In order for a scaled, national solution like the Science Action Network to be implemented, funding is needed for formalized coordinator positions, such as the Regional Academic Liaisons, and 

Network operation. We must institutionalize the communication and collaboration 

demonstrated by the e-mail I cited, so that the next time a spill occurs, we can effectively leverage our unparalleled scientific expertise to improve decisionmaking and, 

ultimately, minimize spill impacts on human and ecological communities. The challenge of integrating scientific expertise into decision-making is not unique to oil 

spills and the investment in formalized solutions like the Science Action Network 

will pay off in the short term across all types of large disasters. 

I’ve already seen beneficial changes: 

• When I was researching some mysterious oil sheens near the DWH site in 2012, 

BP provided me with satellite overflight data and other information. With BP’s 

help, we were able to grab invaluable samples that eventually showed that the 

oil was not from a leak at the repaired Macondo well, but a trickle of oil that 

leaking from the wreckage of the toppled rig. 

• In March 2014, the Kirby barge released 168,000 gallons of fuel oil in Galveston 

Bay, Texas. I immediately dispatched a team from my lab to collect samples. 

After several exchanges with NOAA officials, my team was granted badges and 

17 

easy access to study this location. This contrasts starkly with an experience I 

had in 2007 when I was trying to collect samples in San Francisco Bay following the Cosco Busan oil spill. Gaining access to field samples was challenging, and often I was not permitted access to oiled locations, limiting my capacity to provide valuable insights into that spill. 

• In December 2014, I heard that there was a devastating release of a very heavy, 

viscous oil along the coast of Bangladesh. With a keen interest in the behavior 

of these types of oils, I offered my services and willingness to help NOAA personnel who was sent to assist. I was sent a sample of the oil and was able to 

prepare a report on the behavior of the spilled oil, which was forwarded to the 

Bangladeshis. 

• In January 2015, there was a pipeline break in the Yellowstone River in Montana that released Bakken crude oil. The use and transport of Bakken crude 

oils continues to increase, but little is know about how they biodegrade, so I emailed NOAA personnel on how I could access samples. Thru a NOAA intermediate, I was introduced to the lead EPA on-scene coordinator. With assistance and guidance, he introduced me to the spiller who shared samples with 

me. I was then able to provide a report on the fate of the oil to the spiller within two months. 

Last Thursday, I was a guest lecturer in Commander Gregory Hall’s marine pollution class at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. I could 

have presented some new scientific results on DWH on how sunlight broke down 

the oil, how much oil is on the seafloor, or that some oiled samples we find on the 

beaches of the Gulf are not from the Deepwater Horizon, but my lesson for these 

future Coast Guard officers—who will be on the frontline of lines of future oil 

spills—is that they will have to interact with numerous stakeholders who have different interests. What I have learned, and others have observed, is that the best 

outcomes occurred when members of academia and the oil spill response community 

had pre-existing relationships. I encouraged these future officers to get to know 

those they may work with during a crisis. It may sound trite, but a cup of coffee 

and an exchange of e-mails may save miles of coastlines from oiling. 

Wise pre-emptive research 

I could give you numerous examples—from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 

alone—where investments in basic research paid unanticipated dividends in assessing the DWH disaster. WHOI and other academic institutions were ‘‘preadapted’’ to 

respond to the spill. ‘‘Preadaptation’’ is a term borrowed from evolutionary biology. 

It refers to natural selection turning an existing structure to a novel use when the 

right conditions develop. In an analogous manner, our culture of scientific inquiry 

meant that knowledge applicable to the oil spill response already existed and could 

be applied to a new use. 

But my suggestion is not a blanket call for more investment in research because 

it often turns out to be useful and applicable. More specifically, I recommend more 

investment in collecting baseline information about environments we intend to drill 

in. 

The DWH disaster exposed how little we knew about fundamental physical, chemical, and biological conditions and processes that exist in the Gulf of Mexico. In an 

area full of oil rigs, where a spill was a good bet (if not inevitable), we had not conducted extensive, long-term research that would have captured what the Gulf was 

like before it was dosed with oil. We lacked baseline knowledge about preexisting 

conditions, making it extremely hard to assess damages afterward. 

And although after-the-fact assessment studies will teach us lessons, in some 

ways it is like providing knowledge to firefighters and insurance adjusters after the 

fire. Another approach is to focus research on learning what we can about how individual ecosystems operate—because they all operate differently—before we invest in 

constructing oil rigs in them. 

Let us learn from the Gulf before we look to drilling in the Arctic. The Arctic is 

a unique ecosystem that we know very little about. It is also far more unpredictable, 

remote, harsh than the Gulf, with far less infrastructure nearby to combat spills. 

With knowledge and predictability about their operating environment, oil spill responders will have the ability to plan more effective responses and be prepared with 

necessary equipment. In other words, what to do and what is needed and where— 

in much the way, for example, that firefighters have surveyed how tall the buildings 

are in their city are and have mapped their city’s streets, so that they can take the 

fastest routes, bringing trucks with ladders of sufficient heights. 

Oil spills are inevitable. This is a pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later situation in which 

up-front investments now can save lives, property, and money later. 

18 

I appreciate the opportunity to testify and am prepared to respond to any questions from Members of the Committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Reddy. Dr. Joye? 

STATEMENT OF SAMANTHA B. JOYE, Ph.D., ATHLETIC 

ASSOCIATION DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF ARTS 

AND SCIENCES, PROFESSOR OF MARINE SCIENCES, 

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA 

Dr. JOYE. Good morning, Chairman Thune, Ranking Member 

Nelson, and members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony today regarding the lessons learned 

from the Deepwater Horizon. 

My name is Samantha Joye. I am a Distinguished Professor at 

the University of Georgia. My research examines naturally occurring microbial processes that mediate oil and gas cycling in the 

Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. 

I am going to limit my testimony today given that my colleagues 

here have covered many of the points that I wanted to touch on, 

but I hope to impress upon you the need for developing an academic response network, complete with necessary infrastructure, 

tools and technology, for academic scientists to be out on the water 

working closely with the National Incident Command within days 

of a disaster. 

Such a collaboration would reduce response time to an offshore 

spill, potentially limiting long term damage to offshore and nearshore ecosystems. A shortened response time would save resources 

and could save lives. It will also reduce hydrocarbon exposure, 

acute ecological impacts, and economic impacts regarding tourism 

and fisheries. 

The cost benefit of investing in effective oil spill response mitigation technologies and infrastructure is almost assuredly positive, 

given the high density of oil production platforms in the Gulf and 

the increasing number of drilling endeavors undertaken in ultradeep water and in extremely gas rich reservoirs. 

One of the big issues that we faced when the Deepwater Horizon 

occurred was a lack of communication. This scientific action network, which is being developed by scientists and individuals at 

Stanford University, and both Dr. Reddy and Dr. Kinner are involved in this effort, I provided Senator Nelson’s staff with some 

copies and information about this network. 

I think this network would move us forward in terms of bringing 

together Federal responders and academic scientists. 

In terms of the oil spill, I want to talk about a couple of critical 

things. The most important is the issue of environmental baselines. 

Dr. Reddy just touched on this briefly, that it would be nice if we 

had a pre-Deepwater Horizon MRI of the Gulf of Mexico. The fact 

is the Minerals Management Service funded many, many studies 

of the Gulf of Mexico prior to the oil spill. The problem was that 

none of those studies had a microbiological component involving oil 

and gas degradation. 

There are many studies of deepwater chemosynthetic communities. There are many studies of deepwater invertebrate communities, many studies of physical oceanography of the Gulf of Mexico, those physical oceanographic studies were really insufficient to 

19 

help us do what we needed to do in terms of the Deepwater Horizon, but you cannot really quantify an impact when you do not 

know what the original condition was. 

That means you have to make guesses, and I think that hinders 

the natural resource damage assessment process that is going on 

today because we are making guesses as to what those original 

baselines were. 

Few long-term baseline datasets exist in the Gulf of Mexico regarding microbiology. One of the few was funded by the NOAA National Institute of Undersea Science and Technology at Mississippi 

Canyon Block 118, which lies about 20 miles northwest of the 

Deepwater Horizon wellhead. 

The baseline microbiological data from this site was integral in 

providing the background information that we needed to see how 

the microbial community was evolving in the water column after 

the Deepwater Horizon blew out. 

Environmental baselines are also lacking on the natural distributions of hydrocarbons in the Gulf and their geochemical fingerprint. 

You have heard many people say, I am sure, that you cannot really 

trace the oil that you might find on the sea floor to the Macondo 

wellhead because there is a lot of oil seeping out of the seabed in 

the Gulf and it is all the same. 

It is not all the same. We do not really know how different all 

those reservoirs are, but we need to know how different those reservoirs are. We need to be able to go in there and do some CSI geochemistry and resolve the actual fingerprints of those individual 

reservoirs. 

Finally, to be prepared for the next incident, the research community needs well validated models of deep circulation and the 

ability to deploy tens if not hundreds robotic floats with appropriate instrumentation. The benefit of providing robotic floats or 

underwater vehicles to do plume tracking and oil and gas tracking 

for us is that it limits the requirements for ship times out on the 

water. 

I would like to conclude for a plea for environmental baselines 

again. Environmental baselines are absolutely important for the 

Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and for the Arctic ecosystem in light of 

the drilling that is going to be probably undertaken there in the 

future. 

Environmental baselines, obtaining necessary environmental 

baselines, are a goal that could be achieved as part of the Department of Interior Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s mission 

since they are mandated to provide funding to support documentation of environmental baselines through the environmental studies 

program. 

However, BOEM’s budget for the environmental studies program 

is $35 million a year. This may sound like a lot but it is not a lot 

when you consider the area over which this money must be spread. 

Obtaining proper baselines for the Gulf and Arctic alone would 

cost substantially more than $35 million a year, and I personally 

believe that these costs could and should be shared by industry. 

Sufficient environmental baselines are the best instruments of 

industry and the trustees, thus, I encourage Congress and the Administration to increase BOEM’s funding and give them the auVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:52 Nov 13, 2015 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\97534.TXT JACKIE
20 

thority to require industry to obtain baselines and ongoing environmental monitoring data at all locations impacted by oil and gas development and production. 

These requisite data collected by proper standardized protocols 

and sampling intervals should be determined by a panel of experts 

selected and convened by either BOEM or the National Academy 

of Science, potentially in collaboration with NOAA’s Emergency Response Division. 

Industry should shoulder some of the cost of this monitoring program, and I believe the funds would be best administered competitively through BOEM. 

With that, I conclude my testimony, and answer any questions 

you might have. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Joye follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SAMANTHA B. JOYE, PH.D., ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, PROFESSOR OF MARINE

SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Good morning Chairman Thune, Ranking Member Nelson, and members of Committee. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide testimony regarding the 

lessons learned and long term environmental impacts of the Deepwater Horizon 

(DWH)/Macondo oil well blowout (hereafter Macondo Blowout), which devastated 

the Gulf of 

Mexico ecosystem beginning in April 2010. My name is Samantha Joye and I am 

a Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia. My research examines the 

naturally-occurring microbial processes that mediate oil and gas cycling in the Gulf 

of Mexico and Arctic Ocean, two areas where natural seepage of hydrocarbons is 

widespread. I have published over 120 peer-reviewed papers on these and related 

subjects. I have worked in the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem for 20 years and continue 

to do so. 

