Of Course Clean Up Workers Can't Find the Oil ... BP Used Dispersants to Temporarily Hide It, So Now It Will Plague the Gulf For Years

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News headlines state that cleanup workers are having a hard time finding oil.

Sounds good, right?

Actually, if BP had let things run their course:

• Oil-skimming vessels could have sucked up most of the oil

• Booms would have stopped most of the oil from hitting the shore

• And oil-eating bacteria would have broken down most of the remaining oil

Intead, BP has used millions of gallons of dispersants to hide the oil by breaking it up, so it sinks beneath the surface.

That means that oil-skimming vessels can't find it or suck it up. As the Times-Picayune pointed out on July 16th:

The
massive "A Whale" oil skimmer has effectively been beached after it
proved inefficient in sucking up oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill.

The
oil is too dispersed to take advantage of the converted Taiwanese
supertanker's enormous capacity, said Bob Grantham, a spokesman for
shipowner TMT.

He said BP's use of chemical dispersants
prevented A Whale, billed as the world's largest skimmer, from
collecting a "significant amount" of oil during a week of testing that
ended Friday.

"When dispersants are used in high volume virtually
from the point that oil leaves the well, it presents real challenges for
high-volume skimming," Grantham said in a written statement that did
not include oil-collection figures from the test.

Similarly,
the use of dispersants means that Booms can't stop it from hitting the
shore. As marine biologist and oil spill expert Paul Horsman explains, using dispersants and oil booms are competing strategies.
Specifically, breaking something down into tiny bits and dispersing
it throughout a mile-plus deep and hundreds-miles wide region (the
reason massive amounts of dispersants are being applied at the 5,000
foot-deep spill site as well as at the surface) makes it more difficult
to cordon off and contain oil on the surface (the reason booms are
being used).

And Corexit might be killing the oil-eating bacteria
which would otherwise break down the oil. University of Georgia
scientist Samantha Joye notes that scientists have no idea how the large quanties of dispersant will effect the Gulf's microbial communities (for more information, watch part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 of Dr. Joye's July 13th press conference).

And as Mother Jones wrote in May:

David
Valentine, a biogeochemist at the University of California Santa
Barbara, warns the stuff may be riskier than just its toxicity. Corexit
may undermine the microbes that naturally eat oil.

Some of the most potent oil-eaters—Alcanivorax borkumensis—are relatively rare organisms that have evolved to eat hydrocarbons from naturally occurring oil seeps. Valentine tells Eli Kintisch at Science Insider that after spills, Alcanivorax
tend to be the dominant microbes found near the oil and that they
secrete their own surfactant molecules to break up the oil before
consuming the hydrocarbons. Other microbes don't make surfactants but
devour oil already broken into small enough globs—including those broken
down by Alcanivorax.

What we don't know is how the
surfactants in Corexit and its ilk might affect the ability of
Alcanivorax and other surfactant-makers to eat oil. Could Corexit
exclude Alcanivorax from binding to the oil? Could it affect the way
microbes makes their own surfactants? Could Corexit render natural
surfactants less effective?

The National Science Foundation has awarded Valentine a grant to study the problem.

So it's not a
good thing that clean up workers can't find the oil. It means that the
oil will lurk under the surface, poisoning the sealife that lives
beneath the surface, and washing back up during storms for years to come.

Even
Admiral Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis, said
that breaking up the oil has complicated the cleanup. As AP reported on June 7th:

The
hopeful report was offset by a warning that the farflung slick has
broken up into hundreds and even thousands of patches of oil that may
inflict damage that could persist for years.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis, said the breakup has complicated the cleanup."

Dealing with the oil spill on the surface
is going to go on for a couple of months," he said at a briefing in
Washington. But "long-term issues of restoring the environment and the
habitats and stuff will be years."

