Gulf spill response leader denies Obama influenced decision on sand barriers

The commander formerly in charge of the government's response to the Gulf oil spill on Thursday denied that President Obama influenced his decision to approve the use of sand barriers off the coast of Louisiana to block the flow of oil to the state.

The decision to use the barriers was criticized by staff for the national oil spill commission in a draft report released Thursday. The barriers, or berms, were championed by Louisiana officials as a potential way to block oil from hitting the state's shores. But the report says the berm project was expensive and largely ineffective, trapping only 1,000 barrels of oil at most.

The report is the latest draft to be released by staff for the spill commission. Previous reports have been critical of the federal government's response to the spill. Thursday's report cautions that the findings are preliminary and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the full commission, which is slated to release a final report in January.

Adm. Thad Allen, who served as national incident commander during the oil spil, said in a statement that it was his decision, and his alone, to approve the project. 

"To be clear, the ultimate approval of this proposal was my decision as the National Incident Commander," he said.

The project was approved by the National Incident Command Center amid increasing pressure on the federal government to respond to the needs of the Gulf states. The report suggests President Obama himself may have tipped the scale toward approval of the project, instructing Allen to organize a meeting to analyze the project.

“We do, however, believe the facts show that the President’s ‘direction’ to Admiral Allen at Grand Isle set off a chain of events that led to the National Incident Command’s approval of the full six-segment project — six days after it had made a very different decision,” the report said.

The report says the ultimate decision to approve the project did not stem from “a conviction that berms were an effective oil spill response measure worthy of their cost,” the draft reports says. Instead, the decision was based on "the concerns of federal, state, and local leaders." The commission staff bluntly pans the barrier proposal, which was championed by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) in the aftermath of the oil spill. 

“The Louisiana berms project does not survive a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, even without taking yet unquantified environmental impacts into account,” the report says.

No more than 1,000 barrels of oil were captured by the berms, the report says.

“To be sure, had the berms been constructed sooner and more extensively, had weather and other factors pushed more oil toward the Louisiana coast, had other response measures been less effective, and had the spill lasted longer, perhaps the berms would have trapped more oil,” the report says. “But not much more than 1,000 barrels, in the context of a spill in which nearly five million barrels of oil were released, and approximately four million barrels entered the ocean, is a miniscule [sic] amount by any measure.”

The report also criticizes the proposal for its massive cost. “BP’s expenditure on berms is about three times greater than its expenditures for all other response and removal activities in Louisiana,” the report says. “The $220 million BP has spent on the berms to date, along with the additional $140 million BP has committed to the project, represents about one-third of the total amount BP has paid to the federal government and the states for oil response and removal in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The federal government should consider setting up an entity that can analyze large-scale spill response measures in the event of another disaster, the report recommends.

“For the future, the Commission may wish to recommend use of an independent process or group — perhaps separated from the National Incident Command — to provide decision-makers with a rigorous, scientific analysis of the effectiveness of large-scale and previously unstudied spill response measures like the Louisiana berms project,” the report says.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a letter sent Thursday to the oil spill commission, Garret Graves, chairman of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said, “Doing nothing was not an option for us as we fought to protect our coast — especially as the threat of oil moving further into our interior wetlands loomed, as the spill occurred during what was expected to be a very active Hurricane Season.”

He also raised questions about inaccuracies in the report. “[P]revious commission staff reports included factual errors that we have identified and corrected to the commission. … I am hopeful that your final report is indeed accurate and will aid in future oil spill response activities.”

This article was updated at 3:30 p.m.