For this hearing, I was asked to discuss what the scientific community has 

learned in the past five years in the wake of the Macondo Blowout, the lingering 

environmental impacts, as well as my thoughts on how to move forward so that we 

are better prepared as a research community and as a response community for the 

next incident. My comments represent the not only my opinions, but those of my 

colleagues within the consortium that I direct, and of the broader scientific community working in the Gulf system, of which I am an active participant. The topic of 

this hearing could not be more timely. Recently, John Amos summarized the number and location of hazardous material spills in the Gulf since the 2010 DWH disaster: 10,000 spills of various sizes have occurred in the past five years. Clearly, it 

is not a matter of if, but rather when, the next large accidental offshore marine oil 

discharge occurs in the Gulf of Mexico. 

21 

Figure showing the locations of hazardous material spills in the Gulf since 2010. This is time 

5-yr aggregate map; the time series is available at the SKYTRUTH® website: (http://bit.ly/ 

1aLX5UF). 

On April 20, 2010, a chain of events that ultimately resulted in the most significant offshore oil release in U.S. history began. The Deepwater Horizon, a dynamically positioned offshore mobile drilling unit, was drilling a production well in the 

Macondo Prospect, located in Mississippi Canyon lease block 252, about 40 miles offshore if the southeast coast of Louisiana. The night of April 20, 2010, rig operators 

experienced a loss of well control, resulting in an uncontrolled blowout. The explosion and subsequent fire on the platform killed eleven men and injured sixteen others. The blowout preventer, which should have cut the riser pipe at the seafloor and 

sealed the blown out well, failed and the fire on the platform raged for two days. 

On April 22nd, the Deepwater Horizon sank, initiating an uncontrolled release of oil 

and gas from the seafloor that lasted for 87 days and introduced some 5 million barrels of oil (210 million gallons) and 500,000 metric tons of methane into the Gulf 

of Mexico ecosystem. 

I am qualified to provide testimony on the impacts of the Macondo blowout based 

on my detailed knowledge of the Gulf ecosystem and through my role as Director 

of a large research consortium that is tracking long-term impacts and recovery from 

the Macondo blowout. I was among the first academic responders to the DWH oil 

spill, serving as chief scientist on the second academic response cruise on board the 

R/V Walton Smith in May/June 2010. Being out on the water in May/June 2010, 

August/September 2010, and November/December 2010, I witnessed, first hand, the 

devastating environmental consequences of this deep-water oil well blowout. I was 

part of the scientific team that discovered the ‘‘underwater oil plumes’’ and led the 

effort that discovered freshly deposited sedimentary layers containing weathered oil 

that extended over a large parts Gulf seabed in late August 2010. 

Since 2010, we have continued and expanded our work in the Gulf with the aim 

of conducting long term monitoring studies and directed laboratory experiments to 

elucidate the impacts of oil, chemical dispersant, and dispersed oil on Gulf microbial 

communities, in both the water column and in deep sea sediments. I am the DirecVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:52 Nov 13, 2015 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\97534.TXT JACKIE

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tor of the ‘‘Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf’’ (ECOGIG) research consortium (www.ecogig.org), a group of 29 scientists conducting DWH-related research. Our consortium is funded on a competitive basis by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), which was created to administer the $500M research fund BP provided to support DWH-related research over a 10-year period. 

The ECOGIG mission is to understand the environmental signatures and impacts 

of natural hydrocarbon seepage versus that of abrupt, large hydrocarbon discharges 

on coupled benthic and pelagic processes in deepwater ecosystems in the Gulf of 

Mexico, and to chart the long-term effects and mechanisms of ecosystem recovery 

from the 2010 Macondo blowout. 

My testimony today is limited to issues relevant to offshore, deepwater environments and I will describe the major lessons learned and long impacts of the 

Macondo Blowout. I also hope to impress upon you the need for developing an academic response network, complete with necessary infrastructure—tools and technology—to be on the water within days of disaster. This network of academic responders would work closely and collaboratively with National Incident Command. 

Such a collaboration would reduce response time to an offshore spill, potentially limiting long term damage to offshore and nearshore ecosystems. A shortened response 

time saves resources and could save lives, and will also reduce hydrocarbon exposure, acute ecological impacts, and economic impacts (fisheries, tourism). The costbenefit of investing in effective oil spill response and mitigation technologies and infrastructure is almost assuredly positive, given the high density of oil production 

platforms in the Gulf and the increasing number of drilling endeavors undertaken 

in ultra-deep water and in extremely gas-rich (e.g., Tertiary) reservoirs. 

Preface 

The Gulf of Mexico ecosystem is representative of a highly stressed oceanic environment—multiple stressors affect the system from almost every direction and this 

was the case before the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo oil well blowout. Nutrient overenrichment, seasonal hypoxia, fishery stress, pollution, intense industry activity, 

warming waters, and ocean acidification have collectively pushed the Gulf ecosystem 

to the point of collapse. The Macondo Blowout was yet another anthropogenic impact and it has had a tremendous affect on this ecosystem. 

Lessons Learned from the Deepwater Horizon Disaster 

Assessing impacts of an offshore, open ocean oil discharge represents a formidable 

challenge. 

At the peak of the DWH incident, oil covered 29,000 square miles of the Gulf’s 

surface, an area comparable in size to the state of South Carolina (32,020 square 

miles). An oceanographic research vessel travels at about 10 miles an hour. Imagine 

attempting to characterize the vegetation and soil all across South Carolina by driving in a car at 10 miles an hour across the state. Given the large area, you could 

only take a sample every few hours, perhaps 8 samples a day if you and your partner shared the driving. And if taking a single sample required 3 hours (∼this is the 

amount of time required to collect a depth profile of water samples at a depth of 

1500m), it would take a very long time to characterize the entire state. 

This example provides insight to the situation faced by scientists attempting to 

characterize Gulf offshore environments in the wake of the DWH discharge. The 

sheer size of the open ocean area impacted by the DWH discharge and the fact that 

the ocean is extremely dynamic—the water moves and chemical signatures can 

change on time scales of minutes to hours—underscores the daunting challenge this 

incident posed to oceanographers. The spatial and temporal complexity of the arena 

and the presence of oil complicated collection of basic geochemical and biological 

data. Characterize the distribution of oil and gas, aiming to discover novel features, 

and quantify impacts, made this task Herculean. The regular sea-going gear we use 

to collect samples is not made for oily water; extraordinary effort was required to 

clean bottles, sensors, etc. between sample collections. And, choices had to made: 

one could characterize smaller areas at greater resolution or characterize larger 

areas at more coarse resolution—one could not do both on a short cruise. 

The infusion of oil and gas to the system meant that the biological system was 

rapidly evolving. This meant that time series data were critical, so that we could 

track the response of various parts of the system to perturbation. Though insufficient data of this type were collected for offshore water column and sediment habitats, the one published suite of time-series measurements made over a 10-month period (March–December 2010) underscores the clear importance of time-series data, 

as opposed to ‘‘snap-shot’’ sampling (i.e., a single week or two sampling campaign) 

(Crespo-Medina et al., 2014). An enormous amount of time and multiple ships conVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:52 Nov 13, 2015 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\97534.TXT JACKIE
23 

ducting comparable operations would have been required to properly sample and 

characterize the entire area impacted by the discharge. 

Possessing prior system knowledge, i.e., experience working in the area and familiarity with the bathymetry of the seabed, was integral for our group’s discovery of 

the deepwater plumes. We discovered the plumes because we had a good idea of the 

direction the deep currents was moving and we knew the bathymetry of the area 

because many of us had been involved in the only long-term Gulf benthic observatory (at Mississippi Canyon lease block 118) which lies to the N/NW of the 

Macondo wellhead, so had seabed maps of the area. In depth system knowledge provided us with instincts—and the willingness to trust our instincts—and this led to 

our discovery of the plumes (Diercks et al., 2010, Joye et al., 2011). We shared the 

locations of the plumes with Federal responders and with other scientists, which led 

to additional discoveries (Camilli et al., 2010, Valentine et al., 2010, Kessler et al., 

2011). 

To facilitate and improve the efficacy of future open-ocean oil spill response, a 

foundation of strong coordination, communication and trust is needed between academic responders and Federal incident command officials. Ideally, this foundation 

should be in place and vetted before the next incident occurs. As described in the 

testimony below, academic scientists have a great deal of expertise to offer the Federal responders and this expertise should be brought to bear immediately in future 

response scenarios. Furthermore, in hindsight, significant investments in infrastructure and technology and basic research are required to be prepared for the next 

deepwater discharge. Such bold moves will increase the ability of responders to 

identify the multitude of system-scale impacts and assure collection of the proper 

samples to quantify those impacts. 

Environmental baselines are necessary and must be obtained. 

How do you quantify whether and to what extent something has changed (i.e., an 

impact) when you do not know the original condition (i.e., the baseline)? The answer 

is that it is difficult and it requires that you essentially make an educated guess 

as to what the original condition was. Environmental baselines are sorely lacking 

across the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Despite numerous Minerals Management Service (now the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management) funded studies to describe 

Gulf physical oceanography (e.g., MMS 204–022, ‘‘Cross-shelf exchange processes 

and the deepwater circulation . . .) and deepsea chemosynthetic and hard bottom 

communities (e.g., MMS 2009–046, ‘‘Investigations of chemosynthetic communities 

on the lower continental slope . . .’’; MMS 2009–039, ‘‘Northern Gulf of Mexico Continental Slope Habitats and Benthic Ecology Study’’; and MMS 2007–004, ‘‘Characterization of Northern Gulf of Mexico Deepwater hard-bottom communities with emphasis on Lophelia coral’’), the basic microbiology of the Gulf system and the ability 

of microorganisms to oxidize oil and gas were essentially unconstrained at the baseline level in 2010. There was no data available on water column oil degradation 

rates and very little available on water column methane oxidation rates (Wankel et 

al., 2010). Prior to the DWH, someone once described my work on oil and gas microbiology in the Gulf as esoteric. In the post-DWH world, that word would never be 

used because we now know that microbiological research is absolutely critical. 

Few long-term baseline data sets that include basic microbiology are available for 

the Gulf (Joye et al., 2014). The NOAA/National Institute for Undersea Science and 

Technology Mississippi Canyon block 118 (MC118) Gas Hydrate Microbial Observatory and a NSF funded 5-year, though only 2 research cruises, Hypersaline Ecosystems Microbial Observatory programs are notable exceptions. The MC118 site is 

less than 20km from the site of the Macondo blowout and data from this program 

provided critical baseline data that was used to assess microbial community changes 

in the water column and sediments following the DWH incident (Crespo-Medina et 

al., 2014, Yang et al., 2014). Without such critical baseline data, it would have been 

impossible to quantify changes in pelagic microbial oil and gas degrading communities in response to the blowout. Still, other parts of the pelagic ‘‘microbial’’ community such as phytoplankton and small zooplankton, are unknown because we do not 

know much about them in the first place. Thankfully, baseline data were available 

for some cold water coral communities and that has facilitated research aimed at 

quantifying Macondo-related impacts to those communities (White et al., 2012, Fisher et al., 2014a, 2014b). 

Environmental baselines are also lacking on the natural distributions of hydrocarbons and their geochemical ‘‘fingerprint’’ for the Gulf. Fingerprinting oil to a specific reservoir requires ultra-clean sampling protocols in the field and sophisticated 

instrumentation in the laboratory. We need to know how the natural distribution 

of oil (dissolved hydrocarbons) and gas (methane) vary across the Gulf system and 

we need to be able to identify and isolate specific sources (reservoirs). We need to 

24 

understand variability in concentration and fingerprint at the scale of an individual 

seep field, in a lease block, and between regions (e.g., Mississippi Canyon, Green 

Canyon, Alaminos Canyon, etc.). Furthermore, we must obtain basic information on 

oil and gas degradation rates in the environment, how they vary over space and 

time, and we have to know what constrains these activities. One cannot conclude 

that ‘‘microbes ate all the oil’’ based on the observation that oil is no longer measurable in a water sample; the fact is that the oil may have instead moved to another 

location (e.g., the seafloor) where you were not looking. 

