Four oil giants plan to spend $1 billion to jointly design, manufacture and store equipment to respond to an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, part of an effort to bolster their capabilities in the wake of the BP disaster and to reassure Congress members worried about future drilling.
Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and Chevron will unveil a plan today to form a nonprofit Marine Well Containment Co. and to prepare equipment similar to what BP began to design and assemble only after the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and triggered the massive oil spill in the gulf.
Exxon Mobil will lead the engineering and construction efforts, which the companies said they hoped to complete in 18 months.
Meanwhile, with weather conditions deteriorating in the eastern Caribbean, BP stopped work Wednesday on efforts to finally kill its blown-out well and installed a plug in the relief well as protection if the seas get rough.
Company senior vice president Kent Wells said that while boats and crew remain at the Macondo site, work on the relief well was stopped in the morning and evolving plans for an additional effort to seal the well from above were put on hold.
“We could have a tropical storm at Macondo,” Wells said, “and we have to be able to get out of the way.”
The new, multi-company plan focuses on how to quickly stop the flow of oil from a leaking subsea well and how to channel the oil to vessels nearby. It does not include new measures for how to skim oil from water or to clean soiled shorelines.
The plan comes as Congress is mulling new requirements for deepwater offshore drilling, which has been halted by an Obama administration six-month moratorium. The House on Wednesday passed two bills that would push for better oil- spill response and safety technologies.
The joint response plan is in part a response to recent hearings of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose members harshly criticized the major oil companies for having nearly identical oil- spill response plans. Some of the plans included boilerplate about walruses that are not found in the gulf and a contact number of a dead marine expert.
The plan got a mixed review with one key lawmaker.
“This is only one possible tool in what must be a more robust tool kit for oil companies to respond to spills,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on energy and environment. “This could be a positive step, but it cannot be the industry’s last.”
