Ways to Stop Oil Spills
Oil spills are massively destructive events. Whether they happen on land or at sea, massive amounts of loose oil can devastate local ecosystems and local economies. Additionally, once oil hits the ground or water, it becomes terribly difficult to clean up. The best way to avert oil spills is to motivate oil companies to ensure they don't happen in the first place.
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History
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The dangers of oil spills have been illustrated by their history. In 1969, Santa Barbara, California, fell victim to a deep water rig malfunction that led to 200,000 gallons of crude oil spilling into the ocean. This killed off many animals in the coastal area, from small fish, to dolphins, to birds such as seagulls. Oil additionally coated the beaches in tar, and the area's tourism business was for a time all but eliminated. A similar tragedy happened in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform ruptured and spilled for weeks before the well could be sealed. The area's fishing and shrimping industry were destroyed, and the beaches of the Gulf Coast suffered the same fate as Santa Barbara's more than 40 years earlier.
More Inspections
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When oil spills happen, it is usually the result of equipment operating in violation of existing regulations. Oil companies are businesses, and will want to continue operating and avoid work stoppages or expenses that are not strictly necessary. One way of making these steps necessary is to allocate additional money in the federal budget to increase the rate at which federal inspectors can make surprise visits to oil drilling installations and inspect oil tankers to ensure that everything is up to code.
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Long-Term Sanctions
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Oil companies, by definition, need to sell oil to stay in business. Oil companies get their oil by drilling into subterranean oil wells. However, the land (sometimes at sea) on which they drill is owned by state and federal governments; oil companies need permits from the federal government to develop and operate drills. If inspectors find that an oil company has a consistently poor safety record, or a major spill resulting from violations of regulations, then banning the offending company from opening new wells, for periods of time that are significant even on a corporate level, such as 50 years or more, could link an oil company's survival to its efforts to prevent oil spills.
Sensitive Area Bans
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If companies aren't drilling for oil, then the operation can't cause an oil spill. One way to protect against the effects of an oil spill is to simply ban drilling in areas where an oil spill would devastate local economies to the extent that the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill hurt the Louisiana coast. This would require developing energy alternatives to oil to such an industrial level that further oil drilling would be unnecessary.
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References
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