Finally, to be prepared for the next incident, the research community needs wellvalidated models of deep circulation and the ability to deploy 10s–100s of robotic 

floats with the appropriate instruments (fluorometers) to detect oil. We have much 

better models of the Macondo area now (Goni et al., 2015) and of some of the unique 

physics that led to development of the deepwater plumes, for example (Zachary et 

al., 2015), but we need comparable models for the entire Gulf ecosystem. This is a 

goal that can be achieved, with proper research funding. In fact, one could argue 

that such floats with CDOM fluorometers should be deployed now, to start obtaining 

the desperately needed environmental baselines. The research community must 

push the envelope to develop other instruments specific to hydrocarbons that can 

be deployed on autonomous vehicles. 

This will permit characterization of large areas with minimal demands for ship 

time. 

Obtaining proper environmental baselines for the Gulf system is something that 

every environmental scientists conducting post Macondo research realizes. This necessary goal can be achieved as part of DOI/BOEM’s mission, since they are mandated to provide funding to support documentation of environmental baselines 

through the Environmental Studies Program. BOEM’s budget for the ESP is a $35M 

a year and those funds must cover all areas impacted by oil and gas development. 

Obtaining proper baselines for the Gulf and elsewhere (e.g., The Arctic) will cost 

substantially more than $35M per year and I believe these cost could and should 

be shared by industry. Sufficient environmental baselines are in the best interest 

of the industry and the Trustees. Thus, I encourage Congress and the Administration to increase BOEM’s funding and to give them increased authority to require 

industry to obtain baseline and ongoing (annual) environmental monitoring data at 

all locations impacted by oil and gas development. The requisite data collected, 

proper protocols, and sampling intervals should be determined by a Panel of Experts 

selected and convened by BOEM officials, potentially in collaboration with NOAA’s 

Emergency Response Division. Industry should shoulder the costs of this monitoring 

program and the funds should be administered competitively by BOEM. 

Knowing the flow rate is a critical to closing the ‘‘oil budget’’. 

Knowing the discharge rate is essential for selecting and employing the most appropriate method of intervention to seal a discharging well. Quantification of the 

discharge rate over time—and knowing and whether, and if so how much, it varies 

over time, is also essential for determining the total hydrocarbon discharge, a value 

of obvious importance in the NRDA process. I have heard many people say there 

was no technology available to quantify the flow rate when the Macondo blowout 

began. This statement simply is not true. Scientists had determined the flow rate 

of discharging vents in deepsea hydrothermal systems using particle imaging 

velocimetry (PIV, Westerweel 1993), optical plume velocimetry (OPV; Crone et al., 

2008) or acoustic scintillation (Di Iorio et al., 2005, 2012) before the Macondo Blowout. The first evidence that the discharge rate was well above the stated rate of 

1000 or 5000 barrels of oil per day (BOPD) came from satellite imagery: the satellite-derived estimate of 26,500 barrels a day was called the ‘‘MacDonald Minimum’’ by the New York Times (the number was generated by Prof. Ian MacDonald 

at Florida State University). The first estimate of the Macondo well discharge rate 

based on (very poor quality) digital video footage of the discharging wellhead was 

obtained by PIV and the value was 57,000 ± 10,000 BOPD (Crone and Tolstoy 2010). 

It is noteworthy that release of this video footage required three congressional subpoenas. Later in the discharge, Camilli et al., (2011) reported a flow rate of 52,700 

BOPD. There is no reasonable explanation for why the flow rate was not quantified 

early on and continuously. However, because it was not, we will never truly know 

how much oil was discharged from the Macondo wellhead. And not knowing the absolute discharge rate makes generating and closing the oil budget impossible. 

In the future, immediate and continuous assessment of the discharge rate should 

be an absolute requirement of the responsible party. 

25 

Patching other holes in the oil budget. 

—Deepwater plumes and sedimented, weathered oil 

The discovery of deepwater plumes enriched in oil and gas was not an accident. 

The literature was rich with papers describing the formation of underwater oil-rich 

plumes in the event of a deepwater blowout and field experiments verified model 

results. On the first academic response cruise on board the R/V Pelican in early May 

2010, Vernon Asper and Arne Diercks discovered the deepwater plumes (Diercks et 

al., 2010) and on the second academic response cruise, we characterized the chemistry and microbiology of those plumes in great detail (Joye et al., 2011, Crespo-Medina et al., 2014). How much of the discharged oil was in the deepwater plume? That 

value is not well constrained but the number that is most commonly stated is 30 

percent. All of the discharged gas, namely methane, some 500,000 metric tonnes of 

it, was trapped within the deepwater plumes (Joye et al., 2011). Notably, discharged 

gas is not included in the ‘‘oil budget’’. 

A significant fraction, some 5 to 15 percent of the discharged oil, was deposited 

to the seafloor as ‘‘marine ‘oil’ snow’’ (Chanton et al., 2014, Valentine et al., 2014), 

covering an area of over 8,000 square kilometers. Our research team collected cores 

from many sites at various distances from the wellhead in May 2010. We re-sampled some of those areas in August 2010 and discovered layers of recently deposited 

oil-containing material that were absent in May 2010. These layers were observed 

many 10s of miles from the wellhead, showing that ‘‘oil snow’’ deposition was a 

widespread phenomenon. The freshly deposited layer exhibited a dark coloration; 

these cores smelled strongly of hydrocarbons and the water overlying the cores contained a visible rainbow sheen of oil. These cores were not from known hydrocarbon 

seep; this oil had not seeped into the sediments from below, it had rained down onto 

the sediments from above. The depth of the layer was up to several cm thick in 

some places; layers that thick would take hundreds of years to accumulate under 

natural sedimentation regimes. The animals, worms and such, living in the sediment had been suffocated. These cores were like nothing any of us had ever seen. 

We now know that this oil-containing material reached the seafloor through the 

mechanism of marine oil snow sedimentation, a process that was unrecognized and 

unappreciated prior to the DWH disaster. Marine oil snow forms by several different 

mechanisms, abiotically through oil-mineral aggregation, and biologically through 

the activity of bacteria and phytoplankton (Passow 2014, Joye et al., 2014). Environmental conditions determine which type of marine snow is most important for the 

transfer of oil to depth and the primary mode of oil snow formation can vary by location and time. Mobilization and redistribution of this sedimented, weathered presents a long-term, persistent impact of the oil on benthic ecosystems that are exposed, possibly multiple times, to oil components that sank to the seabed. 

Marine oil snow could also serve as an important food source for many planktonic 

species as well, making oil contaminated snow a mechanism to move oil into the 

food web. Macondo-derived hydrocarbons were found in floating particulate matter 

in the Gulf as far as 190 km southwest of the wellhead in 2010, and the ancient 

hydrocarbon isotopic signal persisted into 2011 and 2012. This particulate phase appears to have been ingested by zooplankton and it entered the food web. There is 

also evidence consistent with the hypothesis that Macondo hydrocarbons entered the 

food web of coastal organisms to the north of the spill site. 

Sedimentation of oil was not included in the original Federal oil budget. We now 

know that the formation of marine oil snow particles is an important fate of oil. This 

fate must be considered in future response plans and its importance quantified, 

through direct measurements of sedimentation and trophic transfer, relative to 

other potential fates and impacts of oil. 

—The failure to constrain rates of microbial oil degradation 

Despite the fact that oil was present in the deepwater plume and on the sea surface, no actual rates of oil degradation were carried out. By ‘‘actual rates’’ I mean 

that oil degradation rates were not determined using highly sensitive radiotracer 

techniques. The one degradation rate that was published was from a lab bottle experiment and it represented a potential rate of one group of compounds, alkanes 

(Hazen et al., 2010). The ‘‘turnover constant’’ for this one, very labile, group of compounds, the alkanes, was then applied to all the various components of oil, from 

benzene to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, by some other scientists and the 

media, leading to the highly inappropriate conclusion that microorganisms magically 

degraded the Macondo ‘‘oil’’ on a ∼10 day time scale. Another journal in Science 

(Camilli et al., 2010) published much slower oil degradation rate, but that value was 

largely overlooked. 

26 

There is no evidence that ‘magic microbes’ consumed all the Macondo oil. The reasons why we do not how much of the Macondo oil the microbes did, in fact, consume 

are as follows: The reasons microbial degradation rates were not determined include: (1) making these rate measurements is extremely difficult and time-consuming, (2) the radiotracers are very expensive, and (3) the measurements requires 

specialized shipboard accommodations (e.g., radioisotope-usage isolation vans). The 

scientific community is better prepared now to make these measurements—robust 

methods are now available—but the bottleneck may be expertise as few people make 

these laborious measurements. 

In contrast to oil, methane consumption rates were well constrained and it is clear 

that microbial processes were unable to completely consume the methane discharged 

from the Macondo wellhead (Crespo-Medina et al., 2014). Though there remains 

some debate about the fate of methane (e.g., Kessler et al., 2011 and Crespo-Medina 

et al., 2014), the differing conclusions are largely a function of the timing of sampling and the time-scale sampled (the former lacked samples from early in the discharge when activity was maximal while the latter presented a comprehensive data 

set representing a 10-month time series). 

Because no direct measurements of oil (component) degradation rate exist, we are 

left to make assumptions about the potential for the microbial community to degrade oil and that results in very large error bars and an unconstrained oil budget. 

The Federal oil budget released in August 2010 stipulated that approximately 50 

percent of the discharged oil was not accounted for in a quantitative sense. Some 

fraction of this now lies along the seabed. Another portion was certainly consumed 

by microbial processes. However, we cannot know, in an absolute sense, how much 

of this oil remains in the system in some (weathered) form or where this oil ended 

up. 

In the future, we must constrain the quantity and fate of oil and gas in deepwater 

plumes; we must constrain the formation and fate (sedimentation vs. trophic transfer) of marine oil snow; and, we must quantify rates of oxidation of model oil compounds, e.g., hexadecane as a model alkane, naphthalene as a model PAH, etc. 

Dispersants 

Chemical dispersants break down surface oil slicks, creating a spectrum of sizes 

of dissolved oil particles. The general principle behind application of dispersants is 

that they reduce the amount of oil that reaches the shoreline and that they increase 

rates of microbial oil degradation by increasing the available surface area of oil that 

is subject to microbial attack. Importantly, these chemicals are also assumed to be 

inert, doing no harm to the environment. 

The decision to apply dispersants during the DWH response was not taken lightly 

and ultimately, I believe it came down to minimizing coastal impacts with a true 

belief that offshore impacts of dispersants would be minimal. As it turns out, the 

evidence that dispersants increase oil biodegradation rates is contradictory 

(Kleindienst et al., 2015). There is no scientific consensus that chemical dispersants 

increase rates of microbial oil degradation. In fact, since the DWH incident many 

papers have been published documenting that dispersed oil, and in some cases dispersant alone, are more toxic and harmful than oil alone. Negative impacts of 

dispersants have been documented in marine phytoplankton (Ozhan and Bargu 

2014), ciliates (Ortmann et al., 2012, Almeda et al. 2014), rotifers (Rico-Martinez et 

al., 2013), fish (Ramachandran et al., 2014, Brette et al., 2014), corals (DeLeo et al., 

2015) and coral larvae (Goodbody-Gringley et al., 2012). 

