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Oil Residue The Size Of Rhode Island Covers Gulf Of Mexico Seafloor In Macondo Well Disaster Aftermath
Ever since the April 2010 disaster on the BP-operated Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, there was one big outstanding question: where did the bulk of the oil gol? Now, thanks to a research team led by David Valentine, a microbial geochemist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, sampled more than 534 locations near the spill site, gathering more than 3,000 individual samples, we know the answer: the oil spill - some 10 million gallons of coagulated oil - left an oily "bathub ring" on the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico, about 25 miles from the well, that's about the size of Rhode Island.
The researchers found an area of 1,250 square miles (3,237 square km), mostly southwest of the Macondo well, where a thin sheen of oil rests in patches on the top half-inch of the seafloor, according to the NSF.
The reason why the massive spill was never visible on the ocean surface? "Based on the evidence, our findings suggest that these deposits are from Macondo oil that was first suspended in the deep ocean, then settled to the seafloor without ever reaching the ocean surface," Valentine said in the statement.
"This analysis provides us with, for the first time, some closure on the question, 'Where did the oil go, and how did it get there?'" Don Rice, the program director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Ocean Sciences, told Live Science in a statement.
More from Live Science:
The droplets of oil started out 3,500 feet (1,067 meters) below the ocean surface and were caught by deep-ocean currents before raining down another 1,000 feet (305 m) to the seafloor, Valentine said. This hydrocarbon rain explains the damage suffered by coral around the site, he said.
"The pattern of contamination we observe is fully consistent with the Deepwater Horizon event but not with natural seeps," Valentine said.
Unfortunately, there is more: a major portion of the spill has still not be accounted for and much of the deep ocean oil is still missing. The portion Valentine and his colleagues traced represents only 4 to 31 percent of the oil thought to be trapped in the depths of the ocean (up to 16 percent of the total oil spilled).
AP adds that according to Valentine the spill from the Macondo well left other splotches containing even more oil. He said it is obvious where the oil is from, even though there were no chemical signature tests because over time the oil has degraded.
"There's this sort of ring where you see around the Macondo well where the concentrations are elevated," Valentine said. The study, published in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls it a "bathtub ring."
Oil levels inside the ring were as much as 10,000 times higher than outside the 1,200-square-mile ring, Valentine said. A chemical component of the oil was found on the sea floor, anywhere from two-thirds of a mile to a mile below the surface.
The rig blew on April 20, 2010, and spewed 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf through the summer. Scientists are still trying to figure where all the oil went and what effects it had.
Needless to say, BP is not enthused and hardly wants this walk down memory lane recreated which is why the oil giant questioned the conclusions of the study. In an email, spokesman Jason Ryan said, "the authors failed to identify the source of the oil, leading them to grossly overstate the amount of residual Macondo oil on the sea floor and the geographic area in which it is found."
It's impossible at this point to do such chemical analysis, said Valentine and study co-author Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, but all other evidence, including the depth of the oil, the way it laid out, the distance from the well, directly point to the BP rig.
And, of course, there is the logical question: who else had a massive oil spill in the GOM in recent years?
And while some of the oil has been found, the question where the rest is remains, as does the far more important question: what was the spill's impact on sealife and sea-currents in the Gulf? At least several more years will have to pass before that particular answer is unveiled.
Source: Fallout plume of submerged oil from Deepwater Horizon
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BP says it is caused by 'natural' oil seeps.
And stop picking on Lil Rhody. :)
It's gonna take a lot of Clorox to clean that ring.
Barry will go down ..ha ha...in history as owning this the worst man made disaster.
He should have at least shut down BP.....BALLESS POS
It is a process called sedimentation, all crude emulsions do this if the oil phase is more dense than the aqueous phase. The reverse is called creaming and happens to milk that is not homogenized.
Better down at the bottom of the rather barren ocean than smothering the surface of the gulf.
I will take issue with "corals" being hurt some 5k feet down. Aren't corals more of a shallow reef type animal? Wiki says there are some deep water ones, in Scotland.
pods
I agree with you Pods. We are better off with it down there. I also like that they say it is from the BP spill even though they can't test it to find out for sure. Great science that is. It has already degraded too much. That means nature is already taking care of it in its own way. Man screwed up and nature recovers. I bet they want more money for 'clean up' from the taxpayers.
Well there certainly is enough blame to go around on this one. But I remember the wild theories about what was going to happen, and none of them came true. The Gulf is in more danger from agricultural runoff our of the Mississippi river than this disaster.
