Chevron’s Frade Spill Fiasco

The deep water oil spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro at the Frade field in the Campos Basin, is definitely being contained. The amount of oil spilling from the fracture on the seafloor has greatly diminished but there is still much cause for worry. To begin with the oil slick will most likely hit some of the coast in the form of tar balls, as happened at the Deepwater Horizon tragedy at the GOM. What has exasperated the population and authorities alike is the lack of truthfulness from Chevron, which has withheld information, edited images of the spill in order to try to decrease its significance, simply lied about the number of vessels used in the cleanup efforts and disrespected cleanup procedures by throwing sand on the spilled oil instead of effectively skimming out of the water.

Things began badly and have only gotten worse in terms of how the accident was addressed by the international super major operator. To begin with Chevron did not have an ROV capable of thoroughly examining the deep water leaks, Chevron had to go to its minor partner (30%) Petrobras, which lent them 2 deep water ROV capable of reaching the 1,200 m depth where the leaking fracture was located on the seafloor. To compound that, Chevron did not have the necessary cleanup equipment on hand and had to ship it from storage in the U.S.

Although ANP (The National O&G regulator) is in denial, it is at least strange that their highly valued inspectors overlooked the fact that Chevron was operating without strictly following ANP and international safety directives…strange indeed. Right now only Chevron is set to take the blame but if there is any seriousness in the Brazilian government, ANPs share of the blame in allowing this to happen will eventually emerge.

As things stand now the oil slick is expected to reach the beaches of Rio, mainly Buzios and Angra, along with beaches in Espirito Santo to the North and Sao Paulo to the South, in the next 2 weeks. Unfortunately this may be unavoidable as the columns of oil under the surface are much harder to collect, this also happened at the GOM, with dire consequence to the environment, maybe the only upside here is that at least Chevron has begun to collect the oil from the surface by skimming  (after nearly 2 weeks of spillage) instead of using the sand routine that only takes the oil back down to the seafloor and leaving the cleanup to nature.

Claudio Paschoa