Clearly, the assumption that dispersants are inert and impart no negative ecosystem consequences was wrong. Much more research is required to quantify the 

impacts of dispersants and dispersed oil on the biological components of the Gulf 

system before they are again used as a primary mode of oil spill response. Notably, 

today, blowout preventors are being instrumented with automated dispersant applicators. Available science suggests this is a bad idea and argues that this practice 

should be halted until either a truly biologically inert dispersant is developed or concrete evidence is produced to contradict and invalidate the available work that underscores the inherent negative impacts of dispersant/dispersed oil exposure. 

Long term Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster 

Damage to deepwater ecosystems 

Deepwater benthic ecosystems, including cold-water corals (White et al., 2012, 

Fisher et al., 2014a, 2014b) and benthic invertebrates (Montagna et al., 2013) were 

significantly impacted by weathered oil sedimentation. Cold water coral ecosystems 

are critical benthic habitats in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. Few people realize 

that only half of the world’s coral reefs lie within the photic zone; the other half 

lies in deeper, dark water. These deep, cold-water coral environments provide fishVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:52 Nov 13, 2015 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\97534.TXT JACKIE
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ery habitat as well as other ecosystem services. Corals, and octocorals in particular, 

are excellent sentinels for anthropogenic impact in the deep sea: They sample the 

surrounding water, normally live for 100s to 1000s of years, and when impacted, 

their dead branches or skeletons remain attached to the sea floor providing a record 

of impact that can last for up to a decade. Exposure to dispersants and dispersed 

oil made a bad thing worse, at least for the corals (DeLeo et al., 2015). 

Cold water corals are slow growing animals; since they grow at a rate of around 

1 cm per year, a meter tall coral is 100 years old. Several coral ecosystems in the 

vicinity of Macondo were severally impacted from the Macondo blowout. The most 

serious impacts with within about 11 km of the spill site, but corals over twice that 

distance away and at much deeper depth (to 1900m) were also visibly impacted resulting in dying branches on these normally very long lived corals. Full recovery will 

not happen in our lifetimes. 

The injuries to corals were not confined to the nearby deep sea communities. The 

mesophotic corals were also injured in large numbers on the shelf. Prof. Ian MacDonald’s group at Florida State documented 400 injured coral colonies at two sites, 

but this represents a small fraction of the total coral habitat known to exist on the 

shelf under the area covered by surface oil and under the airborne dispersant flight 

lines. 

Resuspension and remobilization of sedimented oil could generate multiple and 

new exposures to both corals and invertebrate communities, prolonging Macondo’s 

impact on vital deepwater habitats. 

Benthic invertebrates may be considered ‘‘worms in the mud’’ but these animals 

provide important services to their environment: their movement, whether it be burrowing or simply trudging along the surface, serves to mix and oxygenate sediment, 

increasing oxygen penetration into sediments and allowing the microorganisms in 

the sediments to mineralize more organic carbon. Thus, benthic invertebrates can 

affect the rate of sediment organic matter turnover, which also serves to remineralize nutrients. These sedimentary processes are inherently linked to processes in 

the surface ocean: Remineralized nutrients from the deep are ultimately returned 

to the surface ocean where they support primary production. Primary production in 

surface waters fuels the food web but also supports a natural particle flux to the 

benthos. This delicate balance between nutrient supply to the surface ocean from 

the deep seafloor and return flux of some fraction to the deep through natural sedimentation was turned on its head by the massive sedimentation event following the 

Macondo blowout. This benthic-to-surface connection is poorly constrained at baseline levels and we need more data to constrain the magnitude of this perturbation. 

Benthic invertebrate communities, especially within a 5–10 mile radius of the 

wellhead, were wiped out. How long it will take them to recover is unknown. Likewise, damaged coral communities have been documented 10s of miles from the wellhead. These communities are still showing impact and though we know it will require 100s of years for the most damaged coral communities to recover, we are still 

documenting impacts that were not documented in 2012 and it is likely that the 

true magnitude of the deepsea impact may never be fully appreciated. 

Notably, there is no set-back distance that would have prevented these catastrophic impacts. The regulations in place still allow drilling and production to occur 

far too close (500m) to sensitive communities. I encourage Congress and the Administrative to review these set-back distances and to increase them to minimize damage to sensitive chemosynthetic communities. The deep sea is very poorly surveyed 

and its fauna are very poorly known. As noted previously, baseline studies of the 

distribution and status of deepwater communities near oil and gas development 

sites, even if this is video surveys run by the industry, need to be reviewed by 

BOEM/BSEE and trained scientists. We need to better understand the baseline conditions in the deep sea to better understand where the more unique communities 

are found in the sea of mud that is most of the deep sea floor. More in depth knowledge of the biodiversity and population connectivity of the deepsea fauna is needed 

to understand the effects of the next disaster or cumulative impacts of anthropogenic impacts on the oceans. 

Microbial community shifts 

The massive infusion of hydrocarbons to the Gulf system in the Macondo area resulted in a rapid shift in hydrocarbon-degrading microbial community composition 

that, in some places, remains detectable today (Yang et al., 2014). Whether the 

present microbial hydrocarbon degrading community is providing the same ecosystem services or maintaining their previous levels of activity is unknown. Assessment of time-series changes in phytoplankton, zooplankton and meso-pelagic organisms is lacking, so it is unclear whether their populations were impacted similarly. 

However, given the variable ability of some organisms to tolerate oil exposure, shifts 

28 

in community composition are likely. The long-term impacts of such shifts and the 

time required for the base of the food web to achieve a new steady state is unknown. 

Moving Forward 

During the DWH response, it became clear that the research community lacked 

sufficient resources in the form of manned submersibles, ROVs, and AUVs to adequately and rapidly respond. Germany, France, Russia, Japan and China have invested much more vested in deep-sea technology than the U.S. has in the past twenty years and it shows. Deep-sea assets and technology development and instrument 

acquisition are necessary to support basic scientific exploration and discovery. These 

tools are also absolutely essential to track, quantify, map, and verify open ocean 

water column and benthic impacts of incidents like the Macondo blowout. Training 

and instrumenting an academic task force to aid in response to offshore blowouts 

and other natural disasters is a worthy investment. I encourage Congress and the 

Administration to increase BOEM’s funding and scope of work to facilitate and improve future response efforts. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I would be happy to answer any 

questions that you have. 

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30 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Joye. I want to turn now to our 

distinguished Ranking Member of the Committee, Senator Nelson 

from Florida, who I know has a keen interest in this subject. 

STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA 

Senator NELSON. Mr. Chairman, it is just as well that my opening statement, which will be very short, is after the witnesses. This 

matter is very personal to me. Those of us on the Gulf lived 

through this. 

We were first told that it was maybe 1,000 barrels a day, and 

over the course of time, what we found is it was upwards in excess 

of 50,000 barrels a day, a total spill over the course of 89 days that 

was a mind blowing just under five million barrels of oil, and the 

specific figure that Judge Barbier in the Federal Court in New Orleans has come up with is right at four million. 

That is a lot of oil. The consequences were obvious. Some of you 

have pointed them out. In a state like mine, we lost an entire tourist season, not because there was oil on the beach, as there was on 

Pensacola Beach, and some tar balls got as far east as Panama 

City Beach, but because people thought there was oil on the beach, 

and they did not come to the Gulf Coast, all the way down to the 

southern tip of Florida, Marco Island. 

In addition, almost 40 percent of the Gulf was closed to fishing, 

and all the livelihood that occurred from there. 

About a year into this, I went to LSU and I talked to a couple 

of professors that were doing an investigation comparing what was 

happening in Barataria Bay with other bays that had not had the 

oil. The little fish that is about that big [indicating] called the 

‘‘killifish,’’ they found a lot of changes. They found mutations in the 

lungs. They found reproduction was down. They found stunted 

growth, et cetera, compared to those killifish in other bays. 

We know there is an obvious effect. That is in part why we set 

up the money that is eventually going to flow from the RESTORE 

Act in the Trust Fund. 

That is why we set up these centers of excellence in each of the 

states, and specifically for Florida, a real research organization, 

and it is the Florida Institute of Oceanography, a 21 university 

consortium located at University of South Florida, that will continue to do research on the health of the Gulf, which we do not 

know, as you all have suggested in your testimony, we do not know 

the effect, and we do not know how much oil is down there at 5,000 

feet still below, and what are the long term effects. We saw in the 

food chain up from the killifish effects upon the higher food chain 

creatures. 

There is a lot to know. I will be filing some legislation tomorrow 

that I will announce later that would ensure that NOAA and the 

Coast Guard have the tools to prepare and respond for the next 

marine oil spill. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Nelson. I guess we can start 

on questions. I know we have an event coming up before too long 

over in the House chambers, a joint session. A lot of people will 

probably be departing for that. 

31 

I will just ask a couple of quick questions and then I will turn 

it over to people here who may want to drill down a little further. 

This would just be for the entire panel. That has to do with kind 

of the lessons learned from all this, and what has been the most 

important improvement in safety or response technology in the 5- 

years since Deepwater Horizon. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I will talk about what we are doing at the Center 

for Offshore Safety and SEMS. I think even though a lot of companies have good programs, we have really changed, we have come 

together, worked together, developed better systems for sharing 

learning in improving this, and it is really a key tool because it balances between focusing on protecting the individuals and protecting yourself from major incidents, and it gets that balance 

right. 

I think that is what they talked about when they talked about 

safety culture in the Presidential Commission report. 

The SEMS processes embed safety into every phase of learning, 

managing change, developing skills and knowledge, it is embedded 

into your whole work process. It continuously looks at assuring and 

measuring that you have built barriers and have those barriers in 

place. 

I think building a place to learn, improve, and make that continuously better and maintain a continuous focus on that and get 

the balance right is one of the important additions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Anybody else? 

Dr. KINNER. Yes, I would like to address that, Senator. I think 

probably the seminal impact has been the influx of research dollars 

into oil spill R&D. Really, prior to the spill, the amount of money 

that went in both on the Federal side and on the industry side, et 

cetera, was really relatively low, and this effort through GoMRI, 

the National Academy, through industry, and to a lesser extent 

through the Federal Government, has really focused on some key 

questions. 

I think the real issue is moving beyond figuring out what is 

going on in the Gulf, to figuring out how to do response better, and 

response in areas other than Gulf oil spills. 

As you know, every day we see in the news spills of trains, spills 

with pipelines, potentially developing in the Arctic. There are some 

major, major impacts that could occur from those spills that we are 

really not addressing as well. 

I would hope that we would see that research percolate into 

these other key areas. 

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Reddy? 

Dr. REDDY. Thank you. My thoughts about response are it is a 

lot better than it used to be, and in part because after the Exxon 

Valdez spill, which was 13 million gallons of oil, we had only one 

million gallons of oil released in 1991. Business was incredibly 

good. In fact, the track record of oil spills was much, much better. 

The oil spills were not from tankers but actually from ships carrying oil, like the Cosco Busan oil spill in 2007. 

My biggest concern and perhaps the lesson learned is that there 

is a continued interest in understanding effects and damages of 

spills, and not putting enough input, as my colleagues have said, 

into response. 

32 

For all practice purposes, we are training the next generation of 

home insurance adjustors on how to do a better adjustment about 

a house that just burned down instead of training firefighters to 

stop the fire from being one story to a complete catastrophe. 

If I could say one thing, the response has to get more attention 

because that is where the action is. That is where limiting damages 

is. 

I originally would say we should double down on our response 

but I am pretty sure we should be all in. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Dr. Joye? 

Dr. JOYE. I echo Dr. Reddy’s sentiment on the value of response, 

but in terms of lessons learned, I think there were potentially three 

really critical lessons that we learned from the Deepwater Horizon 

moving forward, and they have to do with the Federal oil budget. 

