BP Oil Spill: Clean-Up Crews Can't Find Crude in the Gulf

[Thiebear]

YAY!

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-crude-mother-nature-breaks-slick/story?id=11254252

BP Oil Spill: Clean-Up Crews Can't Find Crude in the Gulf

As Size of Slick Shrinks, Experts Say Oil is Breaking Up, Staying Below Surface

For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it.

The leak is capped and the spill appears to be shrinking, but where is it going?

Watch 'World News' for the latest coverage on the Gulf oil spill.

At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire.

Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen. "That oil is somewhere. It didn't just disappear," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. Salvador Cepriano is one of the men searching for crude. Cepriano, a shrimper, has been laying out boom with his boat, but he's found that there's no oil to catch.

"I think it is underneath the water. It's in between the bottom and the top of the water," Cepriano said.

Even the federal government admits that locating the oil has become a problem.

"It is becoming a very elusive bunch of oil for us to find," said National Incident Cmdr. Thad Allen.

Skimmers Pick Up Less Oil

The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels.

Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

"[it's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

Good news Tuesday...

[NoCalMike]

Something doesn't sound right, and be careful of which professors you are getting information from as BP has bought a lot of them off too.

If this news is true it is good, but I wouldn't be so sure.

[twa]

Which ones did they buy off, the ones that agreed to work for them or the ones being funded by their money that refused to work for them?

Strange how news perspective changes once the administration starts getting hurt from the spill.

Do you hold the same bias for research done by environmental groups which profit from hyping oil spill effects?

[Burgold]

I think it's fair to be cynical, but thank God we have now something to be cynical about instead of outraged, disgusted, and depressed. Cynical is progress... means things are getting better.

[Thiebear]

Im not the most Pro-Administration person on Extremeskins .

But sometimes good news is just: Good news.

[rictus58]

Explain how this is good news? The oil didn't disappear. It's still there. Just not visible from the air. It's still doing damage.

I'd say this is bad news. It's an amount of oil the size of NH that can't be cleaned up.

[Springfield]

I don't understand how oil can be below the surface. It has to rise to the top at some point... right?

Oil and water don't mix. Oil is lighter than water therefore it floats to the top. Is there something I am missing?

[Thiebear]

Explain how this is good news? The oil didn't disappear. It's still there. Just not visible from the air. It's still doing damage.

I'd say this is bad news. It's an amount of oil the size of NH that can't be cleaned up.

From the article:

but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

"[it's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

[twa]

It's an amount of oil the size of NH that can't be cleaned up.

wanna bet?

there are of course residual effects that are less obvious,but even the underwater plumes are breaking down rapidly from reports I see.

[rictus58]

From the article:

but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

"[it's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

Oil is toxic.

If nature "reabsorbed" it, there is going to be a lot of dead zones.

[Thiebear]

Oil is toxic.

If nature "reabsorbed" it, there is going to be a lot of dead zones.

link? Where do you think it came from?

Man did not Make oil.

[twa]

Oil is toxic.

If nature "reabsorbed" it, there is going to be a lot of dead zones.

So is water:silly:

It will be interesting to see the effect on the 'normal' dead zone in that area.

[rictus58]

link? Where do you think it came from?

Man did not Make oil.

Man didn't make uranium or mercury either. That fact doesn't make those any less toxic either.

And honestly, you are going to claim crude oil isn't toxic to the environment?

It's probably likely that the dispersants have caused the oil to sink from the surface to rest somewhere in the thermocline.

[Burgold]

It's better news. Not necessarily good news. Things move in steps. As we find less oil and as man and nature work to correct this... and most importantly the fix holds... things are getting better. That's a relief. They are far from perfect, finished, or good though, but there's nothing wrong at sighing with relief at a moment's respite.

[PeterMP]

This is FAR from being good news in of to itself.

It MIGHT be good news, but it MIGHT also be awful news.

[sideshow24]

From the article:

but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

"[it's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

If this is true, why bother with the cleanup efforts? and just let mother nature "reabsorb" the oil into environment. Look at all the money and time that the cleanup crews wasted!

[Thiebear]

If this is true, why bother with the cleanup efforts? and just let mother nature "reabsorb" the oil into environment. Look at all the money and time that the cleanup crews wasted!

Forrest fires will eventually go out also..

You do what you can to help the people and animals in the region 'faster'.

It's my understanding the Exxon spill is still around???

This is Good news... This is not the Miracle of the dissapearing oil.

[December90]

Explain how this is good news? The oil didn't disappear. It's still there. Just not visible from the air. It's still doing damage.

I'd say this is bad news. It's an amount of oil the size of NH that can't be cleaned up.

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

and

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/06/04/kuwait.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=Sbin

If you did a little research you would find

1) this spill is not unprecedented in size (not the biggest)

2) in terms of the size of the body of water that the oil spilled into, the amount of oil can be reabsorbed. The spill while really bad, is not unrecoverable for the gulf ecosystem.

[Botched]

This sounds like it will only make things worse for crabs, shrimp, oysters, and other bottom-dwelling creatures.

