Oil Disaster Research Articles

“Life Is Losing its Meaning”: The Experiences of Fishing Communities During the Oil Disaster and COVID-19 Pandemic in Pernambuco, Brazil

The goal of this article is to examine how the confluence of the oil disaster and the new coronavirus pandemic had a negative impact on the work and livelihood of artisanal fishing communities in Pernambuco within a short span of time. Eighty people were interviewed (60 of them fishers) along the entire coastline of Pernambuco from October 2019 to February 2020, and through remote surveys from March to April 2020. The category “work culture” and its idea of experience as defined by E.P Thompson forms the basis of our analysis. Our results show that these two tragedies (the oil crisis – felt most strongly from October 2019 to January 2020 – and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that began in March 2020) presented formidable challenges towards the reproduction of the work culture that is produced by artisanal fishers in Pernambuco. This is seen in the experiences that were lived and told by the same Brazilians who currently reside in these fishing communities.

SAR marine oil spill detection based on an encoder-decoder network

ABSTRACT Marine oil spills are currently among the most challenging problems in marine environments. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), with all-day and all-weather observation, has demonstrated great potential in oil disaster monitoring. A simple encoder-decoder network model was proposed by using SAR images for effective oil spill detection. The proposed model incorporates an optimized U-Net architecture that reduces computational requirements while maintaining detection performance. This is achieved through shortened encoder and decoder stages, depthwise separable convolutions, group normalization, and bilinear interpolation-based upsampling. To improve the model’s generalization, the auto-learning rate and focal loss function are also included. Two public SAR datasets acquired by different sensors have been used to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed model. In addition, the polarimetric information has also been assessed for the detection of oil spill monitoring. The results show that the model can achieve high efficiency at a small model size. The sub-dataset with polarimetric features also achieves a high F1-score of 91.65% and an IoU of 84.59%.

РОЛЬ ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ НКО В БОРЬБЕ С НЕФТЯНЫМИ РАЗЛИВАМИ: СЛУЧАЙ УСИНСКОЙ КАТАСТРОФЫ

Based on a case study of the Usinsk oil disaster in the Komi Republic, this article examines public debate on technological disasters in the context of the lives of indigenous peoples. Methodologically, the research is based on focusing on the voices "local" or the voices of "indigenous people". Empirically, the study is based on the series of publications by the NGO "Committee for the Rescue of Pechora". Local residents voiced their interests and demands through this NGO. The article shows how local communities, through their own print media and official websites, constructed, developed and promoted public debate about the consequences of the disaster and held those responsible to account. The key result of the study is that, despite being excluded from the decision-making process, the residents of the Pechora River basin had the potential for power and were able to take a proactive position in the system of confrontations provoked by the Usinsk disaster.

Desastres com petróleo e ações governamentais ante os impactos socioambientais e na saúde: scoping review

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze the actions taken by governments to face the social, environmental, and health impacts of oil spill disasters worldwide. This scoping review was conducted in Bireme, Lilacs, SciELO, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases, considering articles published between 1973 and 2021. The database search returned 22 articles on ten global oil disasters in three continents (Asia, the Americas, and Europe), whose causes were grounding (03), shipwreck (01), collision (02), spill (03), and explosion (01). The actions developed were characterized as intersectoral, economic, environmental, and health-related, and the most frequent were environmental and economic actions. In the actions developed, we observed criticisms of controlling, mitigating, or preventing instantaneous or future damages resulting from oil disasters, which is still an open agenda for social movements in the struggle to ensure a healthy, health-promoting environment that preserves all its biodiversity. The actions to face oil disasters in different countries seem incipient, revealing a governmental inability to guide the confrontation of the impacts of this unusual event.