One is the absolute essential nature of determining the flow rate 

properly from day one, not 2 months after the spill—the discharge 

has become. The fact that the flow rate was not properly determined until almost 2 months into the event means we will never 

know how much oil was discharged from that well, which means 

making the oil budget and closing the oil budget essentially impossible. Techniques are available to do that and it should be done. 

The second thing is if you look at the Federal oil budget, that little pie chart, there is a big part of the pie that is missing, and Dr. 

Reddy referred to that. That is oil sediment to the sea bottom, and 

the range of that is from two to 16 percent, and we do not know 

where in that 2 to 16 percent the actual number is. That is upwards of 10 million, it is a huge fraction of the discharge. 

We know the mechanism now by which that oil got from the surface to the bottom, it is biological processes for the most part, and 

that needs to be included in the oil budget and it needs to be quantified during the next response. 

Finally, the deepwater plumes. We do not really know how much 

of the discharged oil was in the deepwater plumes. It could have 

been 30 percent. I think that is a good number. That is a number 

that I use. What happened to all that oil. The only way you could 

have constrained that is if you were actually tracking the fate of 

that material continuously, and it was not. 

One of the biggest holes in the oil budget is you have all this oil 

that you cannot really quantify. Nobody was measuring rates of oil 

by degradation. Why is that? Because it is really hard to do. It is 

painful, it is excruciating, it is expensive, it is time consuming, it 

is laborious, your graduate students hate you for making them do 

it. It is absolutely necessary. 

Back in 2010, we were doing it in my group at a very minimum 

level because of the expense, and now we do it extensively because 

of the urgency, and the fact that we need to know what these baselines are. 

Those sorts of things have to be factored into the next response 

because otherwise we are never going to be able to close the oil 

budget and understand what happened to all the oil that was discharged from the next well that blows up. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Joye. I am going to turn now to 

Senator Nelson, followed by his colleague from Florida, Senator 

Rubio. 

33 

Senator NELSON. Are you talking about the oil that was floating 

on the surface? 

Dr. JOYE. I am talking about both the oil that was floating on 

the surface—— 

Senator NELSON. No, the plumes. 

Dr. JOYE. The deepwater plumes, I think we did a pretty good 

job of measuring methane degradation. In terms of oil by degradation, there are only two estimates. One was by Terry Hazen, and 

that was in a flask experiment done in the lab, and one was done 

by Rich Carmilli and Dr. Reddy here looking at oxygen depletion. 

The two numbers of oil degradation that they get are vastly different. One was very fast and one was very slow. Those are the two 

numbers and neither of them were direct measurements using tracers. 

Senator NELSON. You are talking about the oil that was floating 

on the top? 

Dr. JOYE. All of it. We did not measure microbial degradation of 

any of the oil properly. 

Senator NELSON. Were we not lucky that the loop current did not 

catch the oil and take it south and around the Florida Keys and 

up the southeast coast of Florida? 

Dr. JOYE. Very lucky. 

Senator NELSON. Where the Gulf Stream is right at the coast. 

Dr. JOYE. We were very lucky. 

Senator NELSON. We were. Tell us, Dr. Joye, about your study 

regarding the subsea oil sediment blizzard. 

Dr. JOYE. Dr. Reddy has published on this as well. One of our 

original hypotheses was that there would be sedimentation of oil 

due to bacterial processes. The bacteria that degrade oil are renown for their ability to excrete mucous, really sticky, heavy, 

exopolymers, that help them essentially emulsify the oil and make 

it more bioavailable. 

The unfortunate side of that is this stuff is sticky, and sediment 

particles, other organisms, it sticks to that material and makes it 

sink. It sinks like a stone, hundreds of meters per day. This material can get from the top to the bottom within a week, and it contains residual weathered oil. 

We first found these deposits in August 2010 near the wellhead. 

They were as thick as five to 10 centimeters, as you go away from 

the wellhead, they thinned out, but these deposits were essentially 

everywhere that we looked. We have been tracking them for the 

past 5 years. In many places, if you put them side by side from 

2010 to 2015, you would not be able to tell which were collected 

in 2015 or in 2010 because they are not going away. 

Senator NELSON. How far out from the wellhead did you find 

that? 

Dr. JOYE. Our most far field sample, I believe, was around 70 kilometers or so from the wellhead. Again, it is a huge area. One of 

the issues is you cannot possibly sample the entire area. It is so 

heterogeneous, as Dr. Reddy said, we are never going to know how 

much oil is on the sea bed, because there is just no way to physically sample it properly. 

Senator NELSON. As we are researching in the future to try to 

determine the health of the Gulf as a result of this four to five milVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:52 Nov 13, 2015 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\97534.TXT JACKIE
34 

lion barrels of oil spill, what are we going to look for other than 

the obvious, the food chain, the critters? What are we going to look 

for? 

Dr. JOYE. The benthic impacts of sediments of oil are multiple. 

One is cold water corrals, for example, that were essentially wiped 

out because of oil sedimentation. Benthic invertebrates were wiped 

out in areas of high oil sedimentation. 

The things you can look for in terms of long term impact, this 

material is not just sitting on the bottom, it is getting immobilized, 

it is getting re-suspended, and it is moving around, and it still contains a significant level of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which 

are toxic. 

The movement of this material could perpetuate its impact on 

benthic ecosystems. There are many bottom dwelling fish and organisms that live in the Gulf of Mexico. Anything that relies on the 

bottom as a food source or habitat could be potentially damaged by 

this material. 

Dr. KINNER. Senator Nelson, might I follow up on that? 

Senator NELSON. Please. 

Dr. KINNER. I think one thing that we would credit the great 

state of Florida for is that some of this work was pioneered by researchers in Florida. Dave Hollander, for example, at University of 

South Florida. 

The key question of what these scientists have found is how 

would we use that information in a future response, either in the 

Gulf or for Senator Sullivan in the state of Alaska. 

If you have another spill, what does this sedimentation process 

mean. I think the question here is if we have oil in either the surface water or deep down and you have some kind of particulates, 

for instance, in Cook Inlet, if you have a lot of sediment in the 

water, or if you have this biological phenomenon in the Gulf during 

the spring, you are going to bring potentially a certain amount of 

that oil down to the bottom. 

That is something that responders need to think about and factor 

in when they think about the tradeoff’s in response. I think that 

is a great example of how research can impact the response we do 

in the future and the tradeoff’s responders have to make and factor 

in. 

That is where this scientific collaboration really would work. Another great example that both Dr. Reddy and Dr. Joye brought up 

is this question of flow rate. If we had a scientific network that responders could talk with scientists beforehand and say here is the 

situation we are worrying about, a blow out scenario, we could get 

scientists thinking ahead of time and say how would you measure 

the flow rate, and a dialogue would ensue, and I think we would 

have realized much more quickly that was a lack of what we knew 

in response. 

Those are just a couple of examples, Senator. 

Senator NELSON. I will just say in closing that we had to raise 

cain to get the pictures 5,000 feet below. Once we got that streaming video, and we actually put it up on my website, then you scientists could look and start making calculations. Whoa, this is a lot 

more than what was originally thought. 

35 

I will just say in closing that we had the Coast Guard Commandant here in the last couple of days. There are a lot of lessons 

learned about how to handle an emergency. I personally think it 

has to be a military command structure with a clear line of authority, since you have emergency conditions that are happening every 

day. It is a war zone out there. 

I think there were quite a few mistakes made in that regard. 

Thank you. 

Senator RUBIO [presiding]. Senator Peters? 

STATEMENT OF HON. GARY PETERS, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM MICHIGAN 

Senator PETERS. Thank you, Senator Rubio. Thank you to the 

panelists for the discussion here today. 

We are looking at the fifth year anniversary of the oil disaster 

in the Gulf, but this could also be, this coming July, the fifth anniversary of another major spill disaster that occurred in my home 

state of Michigan, where we had a six foot break in a pipeline that 

resulted in over a million gallons of heavy crude oil, which overwhelmed the Kalamazoo River, that has been the most expensive 

pipeline break on shore in the history of this country, well over $1 

billion has been spent in clean up. They are still working aggressively to complete that project. 

One of the most troubling aspects of the disaster is it took 18 

hours before a utility employee reported the spill and the pipeline 

company learned of the spill into the waters. 

Unfortunately, as I am sure all of you will agree, failures in pipeline oversight have become the norm, not the exception. Last week, 

in fact, there was an article here locally in Politico that showed the 

gaping holes that we have in pipeline safety regulations. 

We had the Commandant, as Senator Nelson mentioned, of the 

Coast Guard here earlier. I asked him specific questions about an 

issue that I am particularly concerned about, and that is pipelines 

that we have in the Great Lakes, particularly after the pipeline 

break we had in the Kalamazoo River. 

It would be absolutely catastrophic to have a pipeline break in 

the Great Lakes. We currently have a pipeline that goes through 

the Straits of Mackinac, a little over five miles of beautiful Lake 

Michigan and Lake Huron water. It is a pipeline that is nearly 60 

years old. It is operated by the same company that had the pipeline 

break that has resulted in a major disaster on our shore, and there 

are other pipelines. 

Dr. Kinner, I appreciated your earlier comments that we need to 

be looking at these other areas. I would argue that the Great Lakes 

is particularly troublesome given the fact of not only the recreation 

and other activities but we have tens of millions of people who 

drink the water of the Great Lakes. This is a depository of most 

of the world’s fresh water. 

If you would comment on a spill in the Great Lakes, Dr. Kinner, 

Dr. Reddy, Dr. Joye. The Commandant from the Coast Guard mentioned that if we had a spill in the Great Lakes, it would be even 

more problematic because some of the microbes that exist in the 

ocean do not exist in fresh water. He also needed to review some 

36 

of the response plans which he was not able to comment on at least 

immediately, although I am sure they have some. 

If you could comment as to how comfortable you feel having pipelines in one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world, and 

what are some of the unique challenges we may face in the Great 

Lakes, and what are things we need to be thinking about particularly as we look for reauthorization of PHMSA and other legislation 

in the future. I will start with you, Dr. Kinner. 

Dr. KINNER. Thank you very much, Senator. The key difference 

that I see, and there are response plans certainly for that region— 

the key difference that I see is one of the tools right now would be 

out of the toolbox of response, and that is dispersants, because 

dispersants are not really functional in fresh water. That tool, 

which was quite valuable and obviously has some utility in the 

Gulf, is not available. 

There is research being done to work on that, but that would 

make it very, very difficult if you had high wind and wave conditions, for example, and we know the Great Lakes can be very, very 

dangerous, that would be very difficult to recover that oil, and it 

could be quite problematic. 

I think that is one thing that troubles me more than anything 

else, how we would respond. Mechanical recovery is great, but it 

does not work well if you have very stormy conditions. 

Senator PETERS. Dr. Reddy? 

Dr. REDDY. Senator Peters, I could not agree with you more. In 

fact, I actually am no longer going to do any more research on the 

Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. We are in fine hands 

with Dr. Joye and others. 

I believe the future of oil spill science is with Bakken oil spills 

and dilbits, like what happened in Kalamazoo, and I am currently 

working on the Bridger pipeline release that was in the Yellowstone River on January 17. 

To make an example, Bakken oil spills, which is probably then 

newest source of oil to the United States and North America, there 

is not one published paper on a Bakken oil spill in the United 

States. 

As much as we know about the Gulf of Mexico and the baseline 

knowledge, it pales in comparison to future oil spills, and I might 

even be so frank as to say that we are particularly lucky because 

NOAA and the Coast Guard and other responders are outstanding 

and did a fantastic job after the Deepwater Horizon, and they are 

battle hardened for marine spills. 

