by Shay Sokol

BAYOU ST. JOHN -- Tomorrow at the Superdome, offshore oil drilling companies will bid on 38 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management lease sale will be the first oil lease sale since the BP disaster in 2010. But as oil companies grease the wheels, the eyes of the public will be watching. Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, announced today at Fair Grinds Coffeehouse that she will lead an independent monitoring group of citizens into the Superdome tomorrow to ensure the public is represented at the table.

Rolfes believes the newly formed Oil Monitoring Group will institutionalize the public’s presence in the oil industry, and added that it usually infuriates the oil industry when groups like hers are present to remind the decision makers that they are accountable to the people of Louisiana for use of the state’s natural resources. 

The Oil Monitoring Group is made up of citizen monitors clad in khaki vests, who will engage the oil industry representatives tomorrow to advocate safety, sustainability and transparency within the oil and gas industry. The group’s formation is necessary, Rolfes said, because public resources are not respected as such, and because at meetings like tomorrow’s, only the oil industry and the government make decisions, not citizens.

At the press conference today, Kristen Evans, Art-to-Action Coordinator for the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, showed data collected by Carrie Beth Lasley, Doctoral Candidate of UNO, of accidents and spills in the Gulf over the years, from the big ones to the lesser known. There have been 4,500 oil spills since the BP disaster, according to the National Response Center. Every three years, these smaller spills amount to the quantity of oil spilled in the BP disaster, Evans said.

“An oil spill the size of a grapefruit can create an oil sheen that stretches a mile,” Evans said.

The minimum bid for an acre in the Gulf is set at $100. The acres to be bid on tomorrow range from 9 feet deep to 11,000 feet (twice as deep as the Macondo field where the Deepwater Horizon blew out).

On Monday, four national environmental groups filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to halt the oil lease sale tomorrow, the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association reports. The plaintiffs (Oceana, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity) claim the federal agency hosting the sale, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, has not fully analyzed or addressed the risks to wildlife and the environment from spills in the aftermath of the BP disaster.

Tonight, the Oil Monitoring Group will train interested citizens at 7:00pm at Fair Grinds Coffeehouse for tomorrow’s engagement.