And Admiral Allen admitted in his press conference yesterday that oil could re-surface far into the future:

[Question]
There have been reports of very large undersea plumes of oil thousands
of feet below the ocean’s surface. So when you say there’s the
possibility of the shore being impacted for four to six weeks, how do
you come up with that four to six week number? And are you
taking into account these very large plumes of oil that are out there
and very difficult to sort of gauge where they’re going?

[Admiral Allen] What we’re going to continue to watch for is the oil we can’t see.... But the ultimate impact of this spill… whether or not oil surfaces at a later date will be the subject of long-term surveillance.... Impacts are going to go on for a long, long time.

As
Congressman Markey said today, BP has made the Gulf “a toxic bowl”
that will “haunt this region” for years, because “all of that oil is
still under the surface”:

   

Comments

[M4570D0N]

Yes. Yes. Y.E.S.

The Oil Drum just decimated Matt Simmons' fantastical bullshit. Are you paying attention, GW? This is what objective/logical analysis looks like.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6789

[gasmiinder]

Be careful M4570D0N - the article you link is articulate, well-written and quotes technical data not ignorance.  In short, it is exactly what I have attempted over the last 2 months responding to GW's love affair with Matt Simmons, oil industry expert.  In response it has been pointed out to me that articulate data-driven posts are the mark of those in the employ of BP not of "real" ZH contributors.  Go figure.

Junk away boys and girls.........

[Augustus]

BP Oil Is Dissipating, Easing Threat to East Coast

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-27/oil-from-bp-spill-is-biodegrading-quickly-in-gulf-of-mexico-agency-says.html

Oil from BP Plc’s record spill in the Gulf of Mexico is biodegrading quickly, probably eliminating the risk that crude will go around Florida and hit the U.S. East Coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Oil has been dissipating since BP stopped the flow from its Macondo well off the coast of Louisiana on July 15, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco told reporters yesterday on a conference call. Crude that’s dispersed into the sea is being gobbled up by bacteria, she said.

[M4570D0N]

But! But! There's another leak several miles away spewing hundreds of thousands of barrels a day that will crater and cause a tsunami, wiping out everyone near the gulf. Matt Simmons said so, so it has to be true. Obviously these reports of evaporation, microbial biodegradation, no visible or significant increase in oil since MC252 was capped nearly 12 weeks ago, etc. are all a work of pure fiction. Every media outlet, scientist, and industry expert in the world work for BP... except Matt Simmons.

[gasmiinder]

Sir you are failing to give Mr Simmons his proper title and respect.  He should always be addressed as "Matt Simmons, oil industry expert".

[anynonmous]

AFP - Louisiana's fragile marshes should recover from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in a matter of months and the environmental impact will be "quite small," a leading expert said. The upbeat assessment of the damage from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster came from geologist Ed Owens, a world authority on protecting shorelines from oil spills contracted by BP to lend his expertise to the response effort.

http://www.france24.com/en/20100727-impact-gulf-spill-quite-small-expert...

(Ed Owens - Under contract to BP)

See Ed here on BP's site

http://bp.concerts.com/gom/bp_scat_team_17052010.htm

[wang]

The plot is continues to thicken. BP buying up any scientists that are for sale along with their research, NRDA building their own proprietary data base, NOAA managing their data while the unaffected academic community tries to piece things together and conduct independent research. The administration or its surrogates appear halfhearted or even incompetent in the management of the research process as Thad Allen trumpets the decline in surface oil and downplays what might be brewing beneath the surface. 

NOAA currently has 8 or so vessels either its own or under contract  taking samples in the Gulf and feeding data back to NOAA's Sub-Surface Monitoring Unit with some of the data controlled by NRDA. BP likely has its own research cruises underway in preparation for its defense staffed by scientists it has hired.  Of interest testing for sub surface gas has not been a priority. Here is an example of a current NOAA research cruise being operated under the auspices of CIOERT on a vessel called the Seaward Johnson including NRDA staff.

http://cioert.org/flosee/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/cioert_cruise_plan.pdf

WAPO has an interesting article touching on some of these themes:

Research on gulf oil spill shouldn't take a backseat to litigation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/26/AR201007...

