More than 500,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico before the BP disaster, belying comments that drilling in the gulf was safe, federal data show.
The 517,847 barrels of oil leaked into the gulf between 1964 and 2009 killed thousands of birds, befouled beaches as far away as Mexico's Yucatan
Peninsula and dumped double the oil into U.S. waters as the Exxon Valdez tanker did when it ran aground in 1989, The Washington Post reported.
Records kept by the Minerals Management Service, now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, indicate handfuls of spills took place annually because of blowouts, hurricanes, poor pipeline maintenance, tanker leaks and human error, with at least one incident understated in the spillage.
MMS statistics indicated a 1970 blowout on a Shell Oil well that killed four people spilled 53,000 barrels into the gulf. But Robert Bea, a University of California-Berkeley professor who worked for Shell when the spill occurred, said the leak was 10 times that size and contaminated U.S. gulf shorelines down to the Yucatan Peninsula.
The statistics counter remarks by policymakers that drilling in the gulf before the BP disaster was nearly pristine, the Post reported. Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar said the industry's "history of safety over all of those times" provided the "empirical foundation" for U.S. policy, while Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., recently said gulf drilling has an "almost an
astonishingly safe, clean history."
The oil and gas industry is using its pre-BP spill record to urge President Obama to lift a temporary moratorium and to tell the public companies can drill off shore without a similar incident, the Post said. Companies also assert that technology also has advanced -- pointing to operations that weathered hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
While the majority of safety valves did work, MMS reported five modest spills and 125 small spills, adding up to 16,02 barrels of oil, the Post
reported.
Bea said safety issues in offshore drilling are similar to safety issues for airplanes.
"Because of airline regulation, we get in an airliner with a level of comfort," Bea said. "I don't have that same level of comfort when I go out to these offshore activities."