Natural Oil Seeps and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster: A Comparison of Magnitudes

This is a guest post by Dr. Cutler J. Cleveland. Dr. Cleveland is currently a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at Boston University, with joint appointments in the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies and the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future. Dr Cleveland has a thorough piece on the Deepwater Horizon situation at the Encyclopedia of Earth.

Some reports in the media attempt to downplay the significance of the release of oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident by arguing that natural oil seeps release large volumes of oil to the ocean, so why worry? Lets look at the numbers.

Natural seeps can be thought of as natural springs from which liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons (hydrogen-carbon compounds) leak out of the ground. Oil seeps are fed by natural underground accumulations of oil and natural gas. Satellite images have identified hundreds of areas where oil is likely to seep from the Earth's crust into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. These seeps occur over a wide range of the 615,000 mi² (1.6 million km²) Gulf. A 2003 study by the National Research Council and a 2009 report by oil spill expert Dagmar Schmidt Etkin indicate that between 560,000 and 1,400,000 barrels per year (1,534 to 3,835 barrels per day) seep into the Gulf of Mexico from natural sources. Dozens of natural seeps have been identified off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, some in the region of the Deepwater Horizon site.

These natural seeps are quasi-continuous or chronic inputs that represent a "background" rate of oil input that have been in existence for hundreds or thousands of years. As the term "seep" implies, the rate of release from these sources of oil is much smaller than human spills that often release large, concentrated pulses of oil. One of the largest and most intensively studied seepage areas lies off Coal Oil Point, in Santa Barbara County, California. Individual seeps in this area release an estimated 80 to 100 barrels (3,360 to 4,200 gallons) of oil per day; Deepwater Horizon is releasing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day (Figure 1).

The Deepwater Horizon site releases 3 to 12 times the oil per day compared to that released by natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico. By May 30, the Deepwater Horizon site had released between 468,000 and 741,000 barrels of oil, compared to 60,000 to 150,000 barrels from natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico over the same 39 day period.

Natural seeps are not constantly active; the volume of oil released can vary considerably throughout the day and from day to day. As a result, only a small area around the source is actually exposed to "fresh" non-degraded oil, which is its most toxic state.

Marine and coastal organisms and ecosystems presumably have adapted to the natural rate of oil input. Indeed, most organisms living in the regions near natural oil seeps have no special adaptations to the oil. Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the University of California/Santa Barbara studied natural seeps off the coast of California. They found that as the oil moved upwards in the water column, a wide range of microbes consume the oil and produce intermediate products, and that those intermediate products are then converted by another group of microbes to natural gas and other compounds. Their research suggests that oil from natural seeps normally stays in the water for between ten hours to five days.

Oil that does make it to the surface from natural seeps can spread out very widely. One gallon of oil can spread out to cover more than a full square mile, forming an extremely thin film on the surface, about one-hundredth of a millimeter thick. Under these conditions, the oil is not hazardous. Some of the oil in that thin sheen evaporates within seconds or minutes after it reaches the surface.

A sudden, concentrated and massive pulse of oil from an event such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster presents a fundamentally more acute stress to marine and coastal systems. The amount, rate and spatial concentration of crude oil released from such an event overwhelm the natural mechanisms of oil dispersal and breakdown, producing the significant ecological effects that we observe.


Figure 1. Estimates on the quantity of oil released from the Deepwater Horizon accident, from natural oil seeps in the entire Gulf of Mexico, and from some notable historic U.S oil spills. Data sources: Cleveland, 2010; natural seeps: Schmidt Etkin, 2009 and NRC, 2003; U.S. oil spills: Schmidt Etkin, 2009. Figure adapted from that in Cleveland, 2010.

References

Clester, S.M., J.S. Hornafius, J. Scepan and J.E. Estes, Quantification of the relationship between natural gas seepage rates and surface oil volume in the Santa Barbara Channel, EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 77 (1996), p. 420.

Cutler J. Cleveland (Lead Author); C Michael Hogan and Peter Saundry (Topic Editor);. 2010. "Deepwater Horizon oil spill." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth May 24, 2010; Last revised May 30, 2010; Retrieved May 30, 2010], http://www.eoearth.org/article/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

Farwell, Christopher, Christopher M. Reddy, Emily Peacock, Robert K. Nelson, Libe Washburn and David L. Valentine, Weathering and the Fallout Plume of Heavy Oil from Strong Petroleum Seeps Near Coal Oil Point, CA, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2009, 43 (10), pp 3542–3548.

National Research Council Committee on Oil in the Sea. 2003.Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effects. National Research Council Ocean Studies Board and Marine Board Divisions of Earth and Life Studies and Transportation Research Board. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, USA. 265 pp.

Schmidt Etkin, Dagmar; Analysis of U.S. Oil Spillage, API Publication 356, American Petroleum Institute, August 2009, Washington, D.C.

Wardlaw, George D., J. Samuel Arey, Christopher M. Reddy, Robert K. Nelson, G. Todd Ventura and David L. Valentine, Disentangling Oil Weathering at a Marine Seep Using GC×GC: Broad Metabolic Specificity Accompanies Subsurface Petroleum Biodegradation, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2008, 42 (19), pp 7166–7173.

I have found and watched a pretty interesting video describing a batch of microbes being released into and on a spill. Impressively effective in the video. It would be interesting to know if this is being utilized and if it would be used at these depths and temperatures. It certainly seels to be a great idea for using it in the marshes and onshore areas. I hope someone here has more knowledge on the effectiveness.

Oil Eating Microbes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI&feature=youtube_gdata

There are two things I would like to know about this proposed remedial process. First does is actually make any difference to the natural rate of recovery when it is scaled up to a level commensurate with the size of the spill? For example, does the limited availability of oxygen constrain the process?

Second, are there really no negative unintended consequences?

I would echo that last question. Too often (always?) the notion of unintended consequences seems to be overlooked.

The National Contingency Plan Product Schedule has a number of bioremediation products that are preapproved. It makes sense to supply bacteria and nutrients to the undersea oil plumes. Whether O2 is needed also is unknown.

643 quadrillion gallons in the GOM. Assume that bacteria use 1 ppm of O2 from 0.1% of the GOM, then that would be about 5 billion pounds of O2. Assume 2 pounds O2 to 1 pound crude, then 5 billion pounds O2 is enough for roughly 10 millions barrels oil.

clarity - nice to see some quantification going on.

I covered how much oxygen it would take to burn the oil in this post:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6467#comment-623757

Assuming crude as dodecane (C12H26), it takes 18.5 moles of oxygen to completely burn 1 mole of dodecane.
A mole of dodecane is 170.34 grams.
18.5 moles of oxygen is (x32) = 592 grams.
So that gives a mass dodecane to mass oxygen ratio of 1:3.5,
nearly twice your assumption.

assume 15 kbpd spill.
API 35 oil has a specific gravity of 0.85, a gallon weighs .85x8.34 = 7 #/gal, x 42 gal/bbl x 15,000 = 4.5 million pounds of oil per day.
44 days means 198 million pounds of oil, requiring 693 millions pounds O2.

If one assumes the oil is uniformly dispersed in .1 % of the GOM, then the oxygen is OK. If the oil is in 0.01 % of the GOM, it's looking kinda dicey for the oxygen in the GOM. Locally could be worse.

Also remember the methane isn't counted in the bpd figures.

