Confusion hampered Gulf oil spill response, says Thad Allen

WASHINGTON -- The federal government's pointman for the Gulf oil spill said Monday that a separate entity was needed to coordinate government and company responses to such disasters to avoid public confusion over who was in charge.

"Procedures that worked terrific for the last 20 years became dysfunctional because of the perception of what was being done, not necessarily the reality," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen told a presidential commission investigating the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

"I think it may be more perception than reality. But it doesn't matter," Allen told an independent panel gathered here at the start of a two-day meeting. "Once the perception is so great that it starts to intrude in the response, then you need to deal with it."

At times, Allen said, it was not clear to either the public or local officials who exactly was in charge after the April 20 explosion crippled BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana, triggering the nation's worst oil disaster.

Critical activities affected by the problem included stopping and containing the flow of oil, preventing oil washing onto the fragile Gulf coast, and cleaning up the oil after it had sloshed onto the shoreline.

The confusion lead to what Allen described as "the social and the political nullification of a national contingency plan," as the 87-day crisis saw an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil gush into the Gulf.

Billy Nungesser, the outspoken president of Plaquemines Parish in southern Louisiana, urged the commission to find out "how this failed." Famous for his often passionate tirades against the ineffectiveness of government and BP as the spill impacted the local economy and coastline, Nungesser told the panel, "I'm still angry."

He echoed Allen's comments and added the problem had persisted months after the oil stopped flowing. "This late in the day, I still can't tell you who's in charge," he said.

Hundreds of miles of coastline from Texas to Florida were sullied by the devastating spill, killing wildlife and devastating key local industries such as tourism and fishing.

The commission

The independent commission that heard the statements was set up by President Obama to look into what happened during the Gulf spill and aftermath. It kicked off a two-day meeting in Washington, and will be hearing from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, among others.

The commission will probe the use of controversial chemical dispersants to combat the spill, the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling, and other government decisions made during the disaster.

The probe, said former Senator and commission co-chair Bob Graham in opening the meeting, hopes to "inform future offshore drilling efforts, the response to spills, and damaged ecosystems."

Fellow co-chair William Reilly said the panel sought to understand how the United States got to the point "where the need to improvise was so great" during the 87-day effort to stem the flow of oil gushing out of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. It is difficult, he said, "to make the case we were well prepared."

Gloom and doom with a sense of humor®.