I read the MSDS on Corexit many times, and did not see where everyone got this "this stuff is more toxic than the oil" meme. Big words scare people and nobody has died from changing the "oil" in their car. It was an emulsifier specifically made to deal with oil production. Sure it has stuff in it that you don't want to bathe in day in and day out, but it is nowhere near as toxic as many formerly used chemicals (TCE).
The Macondo accident was awful. But the sky didn't fall.
pods
10 million gallons over the area of Rhode Island is 3/10,000 gallon (about 3 drops?) per square foot. I suspect Rhode Island itself is many times more contaminated.
The rest is micrscopic particles of emulsified chemicals floating around the ocean forever..
The shrimp and plankton just love it...
A MSDS won't tell you it's environmental impact, or the fact i wasn't ment to be used in such quantities.
It's an industrial detergent that breaks down oil, that right there should give pause..
Naturally occuring bacteria will break the oil down in time, but now the oil has corexit mixed with it, bacteria wont break that down and in fact kills this bacteria.
Corexit by the boatload=bad, this is undisputed.
It did its job by dispersing a SURFACE slick the size of Rhode Island...
I do not think that Corexit, or any detergent "breaks down oil" as that is a household term associated with laundry. It acts as an emusifier, hardly "breaking down."
As for environmental impact, well that is section 12, which also has a dispersion model showing where parts of the formulation tend to accumulate. You can also glean information about it's toxicity in the environment from section 14 (shipping) and it's TSCA status, CERCLA and the other numerous regulations it falls under in section 15.
It is not like they whipped this stuff up the week before the spill.
I am not saying the release of this was good. All I am saying is that sometimes the choices that you have are not so good, bad, and awful. Why is it that people cannot accept "not so good" for this yet clamor to the polls every year to vote for "lesser of two evils?"
pods
Sky didn't fall and if you don't have gills or flippers, you're fine. Jesus.....
$5 says this admin blew it up....what better way to push the anti fossil fuel agenda and clear the way for investents they were making in Solyndra, etc.....?
thanks pods...
and how can they say "and spewed 172 million gallons" if they don't know where it is? What if it was only 150 million gallons? How can they actually tell?
Time is changed. Now these people don't care how they will go down in the history. Even American don't care how this empire will be judged by the history. Lies and lies, every day all day.
Ahh, there it is. The Obama blame game. The right blamed democrats on Katrina even though it was Bush's (and Brownie's) fault, but the ZHers just love to blame Obama... And jack off to Putin.
The only ring dirtier than that 'oil ring' is that criminal ring (both gov't and private entities) that created it, lied about it, and ultimately is trying to conceal their criminality in it...
There are 7 billion people on the planet. 7 FUCKING BILLION. Doubling every 40 years. They need food. There's no way to feed that many without plentiful oil. It is just not possible.
If you care so much about the planet, do something about the fertility rate. We need women to have no more than 2 kids each, and one or zero would be better for a few decades.
Soon there will be 10 billion. All needing more oil and nuclear power than ever before. Maconda will not be the last eco disaster unless the population disaster is addressed first.
If a tree falls in the woods and there's nobody there, does it make a sound?
If a oilspill the size of Rhode island is under the waves in the golf of Mexico... and BP is a campaign contributor.... is it actually there?...
Jing Jang shit and stuff...
And secondly: Obama said that Shrimp remind him about the American colonisation era so guess what....
Q: "If a tree falls in the woods and there's nobody there, does it make a sound?"
A: No, a tree falling in the woods produces a sound wave. A "sound" is interprited by an instrument capable of relaying those waves to a processor for interpritation. In this case, you could use a human ear and a human brain for an example.
And as far as the article goes. This is good news, right!? I mean, Rhode Island isn't that big!
Very, very nice. One of the few who get it about sound waves, the impact on a surface such as the ear drum, neurological processing to and inside the brain resulting in "sound"
Betcha you'd love Quantum Mechanics.
I do love Quantum Theory! I either barely understand it, or I totally get it, or I cant tell the two apart. ;)
60 years ago they dumped all kind of chemicals around in my country. Now they have to get it out again, realizing its very toxic. The costs are huge. The taxpayer is paying most of it through a trick from the corporations, who did it.
the world is round. what goes around, comes around. you should never fall for the trick of neglecting time.
Shit, there's more murcury on the bottom of the great lakes.
Yeah, I'm not sure which is worse, the great lakes or the gulf. I do know that if the gulf is less polluted at this point, it's gaining fast. There are huge "dead zones" with so little oxygen in the water that sea life can't survive. I hear the biggest dead zone is off Houston, but there are more. Pemex rigs don't give a shit, don't even have a toothless EPA holding them accoutable.