IIRC correctly, it has been mentioned that the underwater plumes reduced dissolved O2 by a ppm or two.
But I can't find that on Dr Samantha Joy's blog at
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/

Anybody have any hard info on dissolved O2 in the plumes?

"assume 15 kbpd spill.
"API 35 oil has a specific gravity of 0.85, a gallon weighs .85x8.34 = 7 #/gal, x 42 gal/bbl x 15,000 = 4.5 million pounds of oil per day.
44 days means 198 million pounds of oil, requiring 693 millions pounds O2.

"If one assumes the oil is uniformly dispersed in .1 % of the GOM, then the oxygen is OK. If the oil is in 0.01 % of the GOM, it's looking kinda dicey for the oxygen in the GOM. Locally could be worse."

Assume the oil is localized and the growth rate of bacteria is limited by the oxygen. Would it be practical to just pump air down (i.e. something like 2 billion pounds of air) to the ocean floor to replenish the oxygen? Maybe seeding it with bacteria at the same time? That way we wouldn't have to wait for the oil to reach the surface before starting to break it down. The air might have other effects - i.e. bringing the methane and other volatiles up quicker. That could be dangerous for ships in the area.

Others have pointed to that video too. It certainly seems cheerful. However, there is no possible way for bacteria to re-hydrate out of a package and immediately ("within minutes") consume such a vast amount oil. We all know how hard it is to estimate oil volumes from water, but it looked like the manufacturers claimed cleanup of 1000 lbs of oil for every lb of bacteria. I'm from Missouri on this one.

Thanks to the poster who mentioned the National Contingency Plan Product Schedule NCPPS. That's new to me. I went to their site and looked over the specs for a product called BET BIOPETRO. (Their capitals, not mine). According to the spec, a clean up of hydrocarbons was effected by this product in direct comparison to a no-product control. But, it took 28 days. That is far more realistic. Before any significant oil degradation can occur you have to get the density of the bacteria to rise. There lies a problem. I suspect that the test used by the NCPPS is in a relatively small flask or tank. The bacteria can get up to high density because (1) they're not diffusing away into the Gulf of Mexico, (2) temperatures may be higher and (3) it is likely that the test does not included predator species, which sharply limit bacterial populations.

Naturally occuring oil seeps in the gulf (see other posts in today's The Oil Drum) give rise to natural populations of "oil eaters". We could pour cheap nutrients onto the oil spill and see if these endemic "oleoclasts" will bloom. Frankly, much of the literature suggests a pretty high probability that the results will not be significant. You might find that it works better in marshes than in open oceans. In any event, we pay for degradation with transient decreases in oxygen tension, per above, but that is probably better than letting these toxic compounds linger.

I have no idea if the bacteria will work down there in those conditions, and just a guess at how much O2 is needed, but I hope remediation is possible.

Yes. It's cold at 5000 feet below sea level and nutrients are limiting. Bacterial turnover is probably much lower on the sea floor than in the marshes. On the other hand, we did see an video image, a while back, of an eel that seemed to be poking about the oil spill. You have to believe that any environment that supports eels will also support bacteria. Nevertheless, my guess is that most of the oil will be consumed near the surface where oxygen is more readily available. You can see this at several blogs.

One of the scientists characterizing the size of the various blooms is Dr. Samantha Joye, working out of the University of Georgia. Her blog is pretty accessible, and there is a chart illustrating the O2 pressures at various depths. The blog URL is:

http://gulfblog.uga.edu/

She uses some abbreviations. CTD used to refer to Conductivity, Temperature and Depth. However, I gather that it now refers to an entire cluster of instruments that return such things as dissolved O2, colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM on her blog), chlorophyl concentrations and other matters. I'm pretty sure that the big drop in O2 levels from surface to about 500 meters is normal. The unusual thing is the sudden drop in O2 co-incident with the big jump in CDOM (the "plume"). I'm assuming that the odd drop in O2 can be attributed to oleoclasts hard at work burning both petroleum and oxygen.

(Here is another data collection effort)

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, MBARI, "sends underwater robot to study Deepwater Horizon spill"

"The MBARI AUV can measure physical characteristics of the water, such as temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen, detect chlorophyll from microscopic marine algae, and measure concentrations of small particles (or oil droplets) in the water."

http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2010/auv-gulf/auv-gulf-release.html

Another difference is the release pressure. I imagine natural seeps to be...seeps rather than 2,000+ psi.

I saw a video a few weeks ago (can't find the link now) that compared oil being released under very high pressure with oil just being spilled on the bottom. The experiment was in a lab - certainly a deep-water release will have other complicating factors. The spilled oil surfaced in the big blobs that would be easy to skim from the surface. The high pressure release was an underwater aerosol in a subsurface plume.

I grew up in Santa Barbara and vividly remember the Oil Spill of 1969 which coated my 9-year-old feet with tar every time I made the 400-yard trek across US 101 and the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks down to the beach.

Every kid in SB learned in about 3rd grade about natural seepage of oil when we studied the Chumash Indians. It was pretty neat to learn how they used tar and pitch to seal their plank canoes. Cool stuff. There was already tar on the beaches before the big oil spill.

But the difference in the amount of tar on the beaches from before the spill to after was HUGE! There was NO COMPARISON. While before you could usually go to the beach and back without ever encountering tar, after the spill our feet were always coated in it. There was no way to avoid it-that's how much there was. We adopted the ritual of leaving a jar of baby oil next to a can of gasoline and a pile of rags by the garage door. Those of us less offended by the smell of gasoline cleaned our feet with that; the more sensitive used the slower but equally effective baby oil. Four decades later I still walk the SB beaches once a year or so. There is still tar, and you can still get it on your feet and have to deal with it. If you don't have a solvent handy, you can keep rubbing clean sand on it until it all gets scrubbed away, though your hand and foot will still feel oily afterward.

I have crystal-clear memories of dying pelicans coated with oil, and dump-truck loads of straw on the beaches (a near futile effort to soak up the oil--I have no idea if it was later burned or dumped somewhere). I also remember the GOO (Get Oil Out) bumper stickers, and to be honest, even today I have trouble buying gasoline at a Union 76 station. We still went to the beach, as anybody who grew up in a beach town will accept as obvious and needing no explanation, but it was never the same. I was not old enough to understand what effect the spill had on the local tourism economy, fishing fleet, abalone divers, or kelp cutting industry.

I don't know if the current amount of tar on the SB beaches is what it was before the spill for the same reason we'll never know about tar balls on the Gulf of Mexico beaches: there is no baseline. Nobody knows how much tar there was before except that the Chumash found enough to caulk a modest fleet of canoes.

I do know that four decades later the beaches in Santa Barbara are once again nice places. Indeed, they were reasonably nice a mere twenty years after the spill. In the last decade or so there is once again a healthy population of pelicans. Over the long run nature will win out.

While the GOM spill is apparently much bigger than the SB spill and will disperse in a much broader area, my heart goes out to coastal dwellers (human as well as wildlife and plants) because they will suffer from this for decades.

I'm glad this subject is being addressed, as it appears that there is a growing body of disinformation out that which, deliberately or inadvertently, serves to downplay the environmental impact of the ongoing oil release.

The fact that there are natural oil seeps scattered throughout the Gulf of Mexico is almost totally irrelevant to the problem at hand. Adverse environmental impacts are almost always a matter of too high a concentration of a toxic substance in too small of an area.