[PeterMP]

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

and

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/06/04/kuwait.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=Sbin

If you did a little research you would find

1) this spill is not unprecedented in size (not the biggest)

2) in terms of the size of the body of water that the oil spilled into, the amount of oil can be reabsorbed. The spill while really bad, is not unrecoverable for the gulf ecosystem.

Neither of those spills are really comparable due to the nature of the spill. In both of the those cases, the spill happened in much shallower water, which is warmer and allows for better biodegredation and evaporation.

Shallower water allows abundant access to oxygen, which means the oil can be degraded aerobically. That isn't going to happen thousands of feet under the gulf.

In the case of the Ixtoc spill much of the oil was allowed to be completely removed from the environment as it washed up on beaches in TX, which are easy to clean up.

In the Persian Gulf, they literally pumped most of the oil out of the Persian Gulf and into nearby holding tanks, and a good bit washed up on beaches and therefore easily cleaned.

That hasn't happened here.

I will also point out that most people disagree that the Persian Gulf really has recovered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_oil_spill

"More recent scientific studies have tended to disagree with this 1993 assessment. Marshlands and mud tidal flats continued to contain large quantities of oil, over ten years later, and full recovery is likely to take decades.

Dr. Jacqueline Michel, US geochemist (2010 interview – transcript of radio broadcast):[8]

The long term effects were very significant. There was no shoreline cleanup, essentially, over the 800 kilometers that the oil – - in Saudi Arabia. And so when we went back in to do quantitative survey in 2002 and 2003, there was a million cubic meters of oil sediment remained then 12 years after the spill.... [T]he oil penetrated much more deeply into the intertidal sediment than normal because those sediments there have a lot of crab burrows, and the oil penetrated deep, sometimes 30, 40 centimeters, you know a couple of feet, into the mud of these tidal flats. There’s no way to get it out now. So it has had long term impact.

Dr. Hans-Jörg Barth, German geographer (2001 research report):[9]

The study demonstrated that, in contrary to previously published reports e.g. already 1993 by

UNEP

, several coastal areas even in 2001 still show significant oil impact and in some places no recovery at all. The salt marshes which occur at almost 50% of the coastline show the heaviest impact compared to the other ecosystem types after 10 years. Completely recovered are the rocky shores and mangroves. Sand beaches are on the best way to complete recovery. The main reason for the delayed recovery of the salt marshes is the absence of physical energy (wave action) and the mostly anaerobic milieu of the oiled substrates. The latter is mostly caused by

cyanobacteria

which forms impermeable mats. In other cases tar crusts are responsible.

The availability of oxygen is the most important criteria for oil degradation. Where oil degrades it was obvious that benthic intertidal fauna such as crabs re-colonise the destroyed habitats long before the

halophytes

. The most important paths of regeneration are the tidal channels and the adjacent areas. Full recovery of the salt marshes will certainly need some more decades."

In terms of the size of the gulf, people said the samething about pollutants entering via the Misissippi three decades ago. Of course, it is now home to the world's largest dead zone.

**EDIT**

This region of the gulf is already an oxygen poor zone compared to the Persian Gulf and the region the Ixtoc oil spill happened in, and over all is more oxygen poor than it was when the Ixtoc oil spill occurred.

[Thiebear]

Curmudgeons... why do you hate this administration and the good works it has done?

[PeterMP]

I don't understand how oil can be below the surface. It has to rise to the top at some point... right?

Oil and water don't mix. Oil is lighter than water therefore it floats to the top. Is there something I am missing?

Crude oil like this is not a single thing. It is a mixture of molecules.

Some are actually more dense than water and likely never left the bottom of the gulf.

These molecules will have VERY long term affects, and we have no real way to remove them.

In addition, it is possible to essentially dissolve the oil in water if you have enough water.

[PeterMP]

Curmudgeons... why do you hate this administration and the good works it has done?

Unlike others, I don't base all of my opinions based on how they affect particular political parties.

[rictus58]

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

and

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/06/04/kuwait.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=Sbin

If you did a little research you would find

1) this spill is not unprecedented in size (not the biggest)

2) in terms of the size of the body of water that the oil spilled into, the amount of oil can be reabsorbed. The spill while really bad, is not unrecoverable for the gulf ecosystem.

I couldn't open up the first link. The browser at work wouldn't allow it.

The second link, while it does contain some valuable information...well, the Gulf coast and Kuwait are not comparable. Either in Ecosystem, environment, or in man's response to the clean-up.

And yes, the gulf will recover. Nature will find a way through it. But how long will it take?

[maxiumone]

There is no good news with a spill. Some even say that doing nothing is the best.

http://www.miller-mccune.com/science-environment/oil-cleanup-cure-may-be-worse-than-disease-15722/

As the head of NOAA’s Hazardous Materials Response Team, which he founded in 1976, Robinson oversaw about 100 oil spill cleanups. “I can’t think of any good example where a cleanup has been anything other than useless. It causes more damage than not doing anything at all. Once the genie gets out of the bottle, there’s no getting it back in. That seems to be proving itself once more in New Orleans.”

Good info on lessons learned for Exxon spill in Alaska. It is a long article

http://www.eoearth.org/article/exxon_valdez_oil_spill