Great lakes, Gulf of Mexico in our own backyard, Fukishima and countless others worldwide. We're pretty much fucked.
"were caught by deep-ocean currents before raining down another 1,000 feet (305 m) to the seafloor"
Were SUNK with Co-wrecks-it, injectectd at the well head to break up the lipids, plus some 20m gallons sprayed aerially. As 'fines' were (generally) levied on the amount of oil recovered, plenty of motive to sink it. Corexit, by Nalco, a product by the oil industry, for the oil industry. With the involvement of J Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics, one of the first, if not the first, widespread release into the biosphere of a fully synthetic organism. Designed to be antiboiotic resistant (why?), and based on a blank yeast cell with genetic material from 'harvested' oil transforming microbes, then 'turbocharged'. Will go for anything with oil, including fish gills and eyes, and human fat. Prepare to be shocked and disgusted at what's corporate crimes have been committed on the Gulf, inhabitants, and locals....here is a set of references:
THE GULF BLUE PLAGUE: IT'S NOT WISE TO FOOL MOTHER NATURE (Full length version)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7N3i1T_Js0
and search:
JCraig Venter Synthetic Genomics Corexit
Gulf Blue Plague
Call me crazy, but remember Haliburton bought Bootes and Cootsjust before the blowout? Haliburton, the SAME corp that did the shoddy cement job? Did they know something that BP didn't? Cheny? More disaster capitalism? Like the 'rebuild of Iraq'?
Why Did Halliburton Buy an Oil Cleanup Company 8 Days Before the Oil Spill?http://inspiredeconomist.com/2010/06/17/why-did-halliburton-buy-an-oil-c...
Peace
you ask: Designed to be antibiotic resistant (why?)
they use antibiotic resistant markers for selection. you cling it to the gene you insert, then put the cell in antibiotics, the one that survive have properly integrated the gene.
they use antibiotic resistance, that is relevant for example in thuberculosis treatment.
could be donated by promoters to other bacteria.
you eat this every day in america, if you eat genetically modified food, but you wont know, cause they managed not to declare it (thanks to 50Mio campaign).
bon appetit!
ps: with markers you can patent almost every gene on the planet...................................
Didn't the Oral of Omaha buy Nalco?
Don't you just love it when they have the balls to deny that it could possibly be from their mega-spill when that's basically the only thing that's happened in the last five years?
How is BP even around anymore? I would have thought that a cleanup of this magnitude would have put them into chapter 11. Oh wait, it's not cleaned up....
Thank goodness oil is biodegradable. No harm, no fowl. Nature will corexit.
/s
Old news, however, I still remember the curious name 'corexit' attached to the BP Macondo cover-up. Perhaps I'm getting old.
We're sorry! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw
Under Obama's watch....and he reopened the Gulf to oil drilling Jan 2012
But I heard fish oil's healthy.
AND ENVIRONMENTAL!!!
Since I've had my car engine remodeled to go on Whale oil, my karma got so big that when I die, I won't have to stand in line to get into heaven!!!
FLASH PASS BITCHEZ!!!
But those poor BP Pensions, think of them first before we make any rash decisions.
OT: Glad all those NAR reports tell me homebuilders are so estatic for the future sales...http://bloomberg.econoday.com/byshoweventfull.asp?fid=460791&cust=bloomb...
Add to this disaster, the supertanker loads of corexit they pumped into the oil volcano to ensure the oil didn't reach the surface..
This shit is twice as toxic to the environment as the oil is..
Quick, sink a pipe...
Call in the central bankers! I'm sure there must be a way that they can print enough paper money to cover up this disaster too! At least the stock market and Wall St seem to think so this morning!
Bath House Barry can suck it it up and return the oil via his asshole to a storage facility!
... mmmm ... those Jumbo Gulf Shrimp are delicious ! Just sprinkle a little of that there Himalayan salt on the oily critters and let them slip down your throat!
Oh yes, always good to begin with a Fuki lettuce salad from California as an appetizer.
I've got some of it in my coffee this morning. Re-heat from last night.
Did you plug the hole yet daddy?
HOLY SHIT! How ignorant is this Valentine guy?
COREXIT 9500/9527A.
'Deep ocean currents' did it, huh?