Sure, if we could take the ongoing oil release and distribute it perfectly evenly over the entire massive inventory of water in the Gulf such that it would be perfectly mixed, the oil would be at a virtually undetectable concentration and have no serious impact. Unfortunately, such is hardly the case. Large and important portions of the ecosystems in the Gulf are going to experience oil constituents at levels well into the toxic range for a considerable amount of time. There will be major and long-lasting damage to be sure.

So, it would be well to keep an eye out for what is being said about natural oil seeps and who is saying it.

The comparison I look for is to the Ixtoc spill. Granted the Gulf was a much healthier ecosystem in that event, and depth differentials make comparisons problematic. But I would appreciate any references or discussion on effects and lag times of that spill.

I found this study, but feel trying to extrapolate to this situation is very flawed:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/ixtoc/Weathering-Petroleum_BMS1982.pdf

The article is too techy for me, but if oil is weathered due to being in a tropical climate, why did it travel 557 miles from Campeche to S Padre TX in 2 months?

It appears the research vessel was in Campeche during Sept 1979 and did not remain in the area for an extended period. I don't quite understand the conclusions.

(My hunch is starting in the fall of 1979 much of the Ixtoc oil went into the loop current due to season changes -from easterly to more westerly)

The evaporation / tropical thing doesn't quite make sense.

Dr Cleveland implies that the well is releasing about 15 times more oil than is released naturally. But the natural releases have been happening for millenia, while the well has only been releasing for a few weeks!

Therefore, millions of times more oil has been released natually than the oil through this well. Cheers, Dr Cleveland. That puts things into perspective.

The well is just a "drop in the ocean" compared to the natural releases (assuming it gets fixed tonight).

So what is all this squaking about? BP drills for oil because we need it for our cars, unless we want to buy it from the middle east, of course.

Hi JC,

Dr Cleveland's last paragraph:

A sudden, concentrated and massive pulse of oil from an event such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster presents a fundamentally more acute stress to marine and coastal systems. The amount, rate and spatial concentration of crude oil released from such an event overwhelm the natural mechanisms of oil dispersal and breakdown, producing the significant ecological effects that we observe.

Does not seem to jive with my take on your comment. Are you implying that he does not know and appreciate the difference a single spill of this magnitude has on the environment as opposed to the sum total of the minor seeps during the same time period throughout the entire GOM?

> Are you implying that he does not know and appreciate the difference a
> single spill of this magnitude has on the environment as opposed to the
> sum total of the minor seeps during the same time period throughout the
> entire GOM?

It's important to separate out the "here and now" issue, from the totality.
In the totality, this leak is nothing in comparison to naturally leaked
oil. A temporary "acute stress" is miserable, but it is a just a
"significant ecological effect that we observe" today, and it is
certainly not Armageddon!

One does not have to be an oil person, or even a scientist to understand the difference between what you conclude and what Dr. Cleveland has concluded. One only has to think a bit. This is something I believe I am qualified to do, and it seems clear that it is not the total amount of oil released over hundreds or a thousand or even all the years since the glaciers retreated, compared to the Deepwater spew that is important. It should be obvious to anyone not hopelessly biased, or not wedded to an agenda, that the sudden massive gush (sorry for the technical jargon) from the Deepwater well will have a fundamentally different consequence for the Gulf and its ecosystems than the comparative trickle from the natural seeps upon which it is being heaped (!).

> the sudden massive gush (sorry for the technical jargon) from the Deepwater
> well will have a fundamentally different consequence for the Gulf and its
> ecosystems than the comparative trickle from the natural seeps

That's a plausible outcome, actually, in the short term. Some things will undoubtedly benefit from the sudden release (sorry for the technobabble). For example, there is low unemployment amongst the human population there presently, because everyone has a cleanup job with BP. Rubber glove companies are having a bonanza!

Joking aside, others will loose out, sure. The question is - why is there such outrage over an oil leak, when the accident cost 11 lives? Which is worse? Where should we focus our anger? On an oil leak?!? The world has gone mad...

Dispensing with sarcasm, I don't think anyone here on TOD forgets the 11 lives lost immediately. In so many ways this is a non-trivial event. Why should there not be outrage?

The world has been mad for some time...

> Dispensing with sarcasm, I don't think anyone here on TOD forgets the
> 11 lives lost immediately. In so many ways this is a non-trivial event.
> Why should there not be outrage?

Good - it was funny that nobody was talking about that side of things, eh?

Thanks, but I'll store my outrage for my enemies. BP is trying to get US oil for US cars from a US oil well using a US oil rig rented from US oil firms operated by US people. The contract is overseen by the US government and the US government wrote out the permits. Sure, let's have outrage - at the US. In the meantime, let BP stop the leak without all this negative chittle-chattle from the sidelines. They've already decided to pick up the tab. Let's all pipe down and let them get on with it. My fear is that all this pressure from chumps is influencing the operation. Even a movie director, Cameron, tried to push in. It has to cease.

Jacques, there was certainly appropriate reaction in the beginning which you would have seen if you had been reading at the time. No problem, it is just that a lot of water has passed under the bridge here since then, which does not mean that anyone has lost sight of the tragic fact that lives were lost.

So, does the rest of you post mean that if I am a Cuban fisherman whose livelihood may be damaged by the leaking oil I would have righteous cause for outrage, but I, as a citizen of the US, should sit on my hands and be quiet? I am a human being dependent on the entire biosphere's health for my physical and psychic wellbeing, like the rest of the humans. I think that entitles me to be outraged at BP (and the MMS, etc.), particularly if negligence is shown sometime down the road.

Perhaps you should read more on other parts of the site. Of course you may be like me as I read here for a couple of years before registering to comment. You will be amply repaid for time spent reading more of the site.

These are all equilibrium arguments. It takes a while to reach equilibrium and any perturbations have a long response time.

Same thing with CO2 in the atmosphere. Normally everything is at equilibrium but since CO2 is effectively inert at fat-tail time scales, small perturbations can put it over the edge. I posted a very interesting cooperative model linking fossil fuel depletion with CO2 buildup here:
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-shock-model-analysis-relate...
You won't find anything like this analysis anywhere else because of its absurd simplicity.

Jacques, are you really that stupid or just pretending to be?

The difference is a bit like eating a gram of saturated fat every day for 70 years (25.5 kilos) vs a 2 kg per day for 2 days.

Most people's bodies can cope with doing the former but the latter would make them unwell.

If the Gulf ecosystem can't digest the oil spill fast enough it ends up being a problem for decades.

I know it's hard for you, but try to keep calm. These are not human beings. We were talking about the sea.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6579#more

So, it's 0.5 per cubic litre. If it was fresh water, you could drink it.

