Thread: Reports Sharply Contradict Claims About Vanished Oil

Reports Sharply Contradict Claims About Vanished Oil
Updated: 9 hours 4 minutes ago

Dana Chivvis
Contributor

AOL News Surge Desk (Aug. 17) -- Two new reports from different groups of academic scientists are providing a counterweight to the government's rosy assertions that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis is drawing to a close. One says that as much as 79 percent of the oil is still loose in the gulf; the other expresses the fear that oil on the ocean floor may not stay there but could resurface at a later time.

Researchers at the University of Georgia announced Monday that between 70 and 79 percent of the oil and its toxic byproducts are still present under the surface of the gulf. That finding stands in stark contrast to the calculations released by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists during the first week of August, which say that only 26 percent of the spilled crude remains after the rest of it was collected or dispersed or naturally evaporated or dissolved.


Win McNamee, Getty Images
NOAA scientist John Tarpley examines oil buried in the sand near Berwood Bayou at the Southwest Pass during an Aug. 14 survey tour with officials from BP near Venice, La.

The major dividing line between the government's and UGA's estimates (both are based on imperfect information, The Wall Street Journal points out) rests on the oil in those last two categories.

"One major misconception is that oil that has dissolved into water is gone and, therefore, harmless," UGA marine scientist Charles Hopkinson told the Journal. "The oil is still out there, and it will likely take years to completely degrade."

The UGA report adds that all the dissolved oil could not have evaporated because large plumes of oil exist under the ocean's surface. Only oil on the surface can evaporate into the atmosphere.

In the second report, to be released today, researchers at the University of South Florida say oil from the spill may have settled on the floor of an ocean canyon only 40 miles from the Florida Panhandle -- further east than original guesses put the oil. The oil, which sank to the bottom of the gulf when it was mixed with chemical dispersants, could resurface later. Whether or not that happens, its harmful effects will still be felt, the USF scientists argue.

"The dispersant is moving the oil down out of the surface and into the deeper waters, where it can affect phytoplankton and other marine life," John Paul, a marine microbiologist at USF, told CNN.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the federal spill response, said Monday that engineers are analyzing one remaining problem at the top of the BP well before proceeding with the final bottom kill. While conducting pressure tests last week, scientists discovered there may be some oil trapped in the well's annulus -- the space around the casing pipe in the well shaft. Now they have to be certain they can maintain pressure inside the well during the bottom kill before that step can proceed.

http://www.aolnews.com/article/reports- ... 2F19596811

More:
Gulf surface cleaner, but questions lurk far belowBy SETH BORENSTEIN, AP
posted: 3 HOURS 44 MINUTES

WASHINGTON -Researchers are warning that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a bigger mess than the government claims and that a lot of crude is lurking deep below the surface, some of it settling perhaps in a critical undersea canyon off the Florida Panhandle.

The evidence of microscopic amounts of oil mixing into the soil of the canyon was gathered by scientists at the University of South Florida, who also found poisoned plant plankton — the vital base of the ocean food web — which they blamed on a toxic brew of oil and dispersants.
Their work is preliminary, hasn't been reviewed by other scientists, requires more tests to confirm it is BP's oil they found, and is based on a 10-day research cruise that ended late Monday night. Scientists who were not involved said they were uncomfortable drawing conclusions based on such a brief look.

But those early findings follow a report on Monday from Georgia researchers that said as much as 80 percent of the oil from the spill remains in the Gulf. Both groups' findings have already been incorporated into lawsuits filed against BP.

Both groups paint a darker scenario than that of federal officials, who two weeks ago announced that most of the oil had dissolved, dispersed or been removed, leaving just a bit more than a quarter of the amount that spewed from the well that exploded in April.

At the White House on Aug. 4, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco said: "At least 50 percent of the oil that was released is now completely gone from the system, and most of the remainder is degrading rapidly or is being removed from the beaches."

That's not what the scientists from South Florida and Georgia found.
"The oil is not gone, that's for sure," University of South Florida's David Hollander said Tuesday. "There is oil and we need to deal with it."
University of Georgia's Samantha Joye said: "It's a tremendous amount of oil that's in the system. ... It's very difficult for me to imagine that 50 percent of it has been degraded."

Marine scientist Chuck Hopkinson, also with the University of Georgia, raised the obvious question: "Where has all the oil gone? It hasn't gone anywhere. It still lurks in the deep."

NOAA spokesman Justin Kenney defended his agency's calculations, saying they are "based on direct measurements whenever possible and the best available scientific estimates where direct measurements were not possible." But the vast majority of it is based on "educated scientific guesses," because unless the oil was being burned or skimmed, measurements weren't possible, NOAA response scientist Bill Lehr said earlier this month.

What is happening in the Gulf is the outcome of a decision made early on in the fighting of the spill: to use dispersants to keep the surface and beaches as clean as possible, at the expense of keeping oil stuck below the surface, said Monty Graham, a researcher at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama who was not part of the latest work. Oil degrades far more slowly in cooler, deeper waters than it would at the surface.
At the surface and the top 100 feet or so, it is obvious why oil is harmful, fouling marshes and hampering sea turtles, fish, birds and other life. Deep down, the effects are subtler, less direct. Oil at that depth can chip away at the base of the food web — plant plankton — and that could cause animals to go hungry. Reduced oxygen levels from natural gas and oil could also starve creatures of oxygen.

At depths of 900 to 3,300 feet, the University of South Florida researchers found problems with plant plankton. About two-fifths of the samples showed "some degree of toxicity."

"We found general phytoplankton health to be poor," Hollander said. By comparison, in non-oiled southern parts of the Gulf, the plant plankton were healthy, researchers said.

That makes sense because past research has shown that when oil when gets into the cell membranes of plankton, it causes all sorts of problems, said Paul Falkowski, a marine scientist at Rutgers University who was not part of the research. However, he said plant plankton don't live long anyway. They have about a week's lifespan, he said, and in a few months this insult to the base of the food web could be history.

Still, the brew that is poisoning the plankton may linger and no one knows for how long, Hollander said.

The Florida researchers used ultraviolet light to illuminate micro-droplets of oil deep underwater. When they did that, "it looked like a constellation of stars," Hollander said.

He also found the oil deposited in the sea bottom near the edges of the significant DeSoto Canyon, about 40 miles southwest of Panama City, Fla., suggesting oil may have settled into that canyon. The canyon is an important mixing area for cold, nutrient-laden water and warmer surface water. It is also key for currents and an important fisheries area.
"Clearly the oil down in the abyss, there's nothing we can do about it," said Ed Overton of Louisiana State University. He said the environment at the surface or down to 100 feet or so is "rapidly going back to normal," with shrimpers starting their harvest. But oil below 1,000 feet degrades much more slowly, he said.

Joye has measured how fast natural gas, which also spewed from the BP well, can degrade in water, and it may take as much as 500 days for large pools to disappear at 3,000 feet below the sea. That natural gas starves oxygen from the water, she said.

"You're talking about a best-case situation of a year's turnover time," Joye said.
—
AP legal affairs reporter Curt Anderson in Miami contributed to this report
http://www.aolnews.com/story/gulf-surfa ... 683?cid=10