How about a 'failure of imagination'? C130's loaded with toxic shit, flying over the Gulf and the coastlines, day after day, week after week, spraying their poisons on the oil to SINK IT... It's not 'imagination'. Fucking B.P. was put in charge by Cannigula, not only of the Gulf, but of the fucking U.S. ARMED FORCES, in the massive spray operation. Tankers were brought in from all over the CONUS, and a surprising lack of chemtrailing was apparent then...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTTRxjCgFU0
Hear, hear..
More ecological info.
Totally off topic, and bad beyond discription..
http://enenews.com/radiation-levels-surge-fukushima-plant-100000-previous-record-high-tv-officials-dont-typhoon-be-blame-video
Japan may be uninhabitable in a few short yrs.
The Japanese should be moved right away.
If the Japanese are not moved, we’ll end up taking care of them in some kind of ‘Humanitarian Farce” like the African Albatross.
Thanks for the post on FUki/ Think we need to let elements of ISIS into D.c and N/Y.C. for clean up measures seeing as how much love they have for Tribe like persons. That clean up is far more important that the Gulf of Mexico. Milestones
I feel better now. I was concerned it might end up someplace that would hurt the environment. Knowing an oil spill of that magnitude lying at the bottom of the ocean is much more comforting.
Are we sure its not Abiotic oil?
Wash those gulf shrimp down with some fructose loaded, sodium saturated, cancer-causing, artificially colored, hypertensive soft drink and you'll be just fine. No reason for you to live long enough to collect ss anyway since there'll be nothing left.
The droplets of oil started out 3,500 feet (1,067 meters) below the ocean surface and were caught by deep-ocean currents before raining down another 1,000 feet (305 m) to the seafloor, Valentine said.
Well if this special oil is actually heavier than water maybe they should drill another hole for it to drain back into.
Maybe the oil is naturally coming up from underneath the sea floor just like it the Beverly Hillbillies.
drill moar
"The reason why the massive spill was never visible on the ocean surface?"
Corexit ... made by a firm owned by ... goldman sachs
next question
Every time there is a disaster, it's measured in Rhode Islands.
There must be a connection...
If there is ever a disaster meaasured in the size of Alaskas or Texas-es then it willl be cataclysmic.
Be happy that they are measured in sizes of Rhode Island.
I'd rule out that it is neither a road nor an island
But wait a sec ... 'size doesn't matter,' right?
All Obama's fault. And they said Bush did a bad job of Katrina. Hahaha.
Bush did do a bad job of Katrina.
Obama has done a bad job with this.
And you are still in the Matrix and trapped within that Red Team/Blue Team bullshit.
And I am not laughing because idiots like you just serve to demonstrate that there is no hope whatsoever.
Of course that just serves my message that...
THERE ARE NO POLITICAL SOLUTIONS.
Only absolute idiots continue to seek that which cannot possibly be found.
And then you laugh at the misery and suffering of those in New Orleans because of Katrina?
What a fucking psychopath!!! When this whole damned charade collapses it is people as yourself that will deserve the most suffering. You will get all of your just desserts.
Enjoy.
Bush... the semi likeable idiot..
I alway get a laugh out of this.. http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushfishingvacation.htm
Wait, there's Coral 4500 ft below the surface?????????
"The droplets of oil started out 3,500 feet (1,067 meters) below the ocean surface and were caught by deep-ocean currents before raining down another 1,000 feet (305 m) to the seafloor, Valentine said. This hydrocarbon rain explains the damage suffered by coral around the site, he said."
Yes.
Yes, some species live in the deep.
There is no coral below about 150 feet ... sunlight cannot reach depths below that. Only a f-ing clueless moron would make such a dumb, uneducated statement. There is no sunlight at 1.8 miles deep. period. You are just plain stupid.
Second, if you had a brain cell to use on this matter - crude oil is less dense than sea water, meaning it floats. There is no oil "floating" around 3500 feet below the surface. Again, only a political hack would make such a dumb accusation.
BP got away with a lot of stuff on the Macando well because ignorant sh!ts like user Bastiat and the clueless academics at UC (who wrote the propoganda piece) keep making stupid stupid stupid comments - which makes BP look less bad in comparison.
go and have a look about deep sea corals.....
https://startpage.com/row/search
You are incorrect. There are quite a few Deep Sea coral in the Gulf of Mexico.
http://ocean.si.edu/deep-sea-corals
Walk softly and carry a big stick, and all that other nonsense.
Who's the ignorant bitchez?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-water_coral
Plug that hole with Tony Hayward's children.
Who the hell cares. "Much of the oil has already degraded." I'm sure the rest will be covered over by sediments in short order. This is not a big story and certainly not a reason to stop drilling and totally halt the economy.