And don't be rude in future.

very interesting satellite discoveries. got to wonder if a lot of those natural leaks aren't leaks from other producing wells. Check this out from SkyTruth.

http://blog.skytruth.org/

Who or what is leading the strategic effort on keeping BP's already-leaked oil plumes away from shores? I believe that should BP's surface and underwater oil plumes escape the Gulf of Mexico, we may yet deflect it from entering selected embayments and perhaps even bays along the USA's southeast coast, by doing something that ocean windmills do: create barricades of chill water that divert warmer plume waters away. Here's what and how:

* Surface oil plumes and underwater oil plumes travel with their respective prevailing currents. When a water current strikes an obstruction, it goes under or over it; failing that, it is deflected around the obstacle. (Grotesquely simplified, given all the other variables from tide to salinity)

Using existing technologies, one can create localized -in place- thermal chilled water barriers that, properly situated, and movable to reflect changing circumstances, will constitute sufficient obstacle from surface to seafloor to force any portion of that warmer oil-rich bit of Gulf Stream current that strikes it to either (1) deflect away from the barrier and continue on its merry way northeast without entering the embayment being protected or (2) split off as a gyre that again stays away from the shore while remediation is applied to it.
See crude map of concept off Port Royal Sound, South Carolina

One produces the chilled seawater aboard freezer or reefer vessels that are capable of pumping seawater aboard, chilling it significantly, and discharging it into towed or anchored semisubmersible arrays of diffuser pipes and hoses that is as wide and long as feasible. The tens of millions of gallons per day cold sea water discharged 24/7 in place will produce a half mile wide and as many miles long as long as the diffusers can be deployed. Incoming and outgoing tides will spread the chill zone. This continuously replenished barrier of cold dense seawater in front of the plume is impenetrable to the oily warmer plume water. The oily plume will be forced to go around this obstacle. "Around" is either off into a gyre, where mitigation can be applied away from shore, or onward aboard the Gulf Stream and into the North Atlantic Drift. But the key thing is that the oily water surface and demersal is deflected away from inlets and sounds and embayments along the coast. At least those that use the tech.

a lot of freezer trawlers out there that have no shrimp or fish to keep cool could be press ganged into performing this activity with a little financial help from Uncle Sam or Granny Google to pay 'em and to refit with with the necessary gear.

Hmm, those comparisons look a little disingenuous Gail. If you are going to compare Deepwater Horizon to previous events, it seems only reasonable to compare with Ixtoc, rather than tanker spills, after all tanker spills are limited and put the oil on the surface, not throughout the volume. Good numbers on Ixtoc seem hard to find, but a central estimate of 3,000,000 barrels (11,000 bpd for 9 months) gives:

which puts a different complexion on things. Even if DH goes on till mid-August, it still doesn't hit the same volume as either of your rate scenarios.

Thanks for posting some real seep vs. blowout numbers, Dr. C. C. and Gail. Too bad JC's reply trying to spin this key post was hardly to be unexpected.

The Deepwater debacle is another hammer blow in the relentless succession of blows the ocean systems are receiving at our hands.

"I dunno' how much more she can take, Captain!"

So you guys just believe anything then eh?

I saw the oil seeps con in California many years ago. The petroleum cartel created front groups like this hilarious one to spread fear about the dangers of natural oil seeps.

They put out bogus reports and lied about the extent of natural seepage. And a lot of slow, uninformed, or outright dimwitted people fell for it. And now they're pulling it out again for the Horizon gusher.

Come on. You've even cited reports from the American Petroleum Institute, as though they have any credibility at all.

I'm new here. So please inform me. Is it the general consensus here that the API is a legitimate, respectable organization? Or that they are an organized crime syndicate?

These natural seeps are quasi-continuous or chronic inputs that represent a "background" rate of oil input that have been in existence for hundreds or thousands of years. As the term "seep" implies, the rate of release from these sources of oil is much smaller than human spills that often release large, concentrated pulses of oil. One of the largest and most intensively studied seepage areas lies off Coal Oil Point, in Santa Barbara County, California. Individual seeps in this area release an estimated 80 to 100 barrels (3,360 to 4,200 gallons) of oil per day; Deepwater Horizon is releasing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day (Figure 1).

The Deepwater Horizon site releases 3 to 12 times the oil per day compared to that released by natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico. By May 30, the Deepwater Horizon site had released between 468,000 and 741,000 barrels of oil, compared to 60,000 to 150,000 barrels from natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico over the same 39 day period.

I believe those two paragraphs are the heart of this key post--do you have any problems with the numbers given? Deepwater is single point flow that could well be two hundred times heavier than the well documented Santa Barbara seep--it pumps 3-12 times as much oil out of one hole as all the rest of the GOM seeps distribute around the the entire Gulf every day.

So just what exactly do you mean by

So you guys just believe anything then eh?

You say that the GOM has seeped as much as a third of the amount of oil that is coming from Deepwater. And that has happened every day for millions of years. So unless Deepwater never stops, it will not come close to the amount of oil that seeps out by nature. And those relief bores intersect in August. Not exactly "forever", is it?

We're serious people, and we don't get hysterical because we can't get what we want (unless you're "The Prez", who is going around in a furious mood!) BP is plugging the hole, the well will be dry and normal service will be resumed shortly. And everybody is in for a cut. So the shouters can relax - everybody is pissed off, and your job is done. So let's Keep Calm And Carry On, as they say in Britain.

The main thing is that a safer way to do this next time is found. There will be a "next time", by the way. If that means that everybody has to get in the lifeboat when the casing is cemented, so be it. Presidential hysteria certainly doesn't help and probably does hinder the operation.

The main thing is that a safer way to do this next time is found. There will be a "next time", by the way. If that means that everybody has to get in the lifeboat when the casing is cemented, so be it

Well they have been slow to learn so far, you might like to comment on JoulesBurn's key post, "Lessons Left Unlearnt From 2003 Gulf of Mexico Near-Spill" as well

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6543

My replies have hardly been hysterical--I've watched BP try to operate like a colonial ruler here in Alaska for years, so pardon me if I don't give them the benefit of any doubt.

I just finished up working at a refinery turnaround where I watched the management trump up a very small mercury presence into a show stopper for part of the planned maintenance operation--which was then nine days behind schedule--in the name of good stewardship. Low and behold they got the plant fired up right about on schedule after 'the surprise' of finding mercury in the oil residue.

Pardon me if I don't take a lot of what I hear from BP or the govt or environmental organizations at face value. Dollars have been trump for a good long while now.

Of course I have a problem with the numbers. They originate from sources who completely lack any credibility. And those same interests are now using them as a PR ploy to minimize the appearance of the Gulf Geyser.

This post's smackdown of this PR attempt is commendable except that it effectively accepts those numbers prima facie and therefore endorsed them. So it ends up being a big fat gift to oil cartel.

The scientific community too often fails to recognize that their profession has been corrupted by the influence of money and politics.

Well I hoped if you had problems with the numbers you would point up a better source...or at least a decent critique of the methodology or lack there of which was used to reach those numbers. As it is this key post appears to have done the best it could with what it had to put some perspective on the BS seep comparison spin that has been steadily and insideously inserted into these threads for over a month. 1smartass repeately brought up the Santa Barbara seeps early on after the blowout but never quantified them even though I asked him to at least a time or two. This at least is a step in the right direction.

In the last couple of years, the API would host occasional blogger conferences (some on-site). They would invite mostly right-wing bloggers, who wouldn't ask any questions, and then would blog minimally about the experience. I think they enjoyed getting the free trip out of the meeting.

Some of the TOD editors would attend and they saw through all the BS. They were the only ones to ask probing any questions.

An in depth analysis of the 1979 Ixtoc spill, regarding oil contamination effects, would seem to be in order, because the size and location are similar.

I Googled TOD and didn't see anything relevant on the fate of the Polycyclic Aromatics, PAHs, being released into the Gulf. This looks like a huge long term issue for marine life and fisheries.

article on GOM spill PAHs

http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/gulfspill-pahs

perhaps a TOD contributor could do a new post on the PAHs

> This looks like a huge long term issue for marine life and fisheries.

