The Gulf Between Us

Stories of terror and beauty from the world's largest accidental offshore oil disaster

by Terry Tempest Williams

Published in the November/December 2010 issue of Orion magazine HERE...

THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE BEEN TOLD:

• April 20, 2010: the Macondo well blowout occurred approximately five thousand feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, causing the BP-Transocean drilling platform Deepwater Horizon to explode, killing eleven workers and injuring seventeen others.
• 5 million barrels of crude oil were released into the sea from the BP blowout. On average, sixty thousand barrels a day were escaping from the well before the gusher was capped on July 15, 2010.
• 632 miles of Gulf Coast shoreline have been oiled: 365 miles in Louisiana; 110 miles in Mississippi; 69 miles in Alabama; and 88 miles in Florida.
• There have been 411 controlled burns on the surface of the sea, killing hundreds of sea turtles and untold numbers of dolphins. The number of deaths has been greatly underreported.
• Four hundred species of wildlife are threatened by the spill, including marine life from plankton to whales, dolphins, sea turtles, tuna, and shrimp; dozens of species of birds, including brown pelicans and piping plovers; land animals such as the gray fox and white-tailed deer; and amphibians, the alligator, and the snapping turtle.
• 8 million feet of absorbent boom have been used to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; 3 million feet of containment boom have also been set around islands and shorelines for protection.
• 2 million gallons of a dispersant called Corexit have been applied on and beneath the surface of the sea to break up the oil. It is produced by Nalco Holding Company, which has corporate ties to BP and ExxonMobil. The EPA, on May 20, 2010, gave BP twenty-four hours to find a less toxic alternative. Corexit’s known toxicity, acknowledged following its use in the Exxon Valdez oil spill, was denied by BP. The EPA’s request was ignored.
• On May 25, the EPA gave BP a directive to scale back their spraying of the sea with dispersants. The Coast Guard overlooked the EPA’s edict and granted BP seventy-four exemptions in forty-eight days, essentially rubber-stamping their continued routine use of Corexit.
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates authorized 17,500 National Guard troops “to fight the massive oil spill,” alongside an army of 42,500 individuals paid by BP to protect and clean up vital shorelines in the Gulf of Mexico. Over 5,300 “vessels of opportunity” have registered with BP, captains with their own boats being paid to look for oil.
• August 5, 2010: BP officials reported a permanent stop to the spill. Crews used a “static well kill” to plug the gusher with drilling mud and then concrete. Two relief wells at depths of 17,864 feet and 15,963 feet are being drilled to ensure a secure and final closure of the well.
• Amid reports of the oil in the Gulf being nearly gone, an article in the August 19 issue of Science describes the presence of a plume of hydrocarbons at least twenty-two miles long and more than three thousand feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, residue from the Macondo well blowout. The plume was said to be moving in a southwesterly direction at a rate of about 6.5 kilometers a day.

I AM ANGRY. I AM OUTRAGED. And I am in love with this beautiful, blue planet we call home.