[gasmiinder]

BP buying up any scientists that are for sale along with their research

wang that means every scientist on the face of the earth............

[titatu]

JM, still not gone to Siberia?

[Internet Tough Guy]

Where's Matt Simmons? He said everyone on the Gulf Coast would die if a storm went through. Well, it did. The only thing that died was Matt's credibility. And George Washington's.

[snakehead]

I hope Dylan Ratigan invested everything he had and borrowed more to invest in Lake Simmons, the world's largest oil reservoir (by a factor of 250).

[snakehead]

"So it's not a good thing that clean up workers can't find the oil. It means that the oil will lurk under the surface, poisoning the sealife that lives beneath the surface, and washing back up during storms for years to come."

Um, I'm pretty sure that nobody really knows what the mid- and long-term effects will be or how long the oil + Corexit + methane from Macondo will last and at what concentrations.  Aside from Markey and non-expert bloggers, I mean.

[wang]

 PCBs in the sixties and seventies might be a useful comparison. 

[snakehead]

I'm not a chemist so I have no idea if or how one might relate to the other except that they're both pollutants and are in the water.

[wang]

Coast Guard Logs Reveal Early Spill Estimate of 8,000 Barrels a Day

White House Timeline Missing Early Estimates, Reports of Oil Sheens

By John Solomon and Aaron Mehta | June 03, 2010

Coast Guard Logs http://www.publicintegrity.org/documents/entry/2124/

[AssFire]

I can only humm Don McCleans "The day the logic died" while reading the scared cat comments.

[trav7777]

The ENTIRE point of this was to obfuscate the reality of the oil business from American Consumers.  Corexit prevented noticeable beach fouling, which is all anyone cared about.  Oh, fuck the sea life, is my vacation to the Redneck Riviera going to be inconvenienced??  THINK about it:  the vast majority of those vacationers were going to drive a gas guzzling vehicle 100s of miles to get there.  Can't have oil on their beaches.

What Hayward should have said was, look, we are not in the spill business.  We're out here in a mile and a half of water and our #1 priority is to get that oil out of the ground and get it into your SUVs.

[Trundle]

Go long antibiotics.

[wang]

and there is this

Haphazard Firefighting Might Have Sunk BP Oil Rig

The Coast Guard has gathered evidence it failed to follow its own firefighting policy during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and is investigating whether the chaotic spraying of tons of salt water by private boats contributed to sinking the ill-fated oil rig, according to interviews and documents.

Testimony at Nguyen’s closed-door hearing in New Orleans showed confusion and disarray among and the rig crew members responsible for firefighting in the hours following the oil well blow-out and explosion. This chaotic scene is tracked minute by minute in a series of Coast Guard incident logs obtained by the Center for Public Integrity for a previous story.

Although the Guard named an on-scene commander when the rig fire broke out the night of April 20, it failed to coordinate firefighting by private boats that arrived at the burning rig about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, the testimony indicates. And the rig’s own chief mate, who was responsible for handling emergencies, was forced to abandon the rescue of an injured worker and flee the blazing vessel after hearing a second explosion.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2286/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFpsUu8r80o&feature=player_embedded

There were reports in late April that all efforts should have been taken to prevent the rig from sinking as that is what created the leak when the riser broke. The suggestion that the approach to extinguishing the fire caused it to sink.