Oil disasters and government actions in the face of social, environmental, and health-related impacts: A scoping review

RESUMO Este artigo teve por objetivo analisar as ações desenvolvidas pelos governos para o enfrentamento dos impactos socioambientais e na saúde em decorrência dos desastres envolvendo petróleo no mundo. Trata-se de uma revisão de escopo realizada na Bireme, Lilacs, SciELO, PubMed, Cochrane Library e Embase, considerando artigos publicados entre 1973 e 2021. As buscas efetuadas nas bases de dados resultaram em 22 artigos sobre 10 desastres de petróleo ao redor do mundo em três continentes (Ásia, América e Europa), cujas causas dos desastres foram encalhe (3), naufrágio (1), colisão (2), derrame (3) e explosão (1). As ações desenvolvidas foram caracterizadas como intersetoriais, econômicas, ambientais e na saúde, sendo que as mais frequentes foram ações ambientais e econômicas. Nas ações desenvolvidas, observaram-se críticas ao controle, mitigação ou prevenção dos danos instantâneos ou futuros decorrentes dos desastres por petróleo, sendo essa uma agenda ainda em aberto para os movimentos sociais na luta pela garantia de um ambiente saudável, promotor de saúde e com preservação de toda a sua biodiversidade. Conclui-se que as ações para o enfrentamento dos desastres por petróleo nos diferentes países parecem ter sido incipientes, revelando uma incapacidade governamental de orientar o enfrentamento dos impactos desse evento inusitado.

Transversal Harm, Regulation, and the Tolerance of Oil Disasters

AbstractLaw – through regulation, criminalization and litigation – provides key mechanisms for mitigating the harmful effects of oil disasters. At the same time, these mechanisms also enable the perpetuation of oil disasters under an extractivist imperative. This disaster tolerance is the point of departure for this article's examination of the legal response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster over the last decade. Based on a methodology that combines a social harm approach with the political ecology of Felix Guattari, we firstly present a reconceptualization of harm inflicted by oil corporations across three registers: environment, society, and subjectivity. We subsequently introduce the concept of transversal harm, which allows us to move beyond the criminal and civil damage of corporate crime and negligence and to capture the collective and continuous impact of oil extractivism, as opposed to the exceptional impact of oil disasters. Transversal harm opens new avenues for assigning corporate responsibility and reducing disaster tolerance as the by-product of environmental law.

Books and Other Reviews

Key Points Dead zones: The loss of oxygen from rivers, lakes, seas, and the ocean — Glenn Suter Desperate: An epic battle for clean water and justice in Appalachia — Glenn Suter Life is simple: How Occam's razor set science free and shapes the universe — Glenn Suter Offshore Situation Room: Enhancing resilience to offshore oil disasters in the Gulf of Mexico — Robert L. Stevenson Impacts of Fukushima nuclear accident on freshwater environments — Louise Stevenson Plastics in the aquatic environment—Part I: Current status and challenges — Temitope O. Sogbanmu Plastics in the aquatic environment—Part II: Stakeholders' role against pollution — Temitope O. Sogbanmu Cumulative impacts: Recommendations for ORD Research: External review draft — Richard Wenning

A Three-Phase Approach to Production of Shedding Crabs (Callinectes sapidus) in Low Salinity Ponds in Mississippi

The ability to reliably produce small blue crabs through aquaculture allows for expanded development of the soft crab industry in the United States with little or no impact to the wild fishery. Research on soft crab aquaculture in Mississippi is based on a three-phase approach: hatchery production of megalopae, salinity acclimation and grow-out of early juveniles in raceways, and final growth to shedding crabs in shallow ponds. Limited access to quality salt water or to hard water aquifers in Mississippi, coupled with the high cost associated with salting ponds led to the development of techniques to produce peeler crabs in reduced salinities. Hatchery success has been variable (average 14%) with significantly lower production following the Deepwater Horizon Oil disaster in 2011. Protocols for hatching and rearing of larvae and methods developed for intermediate grow-out and salinity acclimation of juveniles are reviewed as well as the adaptation of a folk-fishing technique to harvest peelers from the ponds. Economic studies defined production parameters necessary to reduce costs and attain profitability in low salinity (1) pond culture. Increased survivorship of larvae and juveniles during the hatchery, intermediate grow-out and pond phases and stocking density in ponds were key determinants of profitability. Simulation results at various stocking densities indicated that production of shedding crabs could be economically feasible. Although individual culture runs in the current research approached survival rates that would ensure profitability, routine survivorship is currently below the projected estimates necessary to achieve that goal.

Detection of Caenorhabditis elegans Germ Cell Apoptosis Following Exposure to Environmental Contaminant Mixtures: A Crude Oil-Dispersant Mixture Example.