Eh, F it.
Cool! Pre buttered shrimp!
This story says more about the incompetence and arrogance of academics than anything else.
This "professor" at UC went almost two miles deep (holding his breath? Woods Hole didn't lend him their submersible because it doesn't go that deep).
Having made this imaginary voyage, this clown tells us that oil doesn't float in academic fantasy land? Why would anyone consider a degree from UC when this sort of stupidity is accepted?
UC needs to have its accredidation reviewed, and probably revoked. If their "scientists" STILL haven't figured out that crude oil floats, this report isn't useful for anything but toilet paper.
COME ON TYLER... A LITTLE REASONABLENESS CHECKING PLEASE. THIS STORY IS OBVIOUSLY POLITICS, NOT SCIENCE
MontgomeryScott expalined above.
Corexit makes oil sink fast and more deep.
If we don't see oil, there is no problem.
that's not how an emulsion works... as proof, if it worked the way you said it did then BP wouldn't have had a need to go off spec and inject it at the well head... QED
Not disagreeing with you, but some liquid hydrocarbons (C20's+) are actually heavier / more dense than water.
Fill a barge up with vacuum gas oil (VGO) off a distillation tower and watch it sink to the bottom of the river...
Barry has so many disasters it's difficult to decide which one is worse.
So WhoDaFok gives a wonk other than the enviroextremists? The ocean floor has seeped oil for thousands of years. And why not? Oil is abiotic.
need a bigger straw it seems
This hydrocarbon rain explains the damage suffered by coral around the site, he said.
The deepest that I've ever had the pleasure to dive, was 210 feet. There is NO coral at 140 feet. What kind of coral can grow in 4,500 feet without light or heat?
Back to school professor.....
Here, iz kurrikulum
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/guide/media/gomdse6taledeepcorals912.pdf
'A Tale of Deep Corals'
Or more generally deepwater Gulf ecosystems
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/guide/welcome.html
Don't worry, it'll be multiple choice (just up or down arrows)
As natural and as large a part of the enviroment of the earth as oil is, has there never been occasion for mother nature to pop one of her own oil pimples? Just wondering....
Grimaldus
What is interesting is that the hydrocarbon-associated coral reefs appear to be in some kind of long term symbiosis with hydrocarbon seeps. The seeps create an energy input that some organisms can tap into, then the coral colonizes, then it's more self sustaining as the coral adds more biomass and more organisms can adapt to the 'space colony' environment.
In the end oil prospectors actually use these deepwater reefs to hunt for oil. After the seeps have stopped the reefs end up trapping drillable oil. Of course, hydrocarbon rain covering them will damage them. I guess it's kind of subtle and different to imagine......hydrocarbon seeps good, well blowouts bad? Something like that.
What else is interesting is that the search team for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 couldn’t find plane crash debris because of all the garbage floating in the ocean….
thank you, jiminMN
And do not forget the growing large concentration of methane from leaking gas wells hovering over the Four Corners area (San Juan Basin), where BP has a huge presence. These people are fucking dangerous.
I watched B.P. shit on my dinner plate, and now they want me to believe I was just seeing things. Fuck you very much bp
Holy fuck, a thin sheet of oil about the size of Rhode island?!!!
There's more oil residue on the roads across the US than this bullshit extremist statement!!!!
DP'ed by BP. We're sorry
~ Tony Hayward should be rotting in a jail cell next to John Corzine~
What? the underwater microbes didn't actually eat it all?
I bet if the hole that needed pluging was in REGGIE LOVE'S ass Obama would plug it in a second...
UC is nothing but an enviro-terrorist indoctrination camp.
Note to unemployed college grads: your degree isn't worth the paper its printed on if you took one of the author's re-education "classes". Anyone who earned a high school diploma knows that crude oil floats.
Deepest coral seems to exist between 200-400 feet.
As for Corexit or oil on my shrimp? NO thanks= Neither
Deepest Corals in Great Barrier Reef DiscoveredMaybe send Christine Todd Whitman to put some positive spin on the mess.
Same thing she did so well in NYC, after 9-11
In Alaska we fishermen are Forbidden to spray liquid detergent on the mildest oil spills anywhere.
Forbidden and Fined if caught.
Dilution ain't the solution to pollution after all.
isn't that where it came from? now think of the "disaster monetization" and all the "cleanup efforts", and it just sinks to the bottom of the ocean where it came from... priceless
Yeah need a lot more science in the report before it has any credibility.
Even if it's mostly true, need more science to determine wtf it means to anybody.