Practicality must be a prime consideration for oil spill technology. Although it would be possible to design a strong pollution control barrier fifty feet deep with a 30-foot sail above the waterline, the cost and effort involved would make it impractical. Only reasonably practical areas are considered here. Nevertheless, since improved spill prevention and control will be expensive, one can expect oil industry resistance to some of the research areas suggested here.

RESEARCH ON SPILL PREVENTION FROM WELLS

The research most urgently needed to improve the prevention of spills from oil wells concerns operating practices. These practices include both those of the well operators and those of the USGS. The facts indicate that it was inappropriate for USGS to grant variances for the casing depth at the site of the Santa Barbara blowout and on well safety devices at the site of the Shell Oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. However, in each case, there was no objective way of knowing prior to the accident whether a variance was appropriate; the variance was granted in a subjective decision by a USGS supervisor.

It would be to no one's benefit if USGS were merely to make variances more difficult to get by involving more levels of bureaucracy. What is needed is an objective way to judge the appropriateness of existing regulations and variances on these regulations for the scope of anticipated geological and operational conditions. The ability to make these objective determinations will rest on future research into the mechanical and geological problems involved, research leading to a body of knowledge that can be drawn upon when operating questions arise.