Hurricane Ike caused half a million gallons of crude oil to spill

by Dina Cappiello, Frank Bass and Cain Burdeau

Hurricane Ike's winds and waves caused at least a half-million gallons of crude oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Texas and Louisiana, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.
Days before and after the storm, which destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines, companies and residents reported at least 448 releases of oil, gasoline and dozens of other substances into the air and water and onto the ground in Texas and Louisiana. The analysis found that industrial centres near Houston and Port Arthur and oil production facilities off Louisiana's coast were the hardest hit by Ike, which made landfall at Galveston on Sept. 13.

"We are dealing with a multitude of different types of pollution here... everything from diesel in the water to gasoline to things like household chemicals," said Larry Chambers, a petty officer with the US Coast Guard Command Centre in Pasadena, near Houston.
The Coast Guard, the US Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies have responded to more than 3,000 pollution reports associated with the storm and its surge along the Texas coast. Most callers reported abandoned propane tanks, paint cans and other hazardous material containers that appeared in places such as marshes and backyards.

No major oil spills or hazardous material releases have been identified, but almost 1,500 sites need to be cleaned up. The Coast Guard's National Response Centre in Washington collects information on oil spills and chemical and biological releases before passing it on to agencies working on the ground. All reports received by the centre from Sept. 11 through 18 for Texas and Louisiana were analyzed.
With the storm approaching, refineries and chemical plants shut down as a precaution, burning off hundreds of thousands of pounds of organic compounds and toxic chemicals. In other cases, power failures sent chemicals such as ammonia directly into the atmosphere.

Regulators might not penalize companies for those accidental releases because they are storm-related. Additionally, Texas Gov. Rick Perry suspended all rules, including environmental ones that would inhibit or prevent companies from preparing for or responding to Ike.
At times, a new spill or release was reported to the Coast Guard every 5 to 10 minutes. A detailed report from Sept. 14 said: "Caller is making a report of a 6-by-4-foot container that was found floating in the Houston Ship Channel. Caller states the container was also labelled 'UM 3264,' which is a corrosive material." The caller probably meant UN3264, an industrial code that refers to a variety of different acids.

Other reports were more vague. One caller reported a sheen from an underwater pipeline and said the substance was "spewing" from the pipe.
The analysis found that the most common contaminant left in Ike's wake was crude oil. In the week of reports analyzed, enough crude oil was spilled to nearly fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Air contaminants were the second-most common release, mostly from chemical plants and refineries along the coast.

The US Minerals Management Service, which oversees oil production in federal offshore waters, said the storm destroyed at least 52 of the approximately 3,800 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Thirty-two were severely damaged. However, only one report was confirmed of an oil spill at a platform, a leak of 8,400 gallons that officials said left no trace because it dissipated with the winds and currents.
About half the crude oil was reported to have spilled at a facility operated by St Mary Land and Exploration on Goat Island, a spit of uninhabited land north of the heavily damaged Bolivar Peninsula. By the time the company reached the wreckage by boat more than 24 hours after Ike's landfall, the storage tanks containing oil and water produced from two wells in Galveston Bay were empty. Only a smattering of the approximately 266,000 gallons of spilled oil was left, and that was cleaned up, said Greg Leyendecker, the company's regional manager. The rest vanished, probably into the Gulf of Mexico.

But Ike's fury might have helped prevent further environmental damage. Its rough water, heavy rains and strong winds dispersed pollution. Air quality tests by Texas environmental regulators found no problems even in communities near industrial complexes. But the storm also zapped many of the state's permanent air pollution monitors in the region.
Ike's storm surge was less severe than feared -- 12 feet rather than more than 20 feet -- and the dikes, levees and bulkheads built around the region's heavy industry mostly held. Much of that infrastructure is protected by a 1960s-era Army Corps of Engineers system of 15-foot levees similar to the one around New Orleans that failed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. That storm was one of the worst environmental disasters in US history, causing the spilling of about 9 mm gallons of oil.