No. Many millions of times more oil is released naturally, as Dr Cleveland said. Even on an annual basis, so far as much oil is emitted naturally into the gulf. Unless this _never_ stops, it is far less damaging than natural emissions of oil are, in total.

But it gets better. This article compares the US emissions into the atmosphere compared to DH; but fails to say that the sea is 300 times more massive than the atmosphere.

What exactly is it you don't understand about the difference between the ability of microorganisms have to quickly break down oil from small seeps and their inability to do the same for massive oil discharges?

Yes this oil will break down...eventually...but in the meantime it will overwhelm some of the many local systems it drifts into. Just luck of the draw I guess...

'Do you feel lucky, punk?'

> Yes this oil will break down...eventually...but in the meantime it will overwhelm
> some of the many local systems it drifts into. Just luck of the draw I guess...

Yes, that's about it, but the firm will cough up, so no need for luck. What I
object to most is the mindless search for a scapegoat. Look in the mirror, is my
advice.

BP made specific decisions that brought on this particular debacle, they were willing to accept the profits if those decisions panned and they will pay the costs as long as their feet are held to the fire now that those decisions blew up in their face. I don't see any scapegoat issues there. I'm and American, of course I am aware that our jonesing for oil is the ultimate culprit here, but I'm not taking responsibility for specific poor decisions made on the rig or at BP corporate.

Since you seem have no use for luck you don't mind if abscond with whatever share of it you were destined to have do you ?- )

> I'm and American, of course I am aware that our
> jonesing for oil is the ultimate culprit here

Good, we are getting somewhere now. Let's quit the scapegoating, as you suggest, and move on to Halliburton and Transocean, etc.

Been in the general/sub contractor game for a good long time myself. Successful general contractors are notorious for beating up the subs and nicking them for every nickel they can...but when SHTF it is much harder for the general to shift the blame to the sub unless the sub blatantly acted against the general's wishes. I can't think of pair I'd rather smack down than Dick Cheney and Halliburton on this one, but somehow the signs hanging in the background on all the gulf coast news footage only mention BP and Obama. Maybe its time the (you?) BP boys get old Dick and George's necks out on this block along with their (your?) own. Yeah that will be happening...and what the heck is a landlocked country like Switzerland doing running the biggest deep sea drilling ops in the world? Give me a break, those boys are in bed together real tight and they really know it is in their best interest to keep any spat they have here out of the public's view. But billions are real money so the sheets may get parted before this is all over.

I did notice you had no specific reply to my initial reply to you

What exactly is it you don't understand about the difference between the ability microorganisms have to quickly break down oil from small seeps and their inability to do the same for massive oil discharges?

Being a little disingenuous in this whole discussion are you? You aren't a particularly skillful fencer if you can't defend your most vital parts--this is a foil match, not epee.

> I did notice you had no specific reply to my initial reply to you

I won't mince words with you, Luke - if you want answers, don't ask leading questions. It's fixed now, so it's all water under the bridge (or oil under the sea!), like I said it would soon be.

So what shall we talk about now the media has moved on? How about something much more important, like the 20 tonnes of carbon each American releases every year?

Jacques, it is one thing to advance lines of inquiry designed to assess a situation for hazards and unexpected consequences, it is quite another to put forward categorical statements about the non existence of said hazards or consequences.

Right now there are potentialy large underwater zones carrying fresh oil from a deep reservoir into important fisheries. If you believe you can state categorically that there is nothing unusual about this, happens all the time, no possible hazards, then I would expect you have explored all the possible hazards completely and can supply the relevant papers. By all means, please provide the studies supporting your position.

> By all means, please provide the studies supporting your position.

Cheers. There's not much to say, really. The leak isn't horrendously more than the local rate of natural seepage, and it lasts much shorter. That's the question.

Clearly you are confused by the difference between a healthy organism coping with mild challenges versus ACUTE TOXICITY LEADING TO DEATH. Along with all the evidence of dead marine life (insert dead dolphin picture) consider these analogies:

You can eat almonds every day for a year and not have a problem, but will you survive if you ingested the cyanide therein in one day?

You can hold your breath for five minutes out of every hour for a day and survive, but can you hold your breath for 2 hours once a day?

You can get a wiff of hydrogen sulfide every day for a year, but can you survive if you had all that H2S in one hour?

You can have an established benthic population living with a low level seepage of aged hydrocabon and plenty of O2, but will that population survive being coated in fresh oil and O2 depletion?

Some fun facts about PAHs http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts69.html

(edit) BTW, you are ducking the request for studies backing up your position. Noted.

No confusion at this end, clarity, except your reply - are you being rude? Noted. All the necessary facts are in Dr Cleveland's paper.

PS: I'll try to help you out (although I suspect you will be rude, so perhaps I should not bother?) - any confusion at your end is about the difference between an immediate impact, and a long term one. In the meantime, please try to be nice, or to be quiet!

> You can have an established benthic population living
> with a low level seepage of aged hydrocabon and plenty
> of O2, but will that population survive being coated
> in fresh oil and O2 depletion?

There are some good points in your reply. I'd like to find out more about them, but I dread any more bellicosity from you! Let's hope things are not so bleak in the longer term.

There's no use raking up the past. What's done is done. Unfortunately, Dr Cleveland's report makes few constructive suggestions about what to do now. That's where the focus should be. The Prez is a joke, because he keeps butting in angrily, but has no technical input. He doesn't seem to realize that the most challenging engineering operation since the moonshot is happening under the gulf. He even asked the military if they could sort it out. What a chump he has turned out to be. Between him and that film director, they'll wreck this operation. I strongly fear that they've already had a deleterious impact.

If I were a BP investor, I’d be tempted to take the $75m option, and bail out now, leaving The Prez to it.

Hmmm,
There seems to be a bit of unknowledge about the fate and effects of crude oil. I did a little reading and thought it might help with this discussion.

The toxicity of a chemical is usually a function of concentration and time of exposure, not mass quantity. Unlike most toxicants crude oil has two modes of toxicity, chemical (volatile organics like benzene) and physical (smothering and/or coating of the oil on an organism). Therefore, mass quantity over time does effect toxicity as regards physical smothering. The other factors are route and areal extent of exposure. This spill overshadows multiple seeps as regards environmental impact as it has greater exposure area and more opportunity for smothering and impact on the intertidal zones. Call it Potential for Exposure.

Its generally felt that the toxic chemicals of most concern from crude oil are the volatiles, primarily toluene, xylene, and the most toxic one, benzene. Unfortunately these are not generally directly tested for. A much cruder test called TPH, or Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons is used. This test detects the broad sweep of chemials and compounds that make up crude oil and has a detection limit of around 1 part per million (ppm or mg/L). This is the test that EPA is having BP use in the dispersant study and can be found here (look for "Analysis of Sub-surface Dispersant Use")
http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/dispersants.html

It is these data that I believe Tony Wayward used to state that there were no large amounts of submerged oil but that it had all risen. This is a misunderstanding (I'm being kind to BP) of the test and how submerged oil works. Last time I looked at the BP/EPA data there was a single result of 984 mg/L of TPH found at the surface (his definition of large amounts). All other hits had a concentration just above the detection limits of the test and were found at various depths.