Crude oil disasters, such as the Deepwater Horizon accident, have caused severe environmental contamination and damage, affecting the health of marine and terrestrial organisms. Some previous studies have demonstrated cleanup efforts using chemical dispersant induced more potent toxicities than oil alone due to an increase in bioavailability of crude oil components, such as PAHs. However, there still lacks a systematic procedure that provides methods to determine genotypic and phenotypic changes following exposure to environmental toxicants or toxicant mixture, such as dispersed crude oil. Here, we describe methods for identifying a mechanism of dispersed crude oil-induced reproductive toxicity in the model organisms, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). Due to the genetic malleability of C. elegans, two mutant strains outlined in this chapter were used to identify a pathway responsible for inducing apoptosis: MD701 bcIs39 [lim-7p::ced-1::GFP+lin-15(+)], a mutant strain that allows visualization of apoptotic bodies via a green fluorescent protein fused to CED-1; and TJ1 (cep-1(gk138) I.), a p53/CEP-1 defective strain that is unable to activate apoptosis via the p53/CEP-1 pathway. In addition, qRT-PCR was utilized to demonstrate the aberrant expression of apoptosis (ced-13, ced-3, ced-4, ced-9, cep-1, dpl-1, efl-1, efl-2, egl-1, egl-38, lin-35, pax-2, and sir-2.1) and cytochrome P450 (cyp14a3, cyp35a1, cyp35a2, cyp35a5, and cyp35c1) protein-coding genes following exposure to dispersed crude oil. The procedure outlined here can be applicable to determine whether environmental contaminants, most of time contaminant mixture, cause reproductive toxicity by activation of the proapoptotic, p53/CEP-1 pathway.

Decline in Survival of Cultured Larvae from Wild-Caught Blue Crabs Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster

Culture data representing 96 observations of larval survival for the blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) over the time period 2008–2019 were examined to determine factors relevant to larval health and survival. The study spans years before and following the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Variability in survival of cultured larvae was high over the study period, despite attention to water quality standards and consistent culture protocols. Generalized linear models were constructed using the pre/postspill factor, several covariates, and individual crabs as subjects to predict the 96 larval survival observations from cultures representing 25 individual spawning female crabs. Survival decreased with age of the culture and nitrite concentration as covariates for both zoeal and megalopal stages. Notwithstanding effects of the two covariates, prespill survival was substantially higher than postspill survival for both zoeae and megalopae. Mean prespill survival values of 13.2% and 21.5% were notably higher than mean postspill survival of 4.7% and 11.2% for zoeae and megalopae, respectively. Postspill studies in the northern GOM found widespread evidence of PAH contamination associated with the DWH event in coastal biota, including wild-caught blue crab megalopae. The co-occurrence of oil and larvae offshore coupled with the oiling of megalopal settlement habitats, juvenile maturation habitats, and barrier island spawning areas suggest there was a high potential for PAH exposure to blue crab populations at all life history stages. Based on published data and known exposure mechanisms, plausible pathways exist for carryover effects of oil on developing larvae. Although the history of contaminant exposure to spawning blue crab females was unknown, the pattern of larval survivorship concurs with published environmental impacts and suggests that bioenergetic effects associated with PAH exposure may have affected maternal crabs or embryos during embryogenesis.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in sediments of the amazon coast: Evidence for localized sources in contrast to massive regional biomass burning.

The Amazon coastal zone has become contaminated with organic pollutants, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). However, information about their distribution and sources in this area is scarce, despite increasing deforestation and oil exploitation. Therefore, individual PAHs were analysed in the sediments of the Oyapock estuary, which is located in the Amazon coastal zone. This study provides information about the spatial and short-term temporal distributions of PAHs and discusses the major sources of PAHs to better understand the anthropogenic processes occurring in adjacent areas. The concentrations of all sixteen priority PAHs defined by the US EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency, ∑16PAHs) ranged from 10.9 to 138.8ngg-1 with a mean and standard deviation=37.9±20.5 and indicated that this estuary is not contaminated, while the mean levels were similar to those found in other Amazon regions and pristine areas along the coast of Brazil. No significant differences were found in the sedimentary PAHs levels between the wet and dry sampling campaigns, despite the different climatic conditions. Diagnostic ratios, positive matrix factorization (PMF) and cluster analysis have shown that the majority of the investigated PAHs were derived from combustion processes (at least 55.1%, as estimated by the PMF model). Localized source inputs from oil and its by-products concomitantly with natural/biogenic sources appear to be secondary sources. The PAH contribution from biomass and wood combustion was approximately 13.6% and was relatively lower than other regions of the Amazon that are undergoing massive biomass burning. As the first study of PAHs in this region, this study provides vital information on the healthy state of the estuary and can serve as a baseline for assessing the impacts of acute oil disasters or the chronic input of PAHs as a result of human settlements.