I do not think we have the same level or experience in land 

spills, so in many respects, we have a lot of work to do. I think 

your concerns are validated. 

Senator PETERS. In the Great Lakes in particular. 

Dr. REDDY. Throughout these areas where we have pipeline 

movement of these new types of products, whether it is Bakkens 

or dilbits or other products. 

Dr. JOYE. I am in total agreement. I see this as a huge issue in 

terms of response, Federal response and natural ecosystem response. The microbiology of oil and gas is not nearly enough known 

in marine systems. When you go to fresh water, there is quite a 

37 

bit of data on groundwater, but not in surface fresh water systems. 

We do not really know how those systems are going to respond. 

Many of these lakes have been very well characterized in terms 

of the basic biology and microbiology, but in terms of hydrocarbon 

dynamics, there is next to nothing known about how the systems 

would respond to a major infusion of oil, and that is a tremendous 

data gap that needs to be filled. 

Senator PETERS. Thank you for your comments. Very troubling 

and something we have to pay very close attention to. Thank you, 

Senator. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. I am going to skip my turn in interest of time because I know everyone is anxious to hear from the 

Prime Minister. Senator Klobuchar? 

STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you. I just want to follow up a little bit, Dr. Reddy and Dr. 

Joye, being in a state right next to North Dakota, where it has 

really been in many ways a good thing that we have gotten some 

more domestic oil, but we have also seen all the trains and some 

spills. 

What kind of scientific research exactly do you think would be 

helpful? I know you talked about the effect on fresh water, and how 

do we get that research going so we know and make good decisions 

as we move forward? 

Dr. REDDY. I do not even know where to start to be frank because there is such little knowledge known. For example, every oil 

is different. Oil has different personalities and characteristics and 

these dictate their behavior. Ultimately we have not had a full 

comprehensive examination. 

If we are going to keep talking about health, we have not done 

a physical on some of the products that are being moved in your 

backyard. In order for us to even start to make plans, we have to 

get a good understanding of the behavior and the chemistry of oil 

spill science and Bakken oils. 

Bakken oil has been well characterized and there are excellent 

studies by the United States Department of Transportation in the 

last year. That is about looking at whether or not there is an explosion. There is much less known about the behavior of oil. 

I would start off by saying let’s investigate our patient, get an 

idea as to the behavior, and then we can make the most well informed decisions about how to put our assets in place in future research. 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Very good. I wanted to go back to some of 

the other spills and what has happened. There has been legislation 

that has been passed since then. Mr. Williams, do you think these 

policy changes—I am thinking of the Exxon Valdez spill—has these 

policy changes resulted in reduced incidents and safety improvements? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I think absolutely. All these were great tragedies 

and the focus has to be on how we can continuously improve. I 

agree we have to be ready for a response, but we have to be really 

focused on prevention as well. 

38 

I think all the focus that is put on prevention and improving prevention, like the things we are doing on safety and environmental 

management systems and making those more effective in prevention are extremely important as we move ahead. We have to learn 

and improve and do the prevention and also be ready for the response. 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Thank you. One of the concerns that we 

had with the Gulf spill was just the effect on migratory birds. We 

have over a million, if you can believe, water fowl, in Minnesota, 

including loons, ducks, geese. I remember we were really concerned 

about their nesting grounds and what is going to happen when 

they are headed down to the Gulf of Mexico. Our state bird is a 

loon. 

What has been the spill’s long-term impact on migratory bird 

habitat? I guess I would ask one of the three of you, whoever wants 

to take it. Dr. Joye? 

Dr. JOYE. I can take a shot at that. I have done quite a bit of 

work in coastal ecosystems. In the marshes of Louisiana, there are 

still some fairly devastating impacts of the Deepwater Horizon. 

There are places in Barataria Bay where if you looked at it, it 

would appear to be fresh oil, shows upon the marsh banks. This 

is a continuing impact on avian populations in those areas that are 

impacted. 

Some marshes are fine, some marshes are not. It is very 

splotchy, very heterogeneous, and it is the same along the Gulf 

Coast. Some places were hardly impacted, some places were heavily impacted. The coast of Louisiana took a very, very hard hit, and 

it is going to take a very long time for that oil to get completely 

out of the system. 

I remember a colleague of mine was telling me recently that they 

had set up a project, a monitoring program, about four years ago, 

and some of their control plots at the time were free of any visible 

oil. They took sediment cores, there was no oil there. Everything 

looked fine. 

Two years later, their control plots were covered in oil and had 

become completely transformed from a natural control to a very 

contaminated site. That is what the animals that inhabit these 

marshes are dealing with. The system is still changing 5 years 

after the incident. 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Thank you very much. 

Dr. KINNER. Senator, I would like to just follow up on that if I 

could. I think Dr. Joye is right on, but I think the other thing as 

I said in my remarks and in my testimony is when an oil spill happens, very bad things happen. Tradeoffs have to be made. That is 

one of the primary reasons why dispersants were used, to minimize 

as best as possible the impact on the near shore and coastal habitats. You cannot eliminate the impact because it is so much oil. 

You are trying to minimize that damage. 

Senator KLOBUCHAR. Mitigate it, that is right. Thank you very 

much. 

Senator RUBIO. Senator Markey? 

39 

STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD MARKEY, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS 

Senator MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. Congress has still failed to put in place the safety reforms recommended following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the independent Blue Ribbon BP Spill Commission gave Congress a grade 

of D+ on its legislative response to the spill. 

More than 5 years after the spill, we still have not enacted key 

drilling safety reforms such as significantly raising the liability cap 

for an offshore spill and increasing civil penalties. 

Dr. Joye, Dr. Reddy, can you speak to that and whether or not— 

good to see you both again, and welcome to the Committee. Your 

recommendation on those issues, D+ from an independent commission really does not give any great reassurance that we are going 

to be protected. 

Dr. JOYE. I think one way to move forward in a very positive way 

that would benefit both industry and the response side of this problem is to form an academic response network that is well integrated into the National Incident Command that works with Federal responders. 

I think that many of the issues that were faced and the challenges that were faced in the response to the Deepwater Horizon 

by both the Federal side and the academic side was just incredibly 

poor communication between Federal responders and academic responders. 

Academics have a lot to offer. We have a lot of system knowledge. We have a lot of expertise, and that should be fully taken advantage of, and it was not. 

Senator MARKEY. Should Congress take action to make sure the 

spill recommendations are put in place? 

Dr. JOYE. Absolutely. 

Senator MARKEY. OK, great. Dr. Reddy? 

Dr. REDDY. I could not agree more. Furthermore, I would like to 

make sure that credit is due to you, Senator Markey, because in 

many respects while you were a Congressman, you actually paved 

the way, and you broke down many of these walls that led to what 

I think is a much better place now between academia and responders. 

It was a big problem at the beginning of the spill, and certainly 

you broke down these walls, and I think we are in a much better 

place. 

Unfortunately, scientists always say three things, we wish we 

had more time, we wish we had more money, and we are not quite 

sure. In this case, I would say that in order for us to grease these 

wheels and to get academia and response working more closely together where I think we have great synergistic effects, we are certainly going to have to grease these wheels and provide more funding that in many cases was outlined in the President’s Commission. 

Senator MARKEY. Dr. Kinner, do you want the recommendations 

of the BP Commission to be implemented? 

Dr. KINNER. Absolutely. I think they are critical. I think the 

other thing—— 

Senator MARKEY. Do you think it is critical for Congress to act 

to put them in place? 

40 

Dr. KINNER. Yes, sir. What I think also to follow on with what 

my colleagues have said, it is not only critical to have the academic 

community interacting with responders during a spill, but I think 

it is critical before a spill. 

I think now is when we should be having responders talking 

more with scientists and getting into the issues. Science has a lot 

to bring to the table. It could be brought to the table now. It is too 

chaotic during a spill to be discussing what is going on. 

It is thinking ahead of time, here is a spill, as the Senator from 

Michigan and Senator from Minnesota pointed out, here is a spill 

that could occur in the Great Lakes. What are the issues we would 

face? How could we deal with them? 

Senator MARKEY. The same issues that the BP Commission are 

recommending that we implement. 

Let me ask you this, natural gas, right now it is not counted in 

terms of release and when there is a calculation for fines, should 

natural gas be included in terms of potential damage? Dr. Joye? 

Dr. JOYE. In my opinion, absolutely. It has an ecosystem impact. 

It should be included without question. 

Senator MARKEY. Dr. Reddy? 

Dr. REDDY. I could not agree more. 

Senator MARKEY. Dr. Kinner? 

Dr. KINNER. Yes. 

Senator MARKEY. Mr. Williams? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I think the key thing is to really look at the gaps, 

and when you find gaps, close the gaps. 

Senator MARKEY. Should natural gas be included? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I do not have a comment or position on that. 

Thank you. 

Senator MARKEY. OK. Thank you. Just one final question. The 

BP is saying there has been no significant long-term population 

level impact to species in the Gulf. Do you believe that is accurate 

or is that just a premature overstatement of a conclusion that cannot yet be determined? Dr. Joye? 

Dr. JOYE. I disagree with that statement. 

Senator MARKEY. Great. I am going to run out of time. Dr. 

Reddy? 

Dr. REDDY. I believe it is premature and I would rather be in the 

long game of science to make sure we get everything in place before 

we can really hammer out what we know and what we do not 

know. 

Senator MARKEY. Thank you. Dr. Kinner? 

Dr. KINNER. I do not think we know yet. 

Senator MARKEY. That is great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. Senator Ayotte? 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you all for being 

here. Dr. Kinner, I wanted to follow up based on my recent visit, 

where I had the opportunity to visit the Coastal Response Research 

Center, and ask you as we address the challenges of preventing 

spills and also properly responding to spills, to protect the environment and to really use the best means available in technology, how 

at the Center have you had discussions with the private sector and 

worked with the private sector as we look at really their responsiVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:52 Nov 13, 2015 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\97534.TXT JACKIE
41 

bility and their piece in this of using the best technology to prevent 

spills and also if we have one, of properly responding? 

Dr. KINNER. Yes. I think we really as the Center, and as you 

know, the Center focuses on bringing together all stakeholders, so 

we bring industry to the table. 

I am sure you remember my little circle pin. We bring everybody 

to the table. They all have an equal seat at the table, and industry 

is very important in that mix, because industry, as Mr. Williams 

mentioned, is the group that is going to implement changes. 

We can legislate changes. We can have requirements. They are 

the ones who have to implement them. We do bring industry to the 

table in our discussions. 

For example, I was just mentioning a bit ago about if there was 

a spill in the Great Lakes, we need to be developing dispersants 

that work in fresh water. Industry is certainly a partner there and 

they are working on that. 

I am not saying we should just take what industry does without 

any kind of evaluation. I think they are a big player here, and they 

have spent quite a bit of money on research. Those researchers are 

valuable parts of the community of researchers to discuss these 

problems. 

I think they are important to bring to the table. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you for that. I just want to understand, 

because I see this as we all have a piece in this, making sure that 

we are using the best practices and then also responding properly 

going forward. 

I know you had a forum that was hosted and really brought not 

only public sector research, industry groups together last fall, and 

wanted to get your insight of what the discussion and conclusions 

were of that forum that we might be able to use as policymakers 

as we address these issues. 

Dr. KINNER. Yes. I will say all of my colleagues up here were at 

that forum. 

Senator AYOTTE. They are happy to jump in, too. 

Dr. KINNER. We have taken away basically three messages from 

that. The first is the concept of involving academics and scientists 

in thinking about how to improve response. My colleagues have 

talked a little bit about that. 

As I mentioned, I think it is more than just interacting during 

a spill, it is getting those dialogues going and those evaluations 

happening before spills to think about the new types of threats we 

face. 