[gasmiinder]

There were reports in late April that all efforts should have been taken to prevent the rig from sinking as that is what created the leak when the riser broke. The suggestion that the approach to extinguishing the fire caused it to sink.

wang the damn well had a blowout.  If the rig had not sunk the loss of control would still be the issue.  Keeping the riser intact would not have meant anything - the leak would have been at the rig instead of in the crimped riser.  The fire occurred because they lost control of the well, once the gas was flowing to the surface there was nothing to hold it back.  Once the riser was filled with gas and oil instead of seawater the pressure holding it back would have been even lower in that situation than it is at the seafloor.  While there may indeed be things to quibble with about the firefighting effort (I have no expertise or knowledge on the topic) - your statement that breaking the riser created the leak is moronic.  BP's failure to control the wellbore created the leak and an intact rise would have NO effect on the lack of control.

Feel free to accuse this post of being a defense of BP

[Augustus]

The well had a blowout.  That was the cause of the leak.  Most of the oil was burning when it came out at the surface on the rig.  I don't know how long the rig could have survived the intensity of the fire.  But I sure cannot imagine that any workers would have been able to man the rig with the oil flowing through the drill floor.  Whatever was going to shut the thing in was on the seafloor and it did not work.

[blindman]

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/11/bp-gulf-oil-spill-photos-show-bp-real-reason-constitution-suspended/

.

BP Gulf Oil Spill Photos Show What BP Doesn’t Want You To See, The Real Reason Constitution Has Been Suspended

  Posted by Alexander Higgins - July 11, 2010 at 8:22 pm

can you "see" all the dead fish and oil in these pictures or do

you think the images are photoshop creations?  perhaps too old,

last two months, to be relevant?      

[HEHEHE]

I've posted this video before re the dispersant, Corexit, that BP is using in the Gulf:

http://cryptogon.com/?p=16328

I would like Jim Rockfords of the world to explain to the people along the Gulf Coast how this nothing to worry about; maybe tell them he's read Scientific America once so no need to worry.

[wang]

July 27

Nature

Muddying the waters on Gulf oxygen data

Independent researchers claim oxygen depletion in the Gulf of Mexico is real, but a US government report advises caution.

There has been a significant drop in oxygen in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon spill, according to a number of independent researchers who have gathered data there. But the second US government summary report on the movement and breakdown of subsurface oil around the spill, issued on 23 July, says the depletion is not serious and may be down to flawed data....

But scientists who gathered data independently on some of the same cruises on which NOAA is basing its report say they have used a variety of techniques to verify that the oxygen depletion is real...

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100727/full/news.2010.378.html

[Merlin12]

Your doing us a great service here, George.  Giving us the Kos Kids talking points without our having to soil ourselves with actually visiting that cesspool.

[Instant Karma]

I'm no expert, but, it seems to me that "containing and skimming and burning" is better than "dispersing." Dispersing is essentially just hiding the oil, with the "hope" that the oil and the dispersant will be broken down by microbes. As noted, the dispersant is a whole 'nother set of toxic chemicals. Hopefully, the ecosystem of the GofM is resilient enough to gobble up the oil and the dispersant and turn them into bacteria food. I guess one question is, what kind of bacteria is the oil/dispersant feeding and how will those bacteria influence the ecosystem. Would have liked to see the "A Whale" in action.

Although generally pro-business, I would like to see a time line of the decision making aboard the Deep Water Horizon for a month or so prior to the explosion. Sounds like there were a number of red flags. Also, what's the verdict on the blow-out preventer and its failure to seal the well?

[Merlin12]

Dispersing the oil would drastically increase the surface area available for the microbes to feed on.  Absent any negative effects of the dispersant chemicals on the microbes, the consumption of oil per unit time might increase exponentially. But who am I to say - I'm only a retired engineer, not an Interior Designer.

[Jim_Rockford]

Dispersing the oil would drastically increase the surface area available for the microbes to feed on.  Absent any negative effects of the dispersant chemicals on the microbes, the consumption of oil per unit time might increase exponentially.

That's pretty much a dead lift from the Scientific American article.

When I was a kid my Dad got the Scientific American each month and it was always available for me to read.  I agree that it is not the magazine it once was, no doubt about it.

[First There Is ...]

