Word: hickelisms
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Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel was justly outraged. The recent Gulf of Mexico oil fiasco, during which a cluster of twelve offshore wells owned by Chevron Oil Co. blazed for a month, has caused even greater repercussions than last year's Santa Barbara debacle. Beyond oil, Louisiana's largest industries are shrimp and oysters, and the rich Gulf of Mexico beds may have been irreparably damaged by the spill. Scientific tests conducted at Woods Hole, Mass., last week produced the first solid evidence that oil pollution can disrupt the life cycles of marine creatures...
Perplexing Negligence. Hickel got the kind of action he demanded. Despite strenuous opposition by Louisiana politicians and the oil industry's powerful lobby in Washington, a federal grand jury convened in New Orleans last week to investigate Chevron's offshore operations as well as those of several other prominent oil companies. Among other things, Interior officials charged that Chevron had failed to maintain "storm chokes" (required by the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Acts) on 137 of 178 wells in the Gulf area. Chevron was also cited by the Government for 210 violations of offshore drilling requirements...
...Hickel, who has indefinitely suspended all offshore lease sales, is particularly incensed because, he claims, Chevron "willfully and knowingly" violated the various requirements. Chevron's alleged negligence is as perplexing as it is illegal: the storm chokes, which could have shut off the runaway oil, cost only $800 per well...
Besides the increasingly hard line from Hickel's office, Congress last week approved, by a House vote of 358 to 0 (with 72 abstentions), a tough bill that would impose strong penalties on those responsible for oil pollution of U.S. territorial waters. The bill, which President Nixon quickly signed into law, represents an unprecedented rupture in the congressional tradition of pandering to the oil industry. It calls for unlimited liability in cases of willful negligence, plus liability of $100 per gross ton of oil, up to $14 million, for accidental spills. The latter provision is particularly noteworthy since willful...
Meanwhile, the Louisiana debacle has apparently taught Hickel that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of indemnity. Hickel issued a stern warning to Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik, a German company that plans to build a petrochemical complex on an unpolluted saltwater estuary near the lush island resort of Hilton Head, S.C. In a letter to Hans Lautenschlager, president of B.A.S.F.'s American af filiate, Hickel made it clear that he would not tolerate any pollution. "This department," he wrote, "will strenuously oppose any action which would result in the degradation of the water quality in that...