The second thing, and I think this is really important, is thinking about communication. We have a real problem of communicating with the public during a spill, prior to a spill, et cetera. 

The Deepwater, we saw that. We see that continuing today with the 

kinds of spills, with the energy renaissance. 

To that end, as you know, we are having a forum where we are 

bringing together folks from the media and folks from the government and folks from industry to talk about how we can prepare for 

communications that are more effective ahead of spills, and what 

kinds of communication strategies, what will the media bring that 

are issues that we have not dealt with. 

42 

The third thing, as you know, Senator, and helped us sponsor 

last week, bringing the best people to the table to brief congressional staff, and I know several people were at our briefing last 

week, about the latest and important issues that we as a community see developing. 

Those are three things. Thank you, Senator. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you. 

Dr. REDDY. I would take home one message from that meeting. 

Commandant Allen said do not exchange business cards during a 

crisis. That is certainly a lesson learned. 

Last week, I was lecturing in a marine pollution class at the 

United States Coast Guard Academy for cadets who will be graduating this year. I could have talked about science to them. Instead 

I talked to them about how they were going to play a critical role 

in the future of oil spills. 

At the end of the day, I tried to give them a lesson in sociology 

and about different cultures, and that ultimately they are going to 

interact with a wide range of different stakeholders. I told them 

when they get stationed, instead of exchanging e-mails, I think 

quite frankly that a cup of coffee and exchanging e-mails is going 

to save many miles of coast line. 

We have to not only start to, but we have to recognize that it is 

an important median to build relationships before a spill. 

Senator AYOTTE. I thank you all for sharing your testimony 

today. I have to say with many of the crises we face and challenges, this seems to be a take away, that you cannot be exchanging business cards at the time when you have a crisis situation. 

I think that is a good lesson for us to take, not only in this context, and hopefully we can help facilitate your work there, but in 

every context as we respond to challenges in communities and also 

for our environment. Thank you. 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. Senator Sullivan? 

STATEMENT OF HON. DAN SULLIVAN, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA 

Senator SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the 

panelists. This is a very important issue that you are shedding 

light on. I think we all struggle in many ways with the issue of certainly mitigating risk to human live, as we saw in the Gulf. Also, 

to the environment, and while maintaining the opportunities that 

we have in the energy sector, whether it is robust jobs, great opportunities, energy security. 

Of course, you know in my state you see a lot of that. We struggle with a lot of that. They are very, very important issues. We are 

very proud of our record in Alaska, some of the highest standards 

on the environment and protection literally in the world. 

I have had the opportunity to be in other parts of not only the 

country but the world, Russia, Azerbaijan. The standards do not 

even come close to what we have in Alaska, the highest. 

At the same time we have significant opportunities. You mentioned Cook Inlet. We have a jobs boom in Cook Inlet, a basin that 

was considered a dead basin a couple of years ago is now providing 

enormous opportunities, energy, jobs, and exports for this country. 

43 

I think we all know this is a critical issue that we need to balance. I appreciate all the work that you all have done on this issue. 

Let me just start with a quick question. I think a lot of times 

we get the sense, particularly in the Federal Government, that one 

size can fit all, on these issues. As you know, there are many, 

many different types of basins, many different types of resources. 

I will give you one example. We were talking about the Deepwater Horizon. There was, of course, a Gulf moratorium that Secretary Salazar put on the Gulf during that time. He also slapped 

a moratorium on Alaska that summer, which I thought as Attorney 

General of the state was not legal. Two very, very different scenarios, 100 feet of water in the OCS off the coast of Alaska, 6,000 

feet in the Gulf. They put a moratorium on us anyway. 

Do you agree that we should be looking at these issues not as 

one size fits all but very, very particular given the different basins, 

different challenges that we have in different regions of the country? Mr. Williams? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I think there has to be a framework, obviously, 

but I think it is absolutely key, and that is one of the principles 

we work on in the Center for Offshore Safety, that you have to 

plan, identify hazards, build barriers, manage your program all to 

address the circumstances of where you are. 

The real key to preventing incidents is this planning and continuous monitoring around the circumstances and conditions in which 

you are going to have to operate. 

Senator SULLIVAN. Thank you. Dr. Kinner, do you have a 

thought on that? 

Dr. KINNER. Yes. I think that is correct, but I think we can take 

some resources and knowledge that we have from other areas and 

help it inform how we do work. 

I will give you an example. During the spill in the Gulf, there 

was a common operating picture called ‘‘ERMA,’’ the Environment 

Response Management Application, that NOAA used, and there 

was even a public site, that was actually a resource for all sorts 

of environmental data coming in and being a home for that data 

where responders and the public could look at it and scientists. 

That application has been applied in your state, but it takes a 

different kind of application because, for instance, in the Arctic, 

there may not be connectivity during a spill with the Internet, 

which in the Gulf is much, much easier. 

A stand-alone version of ERMA had to be developed. These kinds 

of things sometimes do have some overlap, but they need to be tailored to the unique situation, as you pointed out, sir. 

Senator SULLIVAN. Great. Thank you. Let me ask another question, you raised the issue of the Arctic. I think one take away that 

hopefully is positive, hopefully you would agree, that the level of 

cooperation between government and industry has changed in a 

positive direction since the Deepwater Horizon spill. 

I do not know if any of you have seen the National Petroleum 

Council’s recent study on the Arctic. To me, this is to Secretary 

Moniz, this is a good example of industry, science, academics, all 

collaborating on an important issue, Arctic oil and gas development 

and potential. 

44 

Have you read this report and do you agree with the recommendations? Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit for the 

record the summary. This is a very large study that was recently 

released to Secretary Moniz. 

Senator RUBIO. Without objection. 

[The information referred to follows:] 

ARCTIC POTENTIAL: REALIZING THE PROMISE OF U.S. ARCTIC OIL

AND GAS RESOURCES

Committee on Arctic Research 

Rex W. Tillerson, Chair 

National Petroleum Council 2015 

The executive summary of the report can be found at http://npcarcticpotential 

report.org/pdf/AR-ExecutivelSummary-Final.pdf 

Senator SULLIVAN. Mr. Williams? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. No, I actually have not read that report. 

Senator SULLIVAN. It would be interesting to see what you believe after reading this study, maybe we can follow up with questions for the record, if you agree with some of these recommendations in this study. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I will. Thank you. 

Senator SULLIVAN. Dr. Kinner? 

Dr. KINNER. Yes, I have looked at the report, sir, and I think one 

of the key things that is important to point out here is not only the 

Federal Government and the state government and the industry 

working together, but also to involve especially in your state the 

Alaskan Native knowledge and the Alaskan Native culture that is 

so important to how we would respond and the impact a spill 

would have in the Arctic. I think that is a real key. 

Senator SULLIVAN. I agree with that. 

Dr. REDDY. Senator, I saw a presentation about it but I have not 

read the report. I would love to go back to your other question 

about lessons learned. It is like buying a house, location, location, 

location. Alaska is not as conducive to responding to oil spills as 

the Deepwater Horizon. 

In fact, I have an ongoing research project studying the Exxon 

Valdez, and I can tell you I can find fresher less weathered oil from 

the Exxon Valdez than I can in the Deepwater. 

Senator SULLIVAN. But 100 feet of water is not 6,000 feet of 

water. 

Dr. REDDY. No. 

Senator SULLIVAN. There is no reason for an Arctic moratorium. 

Dr. REDDY. No, my point is I am very concerned that we use one 

size fits all. 

Senator SULLIVAN. Me, too. 

Dr. REDDY. And that we have to recognize in how we put our assets in place with the limited infrastructure that you have in place 

in the Arctic so we can use and tailor what we know from these 

very small studies that we have done in the last 25 years, and not 

use what we used in Deepwater Horizon. 

Senator SULLIVAN. I think this study has a lot of the issues that 

we are looking at in my state certainly. Thank you very much, Mr. 

Chairman. 

45 

STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA 

Senator RUBIO. Thank you. I thought I saw Senator Blumenthal. 

Stand by. 

I think what I will do for the record while I wait for Senator 

Blumenthal, I had a statement I was going to enter into the record, 

and I will just enter it verbally. 

I wanted to thank all of you for being here to discuss one of the 

most devastating events that happened to the Gulf of Mexico and 

the states that border it. 

I do think first and foremost today we should pay tribute to the 

11 souls who lost their lives on that tragic day, their families and 

friends are in our thoughts, especially today as we reflect on the 

past 5 years and on the need to assure other Americans do not suffer the same fate. 

This oil spill in April 2010 had an impact on small businesses 

that rely on fishing and tourism dollars, and that impact has been 

tremendous. The event happened during the busy time for my 

state’s beaches and local economies along the Gulf coast and felt 

the blunt of it. Hotel reservations were canceled, restaurants sat 

empty, and those vital tourist dollar plummeted. 

Coupled with what I believe were the Administration’s actions to 

close 88,500 square miles of the Gulf to fishing, 131,000 jobs that 

were supported by $12.8 billion per year, were negatively impacted. 

The environmental impacts were also widespread. An estimated 

4.9 million barrels of oil flowed through that habitat that is home 

to more than 15,000 species. Wildlife washed ashore covered in oil, 

marshes which serve as a habitat for wildlife suffocated and died, 

and deep sea coral colonies showed signs of tissue damage. 

The term ‘‘blowout preventer’’ was on everyone’s tongue while 

live underwater shots of oil spewing into the waters of the Gulf 

was happening. For 87 days, the Nation watched and waited for a 

fix. 

Today, we have been hearing from you about how technology has 

evolved to address the shortcomings of that well. Innovations and 

equipment design and important changes to response measures 

will hopefully prevent another catastrophic event, and technological 

advances have also been made to address any remediation necessary as quickly and effectively as possible. 

I am encouraged by this progress made through ongoing recovery 

efforts, and I am even prouder of the resiliency of the communities, 

the businesses, and the people that were impacted. 

I am pleased, as Senator Nelson highlighted earlier, that the RESTORE Act money is finally being made available to continue the 

recovery efforts on the ground. 

I want to again thank all of you for your insight here today. I 

look forward to a continued dialogue on these issues. Senator 

Blumenthal? 

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM CONNECTICUT 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Just very briefly 

before we close the hearing, as you know, there was a joint investigation by the Department of Homeland Security and Interior in 

46 

April 2010 which revealed, and I quote, ‘‘Numerous systems deficiencies and omissions by the Deepwater Horizon crew as well as 

poor maintenance of equipment, ignoring alarms, and lack of training personnel.’’ 

In 2012, two years after these recommendations were issued, 

Shell had to significantly roll back drilling plans in the Alaskan 

Arctic because of several accidents and missteps that revealed the 

company was ill prepared to be drilling in the harsh conditions of 

the Arctic, and had not been taking safety precautions serious 

enough. 

Let me just ask Mr. Williams, has the oil and gas industry in 

your view heeded the lessons of the Gulf disaster and the subsequent recommendations from this investigation and others in its 

activities in other parts of the world? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir. I think if you look at the Center for Offshore Safety, it was set up as a place where we could collaborate 

and learn together, and learn these lessons on how we could improve safety management. 

The industry in general, I think one of the key changes that I 

mentioned is how we came together and made new industry standards and made new systems for subsea containment, and have 

worked together to improve this. 

The key thing is looking at safety management systems, not only 

are we learning and looking at how we can improve safety management, but we are also measuring it, so we get measurements that 

feed back into this continuous improvement of how to make it better. 

Also, if you do the SEMS’ audit, you have to have a mandatory 

action plan to address any findings that are found in the audit. 

