Science Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, and former director of the United States Geological Survey, spoke about lessons learned from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill during the Michel T. Halbouty and Geology and Society Division Distinguished Lecture at the Geological Society of America’s Annual Meeting in Baltimore.
Marcia McNutt, who has been with Science just over two years, said that “science in crisis is special” because it teaches people to pull together as a team. Although it’s wise to draw on past disaster experiences when facing new ones, “every oil spill is different,” she cautioned, and each time things “fail in their own ways,” McNutt said.
McNutt served as director of the USGS from 2009 to 2013, leading the organization during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and major earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Science during a catastrophe falls into three categories, McNutt said, and they are: actionable science, opportunistic science and strategic science.
Actionable science is timely and accessible to policy makers and the general public, McNutt elaborated. During the Deepwater Horizon incident, scientists had to determine if the exploded Macondo Well could be shut down safely without causing any leaks. If oil were to escape the well and seep into the seafloor, scientists could have a much harder time controlling the wellhead’s pressure, McNutt said.
After extensive talks with BP scientists and engineers, outside industry experts and academics, on lithological and structural considerations, reservoir and geomechanical analyses and well containment, among other issues, the scientists were able to move forward with staunching the flow of oil.
Although actionable science is presented to policy makers, it doesn’t always consider other inputs that go into major policy decisions, McNutt said. Strategic science, the second category science can fall into during a crisis, involves interdisciplinary teams of researchers and provides policy makers with knowledge to help prevent a long-term legacy of problems.
A “Strategic Science Working Group” formed during the Deepwater Horizon spill consisting of “PhDs who can win a bar fight,” McNutt said, drawing inspiration from the Office of Strategic Services, which formed as an intelligence agency during World War II between 1942 and 1945. The working group members were experts in their fields, physically hardy and had access to policy makers, McNutt said.
Unlike strategic and actionable science, opportunistic science does not play a role in disaster response efforts. Instead, it “takes advantage of the unusual conditions existing during a crisis,” McNutt said. Opportunistic science needs to begin immediately to take advantage of the situation, but undergoes a truncated period of peer review prior to getting funding. Opportunistic science also suffers from a lack of opportunities to reproduce results, McNutt said.
For science to have the greatest impact, scientists need to communicate with decision makers, produce actionable science, consider strategic approaches and act quickly and thoroughly. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, “The effective application of science depended on the good will and cooperation of all parties to use the scientific method as the preferred way forward for making sound decisions,” McNutt said.
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