First, because unaltered crude oil is less dense than water it floats and the only way a concentration of 984 ppm can occur is when the crude is in an unaltered state that has risen to the surface and shows up as a slick. But the use of dispersants breaks down the crude oil into very small droplets reducing its buoyancy causing it to sink and turn into an emulsion where it can settle at some depth as it reaches neutral buoyancy. Because the oil has been broken down into much smaller particles it will also begin to mix more quickly with the surrounding water and disperse. The concentration goes down as a function of how much mixing has occurred. Therefore, almost by definition you will not find high concentrations of TPH or crude oil in the water column. It will only be found on the surface unless you sample right in the discharging oil plume which is constantly moving around. Its therefore a bit disingenuous for Mr. Hayward to say its all coming to the surface because the only significant concentration of TPH was found on the surface.

Second, its unclear if the 1 and 2 ppm values are background noise or what, but I believe some are also where submerged oil plumes are, as TPH concentrations should generally all be Non Detects (ND) or below 1 ppm.

It is this breaking up that can cause dispersants to enhance the toxicity of crude oil (crude plus dispersants) over its unaltered state. Changing the crude oil into small droplets when used at the surface, can enhance the release of volatile compounds like benzene which will rise to the surface and keep on going into the atmosphere (evaporates). This can have both good and bad results. Enhanced release of the volatiles shortens the time of toxicity or exposure (in the units of minutes to hours) but increases the concentration during any exposure.

It should be pointed out that the concentration of toxic volatile chemicals would be highly variable both in space and concentration. You could have two receptors (humans) standing 10 meters apart and they could be exposed to very different concentrations. Air sampling on the beach would not necessarily give the same result as air sampling directly over an oil slick in the nearshore waters. Its the dynamic nature of the volatile compounds which have been shown to result in very different results for toxicity tests done in a lab versus out in the field. This was shown in the most relevant study I could find ("Toxicity of South Louisiana Crude oil, Alaskan North Slope Crude Oil and Dispersant Corexit 9500 to gulf killifish, white shrimp, and eastern oyster.")
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-1113103-122552/unrestricted/Liu_th...

I could not find any information how the use of dispersants at very deep depths changes the toxicity of crude oil.

The best reference was a 1989 NAS report, "Using Oil Spill Dispersants on the Sea" (1989) Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=736&page=254

I recommend the free pdf Summary.

It really is a function of do the volatile compounds still separate from the rest of the crude oil and keep rising to the surface or stay with the neutrally buoyant oil plume. The best way to find out is run toxicity tests. So far the BP/EPA rotifer toxicity tests have not been showing any toxicity. Only one result (75%) below the 80 percent survival threshold. This is a significant unknown. A good quick reference is
http://oils.gpa.unep.org/facts/fate.htm

The use of dispersants so that the crude oil is changed into small droplets should reduce the toxicity from physical smothering. For this to occur dispersant use should be applied before the crude oil reaches the shoreline and begins to enter the sediments, marshes, etc. as little subsequent mixing can then occur.

An earlier poster asked about the degradation of PAHs. See this reference where it states "It depends".
http://www.epa.gov/oem/docs/oil/fss/fss02/neffpresent.pdf

My feeling is the use of dispersants at the point of the oil discharge is appropriate and reduces the environmental impact of the spill but does not negate all of the toxicity. I agree with EPA's edict to only use the dispersant at depth. BP has probably been under-dosing the dispersant as they were assuming a flow rate of only 5,000 bpd. (Another reason why its important to know what the flow rate is). Maybe why so much oil is still making it to the surface. Based on the modes of crude oil toxicity, it would be expected that toxicity does exist in the rising crude oil plume and the oil slicks on the surface, especially when it gets to the nearshore.

Any toxicity within the emulsified oil plume at neutral buoyancy that are spreading around the GOM at various depths is simply unknown. So far the limited testing has shown very little toxicity. We can only hope.

Hope this helps

Well, studies and actual testing would help. References?

(edit) BP/EPA toxicity test references? TPH sampling ongoing? Other methods? Lab? Results? Samples being collected?

"Any toxicity within the emulsified oil plume at neutral buoyancy that are spreading around the GOM at various depths is simply unknown. So far the limited testing has shown very little toxicity. We can only hope."

I suggest that there has been almost no testing of the plume, very little tracking, and "There seems to be a bit of unknowledge about the fate and effects of crude oil" is a massive understatement.

The fact remains that there are potentially large quantities of emulsified/dissolved crude oil components moving undersea. We don't have a good idea on how much oil there is. I haven't seen a map (I looked). Is there a map?

I did provide references. :-)

The PB/EPA data of TPH, and rotifer toxicity tests are found on the EPA website
http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/dispersants.html
look down the page for the data results, I used the excel file. The data set appears to be updated as new data comes in. The testing will continue as long as the dispersants are used. I have not seen any toxicity tests from the various ships tracking the underwater plumes, or anyone else. Could just be a matter of time, as hopefully someone is looking into the toxicity of the submerged plumes.

I'm not sure about the differences of my statement that there was "limited testing" and yours of "almost no testing of the plume."

If you assume that some of the TPH values from the BP/EPA of 1 and 2 ppm are from the emulsified oil plume then they have not shown acute toxicity in the plumes per the rotifier test. Again, too limited testing to say for sure, but if it was highly toxic, it should have showed up in the rotifer test.

I agree that there are potentially large quantities of emulsified (its not really dissolved: see http://oils.gpa.unep.org/facts/fate.htm for a nice fact sheet on what happens to oil in water) and that not many studies have been done on them. Seems as if NOAA is dragging their feet on this.

My point is dispersants can be effective in reducing the environmental impact of an oil spill and are appropriate in this situation. They reduce the potential of exposure (both humans and non-human life forms), and the smothering component. Even if the volatile organics do not keep rising through the water column but stay with the oil droplets, the spreading of the emulsified oil can reduce the concentration to below toxic levels. These benefits do come with an increased toxicity within the rising oil plume itself.

Also, comparing this spill to natural seeps is wrong and a waste of time. As another poster states a more appropriate comparison is between this spill and the earlier and larger 1979 Ixtoc spill. You can find information on amount of dispersant used, toxicity rates in the intertidal zones, and recovery rates on the Ixtoc spill.

Because of the unknowns and the large area being impacted, it needs to be thoroughly studied and has not been. I fault the federal government for this, not BP. The further they delay the studies the less information they will be able to collect.

Hope that helps.

If you need more references or whatever let me know.

Acceptance, I appreciate your comments and information, but I don't think we are going to agree on all parts of this. We do both hope that ultimately the impacts of the spill are made as small as possible.

IMO what is missing right now is hard data on the impacts. There is a huge spill out there right now, and many of the components of the spill are toxic. We have a lot of question and few answers. Background information is useful but not sufficient. I am alarmed.

This report came out yesterday:
http://www.crrc.unh.edu/dwg/dwh_dispersants_use_meeting_report.pdf

"but I don't think we are going to agree on all parts of this"

Fine enough.

I read the report and its a listing of ideas/concepts to study from a wide range of experts. To me this a first cut at potential studies.

I'm sure you read that there was an unanimous consensus from the group of 50 experts that the use of dispersant "...has generally been less environmentally harmful than allowing the oil to migrate to the surface into the sensitive wetlands and near shore coastal habitats." This has been one of my main contentions all along.