Oil spill + COVID-19: A disastrous year for Brazilian seagrass conservation

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the greatest global public health threat of the 21st century. Additionally, it has been challenging for the Brazilian shores that were recently (2019/2020) affected by the most extensive oil spill in the tropical oceans. Monitoring programs and studies about the economic, social and ecological consequences of the oil disaster were being carried out when the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic was declared, which has heavily affected Brazil. For Brazilian seagrasses conservation, this scenario is especially challenging. An estimated area of +325 km2 seagrass meadows was affected by the 2019 oil spill. However, this area is undoubtedly underestimated since seagrasses have not yet been adequately mapped along the 9000 km-long Brazilian coast. In addition to scientific budget cuts, the flexibilization of public and environmental policies in recent years and absence of systematic field surveys due to COVID-19 has increased the underestimation of affected seagrass areas and ecosystem service losses due to the oil spill. Efforts to understand and solve the oil spill crisis were forced to stop (or slow down) due to COVID-19 and the economic crisis, leaving ecosystems and society without answers or conditions to identify the source(s) that was/were responsible for this spill, mitigate the damage to poor communities, promote adequate impact assessment or restoration plans, or properly monitor the environment. Our results highlight that pandemic and large-scale environmental disasters may have had a synergistic effect on the economy (e.g., artisanal fisheries and tourism), public health and ecology, mainly due to government inaction, social inequality and poorly studied tropical ecosystems. The results of this study also demonstrate the need to analyze the short- and long-term impacts of the combined effects (oil spill + COVID-19) on the recovery of the economy and coastal ecosystems.

Novel Quantitative Risk Assessment Interface for Fixed Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration Platforms

Abstract Light, sweet crude oils are depleting, forcing oil and gas companies to explore and operate in increasingly deeper waters, remote geographical locations, and harsher environmental conditions with higher safety risks. This paper analyzed the common misuse and errors of typical quantitative risk assessments (QRAs) during identification, assessment, approval, and project implementation stages of a project for the case of optimization of facilities and manning fixed offshore oil and gas platform, as well as the scenario of a gas leak from riser pipeline of a floating production platform. The lessons learned were then applied to design an optimized QRA process for a real case, preproject assessment for a proposed addition of a riser platform (R-A) to a fixed offshore oil and gas platform complex using individual risk per annum (IRPA) and potential loss of life (PLL) analyses. Findings reveal that applying the standard hazard and effects management process (HEMP) and as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) guidelines and tools alone are insufficient. The application of practical lessons learned from the past oil and gas disasters using IRPA and PLL parameters has helped this research to produce an optimized QRA. The optimized QRA process is a live process which could be further improved with future lessons learned.

World Seaborne Trade with Oil: One of Main Cause for Oil Spills?

Oil is a main driver for the growth of modern economies because of its multifaceted use in transport, energy and manufacturing. Due to uneven distribution of petroleum products across the world, maritime transportation of mineral oils has increased. The main objective of the paper is to examine data on oil spills created by oil tankers for the past 50 years and to examine trends in oil trading and oil spill pollution in an effort to analyse the state of pollution in major oil disasters. The paper also considers the key factors of tanker oil spills and summarizes strategies and directions for the global maritime transport industry to prevent oil tanker pollution in the future.

