Sustainability in Engineering

A Zero Option for the Gulf?

Now that BP has successfully capped the well and new oil is no longer spilling out into the Gulf, we turn our attention to cleanup. I, like many of you, are disgusted that this accident ever occurred and want to see BP pay for the grievous mistakes that led to this unprecedented disaster. One way is make them go through extraordinary and prohibitively expensive clean-up measures to return the Gulf to its pristine state. But is that the right answer?

In engineering, we’ve been taught to always consider the “zero option” or the “do nothing” option in any alternatives analysis. This should also be applied to the cleanup in the Gulf. Similar to a doctor’s creed, the credo for the Gulf cleanup should be “first do no further harm.” Certainly BP will need to take extraordinary actions to clean up certain sectors of the environment impacted by the spill, but other sectors will be much better off if left alone to heal themselves. Let’s hope that in our cry for justice, we don’t lose sight of this and cause more damage than good by forcing BP to take actions that are counter to the best interests of the Gulf coast environment.

Gulf Oil Spill Top Kill

Let us all hope that BP has finally been successful in halting the most significant oil spill in U.S. history. It’s interesting to follow the recent media coverage which seems to be shifting to a much less vitriolic view of the incident. While we shouldn’t hang BP in effigy over this tragedy, we need to remain diligent in our disdain, continuing to ask the questions “How could this have happened? What have we learned from this? and What will we do differently in the future?” Certainly, we need to improve the safeguards and monitoring when drilling deep oil wells. We also need much better disaster preparedness. But will this be enough to safeguard our environment and justify continued oil exploration in the gulf?

By itself, I feel the answer is no. However, as engineers on the cutting edge of technological advances, we sometimes learn more from our failures than our successes. There is a lot to learn from this incident. I hope that the engineering profession as well as the U.S. government stay closely involved in the study of the incident, the response, and aftermath as well as the anticipated protracted litigation. There will be many “nuggets” of knowledge that we can recognize and apply to advance our understanding of how to do a better job, or we can ignore these “nuggets” and be destined to re-live these failures another time.