I share your concern about the lack of hard data. The regulatory agencies have been slow in getting started. Luckily there does appear to be some decent information coming in from the UGA Dept. of Marine Sciences:
http://gulfblog.uga.edu/

I'll be interested to see their toxicity results when they are completed.

That seems to be the area where we differ the most, "How toxic is the spill?". Based on my review of all the data I could get my hands on and my past experience in this field, it doesn't appear to be "catastrophically" toxic, everything being relative and not having a more complete set of information/data. And as the 50 experts in essence stated, It could be a lot worse.

Here's hoping for the best.

> Hope this helps

Yes, cheers. Clarity suggested that we need something on the difference between a long term impact and a short term one. Is there anything in this? It's not obvious to me that this will clear up the "confusion" that clarity mentioned. In the long term, I expect it will be diluted to nothing. Any comments?

In the "how did we get here, where are we going, and what's it all about" spectrum, the most import aspect now is "where are we going?", because we can't change the past. All this pointless handwringing about BP is getting tiresome, especially when The Prez starts piping up. Look, in my opinion, Tony Hayward is not as bad a Osama Bin Laden. He's just a guy trying to get at the oil for your cars!

So, where are we going? Is it a piddly thing that will be all forgotten about in 5 years, or a big thing? Have we got the right perspective on matters? Or is there just a tiddly bit of over-anxiety at play? I suspect the latter.

The answer to the long-term impact questions is we will probably never know for sure as it doesn't appear we have that much knowledge on the ecological conditions of the deep water GOM before the spill.

The information I've read on oil-spills and the 79 Itox specifically, says most of the effected areas will recover in several years time. Based on current conditions the GOM and the beaches are not going to be permanently destroyed like many are stating. This by no means says that there will not be environmental damage done to the GOM, and there is already a huge economic impact. It would not be unheard of to have several species permanently impacted from this spill, but unless baseline conditions are already defined it will never be known for sure. (This is all predicated on keeping this spill out of the wetlands).

Here are some numbers:
Birds killed (birds are considered the most impacted animal from an oil spill):
DWH: >350 (as of May 25, 2010)
Itox: 10,000
Valdez: 250,000

see
http://news.discovery.com/earth/gulf-oil-spill-ixtoc.html

For your second question, "where are we going" is another unknown. This is a very significant event which will not be forgotten in 5 years, even if the GOM fully recovers. The economic and emotional impacts are simply too great (putting aside the environmental impacts temporarily) for it to be "all forgotten in 5 years". I don't believe its either an "all forgotten" or "the sky has fallen, the world has ended" but something in between. That something is still to be determined.

Deep water drilling off the US coasts is not a be-all end-all for the world or the US as a whole. It's only a big deal for the independent oil companies and their workers. Time will tell.

Jacques, you are getting very careless with your numbers where did you read that millions of times more oil is released in natural seeps. You are (willfully?) confusing categories here. Time -frame is important, don't ignore it and pretend that what you are saying has relevance.

I am baffled by what appears to be your stubborn refusal to understand the issue at hand as well as the plain words of the author.

Don't be rude. But yes, sorry. I meant "billions more" through natural seepage, not millions. See above, on time scale issue. If you are baffled, perhaps it's nothing to do with me?

Photos of wildlife affected by non-natural seep (human induced 3-5MM gpd oil gusher)

Jack Carter is API/BP's version of http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr

Humorless attempt at willfully sowing confusion, in contrast with BPGlobalPR's humor, humility, facts. Asshat.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/02/2010-06-02_the_hidde...

http://blog.skytruth.org/

Ever more reasons to ride my bicycles and pedicabs...

Below are just a few excerpts from a recent report which addresses plume monitoring. We are clearly far from where we need to be in understanding what is going on with the subsea oil plumes.

Excerpts from:
Deepwater Horizon Dispersant Use Meeting Report
Report Issued by: Coastal Response Research Center
University of New Hampshire
June 4, 2010
Revision 3
http://www.crrc.unh.edu/dwg/dwh_dispersants_use_meeting_report.pdf

(page 14)
Information Required to make assessment:
 Receptor species/species at risk
 Identify species at risk including their migration, feeding habits, life histories,
reproductive strategies/recruitment
 Dispersant effect on oxygen and other electron acceptor availability on key biogeochemical cycles in the deep water ecosystem
 Assess the maximum rates of dispersant application to balance treatment of the spill and a low environmental impact
 Determine the impact on nutrient recycling, general efficiency of food chain
 What is the particle size distribution as a function of depth, and if these changes
affect key elemental absorption and feeding strategies
 Oil biodegradation rates, microbial community structure and ecosystem function in the presence and absence of the dispersant
 Evaluate the seasonal and spatial variation in the deep ocean oxygen demand in the presence and absence of the dispersant 14
 Scavenging particle interactions, oil-mineral aggregate formation at source and throughout water column
 Vertical and horizontal transport dynamics of deep water ocean currents for an overview of the oil and dispersant transport and dilution
 Unknown indirect effects (e.g., persistence) on the food chain and key elemental cycles
 Biogeochemical and habitat data about ecosystems near natural deep water petroleum seeps to evaluate the cycling rates and community structure
 Percent effectiveness of the seafloor dispersant application relative to thesurface application
 Determine the changes in the petroleum layer through the water column with application of the dispersant
 Changes in microbial degradation due to selective metabolism from addition of dispersants (e.g., is there a preferred dispersant degradation that will pathway that will limit petroleum degradation?)
 Effectiveness of natural dispersion
 Knowing the downstream flux of oil residue from the spill to the seafloor to contribute to a net balance of the oil fate

Knowledge Gaps:
 Preliminary models not validated
 Life history of benthic biota
 Migratory patterns and residence time of deep water species
 Microbial degradation rates on deep ocean hydrocarbon seeps
 Dispersant and dispersed oil byproducts
 Chronic toxicity of benthic biota
o Comparison of bioaccumulation/bioavailability between different droplet sizes
o Comparison of toxicity and environmental impact of natural vs chemically enhanced dispersed oil
 Species avoidance of oil

According to the history detailed across several reputable publications, BP has (B)roken (P)romises again and again, and has continued for decades on a path of transparent disregard for the safety of its workforce, and of contempt for the law, and cruel disdain for the biosphere that sustains each and every one of us.

Notably, but not widely known, is BP's involvement in the misdeeds of Alyeska surrounding a total lack of preparedness in Prince William Sound, despite their repeated assurances to the contrary. If the preparations they claimed they had made had actually been in place on that fateful day, those 11 million gallons could have been contained around the Exxon Valdez and effectively siphoned off with relatively small impact. Instead, the crude was left to drift into 1200 miles of pristine coastline devastating the habitat and populations of numerous species - including seven that have never recovered - leaving a mess that persists in its lethality two decades later.

This current GOM catastrophe is in part the result of the lack of an additional $500,000 emergency shutoff component, for which the requirement was waived by the previous administration. We can also point to the faulty hydraulics and the dead battery in the BOP - both the result of the firm's lax maintenance practices and the 50% cuts in the maintenance staff at the rig in the months before the explosion. Of course, hindsight being 20/20, in light of their $70 billion stock loss and $150 million and rising mitigation expenses, the execs at BP likely now have come to regret those decisions - but that's all oily water under the bridge now.