Safety & Environmental Risk Management: Borrowing from the Past to Enhance Knowledge for The Future

The oil and gas industry is facing more and more challenges in the latest decades. Indeed, as oil and gas became more difficult to be found, new areas are targeted, as deep water offshore or more hostile environments like Alaska. These involve high technology industry and imply deep uncertainty. Thus, the application of classical approaches of risk management is limited, as shown by major safety and environmental oil disasters like the Deep Water Horizon Accident. This paper analyses the later as a case study, to discuss the complexity of safety and environmental risk management in deep-water drilling. Given this complexity, the paper will also analyse how feedback from previous accidents can improve knowledge, and change the perception and thus the way safety and environmental risks are managed in deep-water drilling. The findings of the paper contribute to development of risk management policy and risk decision making.

Organized criminals, human rights defenders, and oil companies

This article examines how the world’s arguably largest oil disaster, in the heart of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, has become a testing ground for new global forms of corporate power and the criminalization of dissent. Following the ongoing “trial of the century” between Chevron Corporation and plaintiffs representing tens of thousands of smallholder farmers and indigenous people affected by the disaster, we look at how the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act has been applied against the affected people and their lawyers to sidestep the norm of international comity and alter the parameters for pursuing environmental justice. Specifically, we point to how the case—and a new crop of cases following suit—has threatened to criminalize the use of “lawfare” as a “weapon of the weak.”

Book Review: When Science and Politics Collide: The Public Interest at Risk

The importance and topicality of When Science and Politics Collide: The Public Interest at Risk can hardly be doubted. Author Robert O. Schneider, of the University of North Carolina Pembroke, has a respectable publication history on issues that demonstrate the collision of science and politics: fracking, oil disaster prevention, and emergency management, among others. He provides cogent discussions in areas where clarity and understanding are essential, such as the distinction between science and politics and how they interact in the development of policy.

Like Water & Oil? Fashion photography as journalistic comment

In its August issue 2010, Vogue Italia ran a 24-page fashion editorial by photographer Steven Meisel. Entitled ‘Water & Oil’, it was inspired by the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that began in April that year. The shoot caused an uproar in both new and old media. Across the journalistic coverage of the shoot and the attendant commentary from digital readers and bloggers was an underlying sentiment that a boundary had been crossed, that high fashion photography had no right to use environmental catastrophe as a backdrop for the promotion of fashion. Much of the online commentary echoed Angela McRobbie’s argument, that fashion media (and especially Vogue) can only conceive of political reality as ‘gestures of style … they can never take the form of social analysis’. This essay poses two questions: can fashion photography sometimes perform the usually journalistic work of cultural and political comment? And how can we understand the resistance to such a function, especially in a commercial women’s magazine like Vogue? Sitting at the intersection of cultural studies and journalism studies, it will draw on the work of John Hartley to answer these questions. Laying out the discourse surrounding the controversial photo spread, this essay explains how the images created by Meisel are ‘matter out of place’. They provoke us to re-evaluate what journalism is and who is allowed to perform it.

Global chemical industry contributes $5.7 trillion to global GDP

Oil is a main driver for the growth of modern economies because of its multifaceted use in transport, energy and manufacturing. Due to uneven distribution of petroleum products across the world, maritime transportation of mineral oils has increased. The main objective of the paper is to examine data on oil spills created by oil tankers for the past 50 years and to examine trends in oil trading and oil spill pollution in an effort to analyse the state of pollution in major oil disasters. The paper also considers the key factors of tanker oil spills and summarizes strategies and directions for the global maritime transport industry to prevent oil tanker pollution in the future.

Implications of the GC-HARMS Fishermen's Citizen Science Network: Issues Raised, Lessons Learned, and Next Steps for the Network and Citizen Science.

This paper is intended to complement our extended documentation and analysis of the activities of the Gulf Coast Health Alliance: Health Risks related to the Macondo Spill project Community Outreach and Dissemination Core entitled, "Building and maintaining a citizen science network with fishermen and fishing communities after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster using a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach." We discuss nuances of CBPR practice, including trust-building, clarification of stakeholder expectations, balancing timelines and agendas, cultural fluency, and the importance of regional history-political-economic context, regulatory practices, and cultural life-ways-in creating social dynamics that overarch and underpin the entire process. We examine the unique role of knowledge-making hybrid structures like the project's Fishermen's citizen science network and compare/contrast this structure with other models of participatory science or deliberation. Finally, we reiterate the importance of environmental health literacy efforts, summarize project outcomes, and offer thoughts on the future roles of collaborative efforts among communities and institutional science in environmental public health.