There is also this system of measurement and oversight that leads 

to improvement also. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Is there adequate collaboration among the 

companies? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir. That is why really the Center for Offshore Safety was created, so we have this one place that is entirely 

focused on safety, where we can come together, share learning, 

share data, and share good practices and develop good practices together to do that. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. But is that adequate? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Sir? 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Can more be done? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Always more can be done. That is what our focus 

is, our focus is on doing the audits, doing the learning from incidents, and seeing if there are gaps and opportunities. If they are, 

what are the good practices that can close them. We are going to 

continuously look at that and continuously learn and address that. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Is there anything that Congress should do 

to assure even greater collaboration or greater preemptive and 

proactive action? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. What I would say again is I think the best thing 

to do is now that we have data and we are collecting data, lots of 

people are collecting data, we have the government reports and the 

industry reports, look at the activities now, look at what needs to 

be done. If there are gaps or opportunities for improvement, let’s 

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close those gaps and make those improvements in the best manner 

that we can. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Have you identified gaps that exist now? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. We have improvement items that we have already 

seen from the first set of audits and from our first annual report. 

It is around things like making sure that we have more effective 

processes, making sure people follow those processes, looking at 

station keeping, so the good news is we found these things we 

know we need to work on and we set up task groups and we are 

working on it, and we are going to develop the good practices to 

help the industry get better in those areas that we have seen. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Did you have—— 

Dr. JOYE. I just want to make a comment. John Amos, who runs 

the SkyTruth program, released a report last week that pointed out 

that since 2010, there have been 9,800 hazardous materials spills 

in the Gulf of Mexico. I think that is a number that we all need 

to keep in mind. 

The other thing I wanted to point out is that in 2004, the energy 

platform sank after Hurricane Ivan. That platform was producing 

26 wells, nine of the wells have been plugged, the other 16 are still 

leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico. That has been ongoing now for 

almost 11 years and it has not been dealt with. 

Situations like that should not be allowed to proceed, and I think 

in cases like that, legislation is needed to force the responsible 

party to deal with and seal those wells so there is not a perpetual 

discharge of oil and gas into nearshore waters. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Do you have a response, Mr. Williams? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Absolutely. Our goal is zero spills and zero accidents, and we work hard to achieve that goal every day, and want 

to learn and put all our efforts into that goal. 

Certainly, any of these is a tragedy, and the key is to do all we 

can to be prepared and prevent these, and then if in the regrettable 

circumstance that we have one, to have the proper response to mediate it as best as possible. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. I guess what I am driving at is what specifically can and should be done to address the kind of problem 

that we just heard that seems to be ongoing. Dr. Joye has raised 

it very specifically. I think there is a need to consider specific action. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Like I said, we have worked on standards. We 

have worked on response systems. What I work on, and what I 

think the key focus has to be is you have to have planning, you 

have to have execution, you have to have the skills and knowledge 

in the staff, you have to have the business processes, especially 

how you manage change going forward, and those all have to be 

effectively and continuously done and monitored, that it is all being 

done well. 

That is where the focus really should be, in safety and environmental management systems, making those effective and continuously working. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. My time has expired. 

Dr. KINNER. Senator, might I just make a quick comment as a 

follow-up? I think this kind of dialogue is exactly what I was talking about in my testimony. What we really need to do is get people 

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like John Amos together with people from industry and really talk 

about the details and talk turkey about these situations. 

Lots of times, just this kind of back and forth in the media or 

in one conference or another is not really moving the problem forward, and that is what I am talking about, really to focus on the 

details of what is this data showing, what might the situations be, 

et cetera. Those are all the important questions, but they are not 

well discussed in a media forum. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Good point. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator RUBIO. I want to thank all four of you for being here 

today, for your testimony, for your time. 

Before we adjourn, on behalf of the Chairman, I want to enter 

two letters into the record. One is from the Gulf of Mexico University Research Collaborative dated April 28, 2015, and the other is 

from the Louisiana State University Office of Research and Economic Development dated April 28, 2015. 

I enter the second letter despite the fact that LSU will be routinely humiliated by the University of Florida on the football field. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator RUBIO. We will enter them into the record without objection. 

[The information referred to follows:] 

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Senator RUBIO. Again, I want to thank all of you for being a part 

of this. The hearing record is going to remain open for 2 weeks, so 

we are going to ask Senators to submit questions for the record. 

During that period of time, we would ask that if you receive these 

questions that you would submit the written answers to the Committee as soon as possible. 

Again, thank you for being a part of this today, and with that, 

the hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:08 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

(55) 

A P P E N D I X 

RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTION SUBMITTED BY HON. MARCO RUBIO TO

CHARLES (CHARLIE) WILLIAMS II 

Question. Mr. Williams, I recognize the importance of oil and natural gas development in the U.S. and the positive impact that it has on our economy. I also recognize that we must be vigilant and continue to learn and improve. I understand that 

the Center serves the U.S. offshore oil & gas industry with the purpose of adopting 

standards to ensure continuous improvement in safety and offshore operational integrity and I truly respect that. Can you describe what the Center is doing to coordinate and share what industry has learned and what the process is to do that? 

Answer. Safety is a core value for our industry, and in recent years, the oil and 

natural gas sector has made substantial improvements to the safety of offshore operations and drilling. The industry has revised existing standards or created new ones 

to guide the design, construction and integrity of deepwater wells, blowout preventers, subsea capping stacks and many other aspects of offshore exploration and 

production and established the Center for Offshore Safety (COS) to ensure continuous improvement in safety and environmental protection. 

The Center for Offshore Safety (COS), launched in 2011 to promote the highest 

level of safety for offshore drilling, completions, & operations by effective leadership, 

communication, teamwork, utilization of disciplined safety management systems, 

independent third-party auditing & certification, and monitoring continuing improvements, released a first-of-its-kind annual report in 2015 to measure safety performance, compiled from industry data and independent third-party audits. 

Additionally, COS develops guidelines and best practices to help companies embed 

a strong culture of safety into all their operations. It is important to understand 

that safety culture is not a checklist. Safety culture is a daily decision by companies 

and their employees to choose safety first in everything they do. 

COS has created tools to assist companies in building or enhancing safety and environmental management systems, and three COS guidelines have been adopted by 

the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) into its own regulations. In 2015, BSEE also formally recognized COS as the first and only organization with the authorization to accredit Audit Service Providers who conduct the 

BSEE-required Safety and Environmental Management System audits, which are 

required for all offshore oil and gas operators. 

An important component of SEMS is the ability to assess and measure its effectiveness and continually improve as well as sharing SEMS knowledge. COS will 

continue to gather and use the information in its annual reports to develop datadriven improvements and good practices as part of our mission to promote the highest levels of offshore safety. 

RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTION SUBMITTED BY HON. MARCO RUBIO TO

CHRISTOPHER M. REDDY, PH.D. 

Question. Dr. Reddy, it is great to hear that the tide has turned, so to speak, for 

the government to be inclusive to the academic community and I hope that cooperation continues and you and your peers are able to fill gaps the various government 

agencies have. As far as local response, I have heard in the past from Floridians 

that a nationally led team is not the most efficient way to prepare for a spill to 

reach the shores. Can you tell me about your experience on the ground, working 

with local governments and officials? 

Answer. In my near 20 years of responding and studying the fate and impacts 

of marine-based oil spills, I have had very few interactions with local and state officials. I have never participated in any planning exercises, worked closely during a 

spill event, or had a direct line of communication with local officials. When I have 

had such interactions (summarized below), it is during general public discussion of 

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interested parties, unofficial briefings, acts of courtesy for accessing an impacted 

area, or updates months/years later during the damage-assessment phase. 

However, it has been my experience and understanding that local and state officials do interact with Federal responders by attending planning meetings, participating in drills, and coordinating/sharing assets during spill events. For example, 

two weeks ago, I was invited to brief the Southeastern New England Area Region 

command response group, which included Federal (Coast Guard, NOAA, EPA, 

Homeland, Interior) and state environmental officials. Before my presentation, I observed collegial and earnest exchanges as each group provided updates. This group 

appeared to share a unified goal of reducing damages during a spill (or preventing 

a bad one from getting worse). After the meeting, I was invited to participate in all 

future meetings. In addition, state representatives for RI and MA invited me to give 

presentations within their teams. This is certainly evidence that ‘‘tides are changing’’ and suggests that during future spills there will be a greater chance for academics to be more involved with both Federal and local officials. 

Attending meetings and an occasional brief is certainly encouraging, but funding 

would create richer and more fruitful relationships amongst state and local officials 

and academia. One of the key lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon disaster 

stated by former NOAA administrator, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, was that NOAA had the 

greatest benefit from tapping academic talent from past and pre-existing relationships fostered by prior extramural funding and coordination. While states continue 

to struggle with difficult budget environments, small investments in cultivating 

state and local relationships with the public and private academic spill response 

communities has the potential to provide significant benefits and reduced impacts 

when such events occur. 

I will conclude by stating the obvious, it should not be a matter of local versus 

national during environmental incident response, which by their nature know no 

borders. Rather it must be a coordination of local, who understand their water ways 

and issues the best, national, who may have years of experience in spills across the 

country, and academia who can provide fact based in situ information for those 

teams to coordinate better responses. Therefore, supporting academia in participating with these groups before, during and after an incident, is crucial. 

Christopher Reddy’s involvement with state and local officials prior to, during or 

after oil spills: 

Presentations that included local and state officials in the audience: 

• Reddy, C.M. An update on the Bouchard 120 oil spill. New Bedford Whaling 

Museum, New Bedford, MA, May 3, 2003. Presentation. Invited. 

• Reddy, C.M., Chemistry and weathering of the oil. Cosco Busan Oil Spill Technical Workshop January 25, 2008. Oakland, CA (Presentation). Invited. 

• Reddy, C.M. Hunting for subsurface plumes in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. Are we in DEEPWATER? Applying Lessons Learned 

from our SONS Experiences, March 22, 2011, Portsmouth, NH (Presentation). 

Invited. 

• Reddy, C.M. An argument for better aligned relations with academia and the oilspill response community. Southeastern New England Area Region command response meeting. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Massachusetts Maritime 

Academy, Bourne, MA, October 21, 2015. (Presentation). Invited. 

Briefings, workshops, and testimony: 

• Testified on oil spills for Joint Committee on Natural Resources and Agriculture, State of Massachusetts, Boston, MA. May 25, 2004. 

• Advised Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection on spills of alternatives fuels and lubricants, Boston, MA. Mar. 13, 2007. 

• Advised city, state, and Federal officials following the M/V Cosco Busan oil spill 

in San Francisco Bay (Nov. 2007). 

• Participant in Research & Development Priorities: Oil Spill Workshop, The 

Coastal Response Research Center, U. of New Hampshire (Mar. 2009); included 

state representatives 

• Briefed Lt. Governor Elizabeth Roberts (Rhode Island) and Emergency Management Council on oil spills, Warwick, RI, August 10, 2010. 

57 

Access to field samples with help from state officials: 

In 2012 upon request from me via e-mail, Mr. Garrett Graves (LA/DNR) arranged 

for a boat to access an oiled salt marsh (from the Deepwater Horizon). 

Assisting state officials during a natural resource damage assessment: 

I worked with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management 

(Summer/Fall 1997) on the toxicity of oil released during the North Cape spill (coast 

of Rhode Island; January 1996). I had found that the oil was more toxic than 

thought and communicated it in several talks to diverse audiences. Only the Rhode 

Island officials, months later, acted upon it, leading towards an additional 1.5 million dollars added to the damage settlement for Rhode Island. I received numerous 

honors for this work including one from the Honorable Lincoln Almond (Governor 

of Rhode Island). 

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