Harsh sanctions are not only defensible, but wholly essential. If not now, when are we ever going to prohibit such neglegent companies from operating where they can inflict such devastation? This is an especially important question when BP is responsible for such brazen business-as-usual crimes (to include three felony convictions and the corporate equivalent of probation when this latest assault on the planet occurred).

Should we let paper animals like this hold us captive, even as they inflict mayhem upon our quality of life for decades, merely because they have become - yet again - too big to fail?

There are many debatable matters that are taking up a lot of regular folk’s productive time and energy: How big is the spill, really? How much damage will it do to the biosphere in the GOM? How bad will the impact be on the seafood industry? What are the true health effects of the dispersant on local populations of sea life and humans? Is the purpose genuinely to disperse the oil for beneficial reasons, or just to keep it off the surface where it could be more closely observed and more accurately estimated? Does the dispersant ultimately do more harm than good?

The far less debatable reality that’s now outlined in stark contrast by this latest alarm bell in the GOM is the very serious national security concern presented by our continued dependence on this fossil energy: On Christmas of 2002 – when the preparatory planning and pre-positioning of guns and boots for the invasion of Iraq had already begun – the sixteen nations possessing over 80% of the world’s oil had about 972 billion barrels between them. Of this total, 69.98% was inside the chaotic Middle East, only 12.64% was in South America and North America put together, and just a trifling 2.33% was here inside our borders.

Canada's 180 billion barrels aren’t in those figures, because 96% is locked up in tar sands and, in terms of energy/environment tradeoffs, getting it is likely to be prohibitively costly – you could do it, but does it make sense?

With about four and a half percent Earth’s population, our daily oil consumption here in the US is about 20 million barrels. Aside from various lubricants and fuels for cars and trucks, industry, and for some home heating and electricity generation, we also suck it in for agriculture in the form of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. It’s also the raw material for all our plastic imports and manufacturing, and for our solvents and many of our medicines.

At that gluttonous rate of gorging, if we’re ever deprived of all foreign sources of oil, our own 2.33% would last us less than three years before we’ve used up all US reserves. That potential reality is not unimaginable. The two most populated nations on the globe, India and China, have more than a billion people each. Both are in hot pursuit of our energy intensive way of life and gaining on us at a breathtaking rate, and oil simply cannot be drawn from the ground quickly enough to meet that demand.

If you'd like a little more data, have a look here: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/04/peak-oil-whats...

I've spent a lot of time looking at the options in front of us, and I haven’t found a more scalable, cheaper, safer way out for the US (and for just about any country anywhere) than solar thermal plants that use molten salt as a medium for heat-exchange and energy storage, combined with long distance HVDC transmission. Our country has about 3.5 million square miles of land. With just 3/10ths of 1% of that land in a line of plants across the Sunbelt – a total of one hundred of these solar thermal plants just ten and a half miles on a side – we can satisfy all the demand for electricity in the whole country 24/7/365 regardless of the weather.

I've been carefully studying infrastructure alternatives, too, and I’ve concluded that all-electric vehicles – in personal transportation, public transit and commercial shipping – will be the solution we turn to in combination with solar thermal. With the majority of these electric vehicles charging up in non-peak hours, growing the number of solar thermal plants to meet that additional demand will be very do-able.

Sound impossible? Have a look here:

http://2greenenergy.com/solar-thermal-leader/2534/
http://2greenenergy.com/utility-scale/2499/
http://2greenenergy.com/electric-vehicle-adoption/2890/
http://2greenenergy.com/epa/3003/
http://2greenenergy.com/paradigm-shift/2668/

Of course, there are many things standing in the way – spineless and pocketed politicians in both parties, entrenched greed feeding off the present infrastructure, insufficient media coverage - but none of these obstacles have anything to do with the science, nor are they based on any scarcity of the necessary materials.

We just can't keep on this path, burning ancient sunlight in the form of poisonous fossil fuels from deep beneath the earth’s surface. We either kick the habit and learn to tap into that magnificently efficient fission reactor 93 million miles distant that we'll all be revolving around for the next five billion years, or we'll stay hooked, and we’ll devastate our beautiful planet in a mortal spiral of wasteful squandering and brutal conflict.

Obama is a clever man, perhaps even a superior man in many ways, but he needs a much more rigid backbone. He needs to come clean, and make good on yet another of his abandoned campaign promises - stop the bribery.

There are 535 congresspersons in WDC, surrounded by 11,000 lobbyists - this is equal to the military division now tasked with security in 24,000 square miles of Iraq. These corporate shills shelled out $3.47 billion, just in the 12 months of 2009 - that's $6.5 million per congressperson. What government can remain true to any principles in the face of that green flood?

That was only a taste of what's to come. Those massive graft figures predate the declaration by the five SCOTUS judges that corporate paper tigers ("fictitious persons" in law) possess the Human Right of Free Speech. These same "justices" have already asserted that money is equal to Free Speech, and they have now unleashed corporate treasuries upon our election processes without limit or even the requirement of a vote by shareholders (the legal 'owners' of any publicly traded firm). Some PR company near the capitol in Maryland even made an announcement that it would run for public office... Will we one day vote against a presidential candidate with the initials BP?

With the closely aligned transportation interests not far behind, the contribution of energy and natural resources companies alone to the “financial well-being” of our congresspersons was only a little less than the lobby money for healthcare interests and Wall Street interests. Lobbying on behalf of labor, which can say it defends the interests of workaday folks, was 12th in line in buying influence - with a full amount coming to a tepid 8% of the "healthcare" lobby.

2009 was a record-breaker in American lobbying, and 2010 is already on a path to top it.

Here's a link to the 2009 data from opensecrets.org:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/02/federal-lobbying-soars-in-2009.html

Obama needs to keep calling all this by its true name, bribery, and needs to call the American people to demand immediate action by Congress against all these corrupting practices that have long and justly been reviled. As long as we let dollars determine our leadership instead of achievements and ideas, we'll continue to be ruled by the most callous sorts of greed and cowardice conceivable.

To find a little more info on the perils of bought leaders, check this out:

http://2greenenergy.com/say-adios-to-campaign-finance-reform/2426/

The most potent danger to our democratic republic is not the blood-spattered tactics of radicalized foreigners, however dangerous they truly are, and however many more of them our own futile Middle East strategy is now helping to recruit than we can ever kill. The nastiest menace facing our nation lies within: the unbridled supremacy of 11,000 lobbyists perverting our leadership and preventing crucial progress on issue after issue.

Obama won’t get anywhere without tackling this reality. If he does tackle it, he'll have a popular movement behind him that’s sufficient to break the hold that oil capital now has on the country’s capitol. He has the wits to develop and communicate the vision, and he must now to show the required nerve.

Can we, or should we, wait for one man to lead us? Or, shall we try every single day to be the change we want to see in the world? That’s another debate that has some merit.

I'm much obliged to The Oil Drum for giving us this place to talk among ourselves and exchange information. Places like this are the hope of the future.

Craig Shields, Editor, 2GreenEnergy.com

We either kick the habit and learn to tap into that magnificently efficient fission reactor 93 million miles distant that we'll all be revolving around for the next five billion years, or we'll stay hooked, and we’ll devastate our beautiful planet in a mortal spiral of wasteful squandering and brutal conflict.

Ummm... I always thought the Sun was a FUSION reactor... silly me.

But I agree that it's our best hope as a long-term energy source, and our resources should be put towards migrating to solar-sourced energy.

Pete in PA