All genuflect before the ENGINEER Merlin. Thank god we've got mechanical and electrical engineers keeping those silly marine and molecular biologists in line. Let me guess, you took some electives? I've noticed a strong tendency towards "know-it-all"-ism among your kind. Is the superiority complex part of the curriculum?

I'm just an interior designer myself, but I am curious about one thing: did the evolutionary process take dispersants into account? By directly intervening, we've almost certainly allowed them to consume more of the smaller suspended droplets.

[whatsinaname]

Alaskans are still cleaning Williams Sound 21 years later.

[Jim_Rockford]

"Williams Sound"?  WTF?  Nice username you got there.

[Merlin12]

Are they?  Citation, please. (And don't cite Scientific American!) 

[acidradio]

What a great job program! We need more oil spills!

[JohnG]

Alcanivorax borkumensis, bitchezz!

[Solarman]

What a stupid hit piece, Newtons law will ensure this oil will disperse and the reactions in the seawater itself will break it down even further.  The part on not knowing  about the bacteria means just that, not knowing. 

Be thankful there is no oil hitting the beaches.

[vxpatel]

do you work for bp or exxon? 

You republikan pos.

[Jim_Rockford]

Since you have brilliantly made "who do you work for" relevant to this discussion.  Who do YOU work for? 

Better yet, who does GEORGE WASHINGTON work for?  Are you going to tell us about your day job George?  Pardon me while I adopt your style, "George Washington may be an Interior Designer!"

[Augustus]

I suspect that the job you have imagined would be a move up.  More likely Geo Wash is a merkin fitter.

[CD]

Classy, Auggie, real classy. A sparkling example of nearly half of the thought-provoking, deep Augustus contributions we mere morts have had the exhilaration and privilege of enjoying these last few months. We're simply not worthy, Master, your brilliance is blinding to our feeble eyes.

[curly]

+1

This article was satire, sarcasm, yes?

Anyone offering that nitwit Ed Markey as an authority on anything must have tongue firmly in cheek?  Regardless, Obama's on the case, so of course the oil's gone, and global warming stopped, AIDS cured, world peace breaking out, unemployment nonexistent, sea level has started falling, the ice caps have stopped melting, it's all good.

[nmewn]

What did Evan Thomas say...he's like a god or sumpin?...ROTFLMAO.

"I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."

Maybe Captain Kick-Ass finally found his straw and sucked it all up...LOL.

[George Washington]

Newton had more than one law.  Which one are you referring to?  The law which states that "huge corporations who sell a lot of oil to the military and contribute a lot to politicians can get away with murder, and no one will hold them accountable?"

[calltoaccount]

not "contribute"-- OWN

[Jim_Rockford]

Nice to see that when given the choice to quote from Mother Jones or The Scientific American, you choose Mother Jones.  Why does that not surprise me?

[First There Is ...]

Go on with your little bitch self, Jimbo . . . Pwned!

[LeBalance]

Jim, you have been outed by the above posts, respond or perish.

[Jim_Rockford]

I would but I have been instructed not to takes things personal.  But please don't perish me ...

[CD]

You surface-skimmer you. The Mother Jones article contains the direct link to the Sci. American piece, if you look more closely. Therefore the Mother Jones quote includes EVERYTHING in the SciAm article, plus additional comments. Not everyone is as dumb as condescension of 'their betters' wants to make them out to be.

[Jim_Rockford]

Given what you wrote above,

The Mother Jones article contains the direct link to the Sci. American piece, if you look more closely. Therefore the Mother Jones quote includes EVERYTHING in the SciAm article, plus additional comments.

I find it highly ironic that you are calling me the surface skimmer.

[CD]

Please elaborate, I have no idea what you mean. I merely said that the MJ article was more info-rich, as it contained several article references (including SciAm) as well as the MJ writer's summary. Your complaint had been that given a choice, GW chose to reference MJ over SA; I simply don't think that's the case.