• This story in the Gulf of Mexico is not a new story. Living in the American West, I understand the oil and gas industry, both its political power in a state like Wyoming and its lack of regard for the safety of workers. Broken necks and backs are commonplace injuries. So are lost fingers. Occasional blowouts occur on land as well, resulting in fatalities. Production is paramount at the expense of almost everything else.
• And I have seen the environmental degradation that is left in the wake of collusion between government agencies and oil companies. Federal regulations are relaxed or ignored, putting the integrity of our public lands at risk. Ecological health is sacrificed for financial gain. This sense of entitlement among oil companies is supported by the U.S. Congress. It has direct results on the ground: burning slag pools; ozone warnings; contaminated water wells flushed with benzene; and loss of habitat for sage grouse, prairie dogs, and pronghorn antelope. The scars on the fragile desert of southeastern Utah, from endless road cuts to the sheared oil patches themselves, will take decades to heal. These are self-inflicted wounds made by a lethal economic system running in overdrive.
• After months of watching the news coverage on the blowout and subsequent oil spill, I had to see for myself what I felt from afar: this catastrophic moment belongs to all of us.
• On July 28, 2010, I traveled to the Gulf Coast with two friends: Avery Resor, a recent environmental science graduate from Duke University, and Bill Weaver, a seasoned filmmaker from Montgomery, Alabama, who now lives in British Columbia. Avery grew up on her family’s cattle ranch in Wilson, Wyoming, where she continues to live in a log cabin without running water or electricity. She is twenty-four years old and bikes wherever and whenever she can. Her name ties her to a deep family history rooted in Louisiana: Avery Island, famous for Tabasco Sauce made from hot peppers, vinegar, and salt. Bill has dedicated his life to making films that illuminate issues of environmental and social justice. He facilitates Media that Matters, a yearly conference committed to more transparent journalism. He is more cat than human, quiet and nimble. When he rolls his camera, you don’t know it. He has learned how to disappear so the authentic story can be told.
• We arrived on the hundredth day of the oil spill and stayed until the “static kill” was complete. We sniffed out stories and followed them. We listened and we engaged. I took notes. Avery took pictures. Bill filmed.
• The oil is not gone. This story is not over. We smelled it in the air. We felt it in the water. People along the Gulf Coast are getting sick and sicker. Marshes are burned. Oysters are scarce and shrimp are tainted. Jobs are gone and stress is high. What is now hidden will surface over time.
• Meanwhile, 1 billion birds are migrating through the Gulf of Mexico this fall, resting, feeding, and finding sanctuary as they have always done, generation after generation. The endangered piping plover will be among them. Seventy percent of all waterfowl in North America fly through the Mississippi Delta. Their energy will be compromised, with food not as plentiful. Their health will be vulnerable to the toxic traces of oil and dispersants lingering in the marshes.
• The blowout from the Macondo well has created a terminal condition: denial. We don’t want to own, much less accept, the cost of our actions. We don’t want to see, much less feel, the results of our inactions. And so, as Americans, we continue to live as though these 5 million barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf have nothing to do with us. The only skill I know how to employ in the magnitude of this political, ecological, and spiritual crisis is to share the stories that were shared with me by the people who live here. I simply wish to bear witness to the places we traveled and the people we met, and give voice to the beauty and devastation of both.

To bear witness is not a passive act.

Gulf Oil Update: Day 158

Is Using Dispersants on the BP Gulf Oil Spill Fighting Pollution with Pollution?

It remains unclear what impact chemical dispersants will have on sea life--and only the massive, uncontrolled experiment being run in the Gulf of Mexico will tell

By David Biello
Scientific American
June 18, 2010

Roughly five million liters of dispersants have now been used to break up the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, making this the largest use of such chemicals in U.S. history. If it continues for 10 months, as long as Mexico's Ixtoc 1 blowout in 1979 in the same region, the Macondo well disaster has a good chance of achieving the largest global use of these chemicals, surpassing 10 million liters.

And there is no doubt that dispersants are toxic: Both types of the dispersal compound COREXIT used in the Gulf so far are capable of killing or depressing the growth of a wide range of aquatic species, ranging from phytoplankton to fish. "It's a trade-off decision to lessen the overall environmental impact," explained marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), at a press conference on May 12. "When an oil spill occurs, there are no good outcomes."

The trade-off in this case is the addition of toxic chemicals in a bid to protect the marshes of Louisiana and the beaches of Florida. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for one, has become concerned about the toxicity of the most-used dispersant at the Gulf of Mexico spill—COREXIT 9500—and ordered BP to look at alternatives. (COREXIT 9527 was used earlier during the spill, but it was discontinued because it was considered too toxic.)

The problem? The EPA's industry-generated data is unclear as to the relative toxicity of various dispersants. "If you think the data on COREXIT is bad, try to find any decent toxicology data on the alternatives," says toxicologist Carys Mitchelmore of the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, who helped write a 2005 National Research Council (NRC) report on dispersants. "I couldn't compare and contrast which one was more toxic than the other based on that."

Dispersed oil

Both COREXIT 9500 and 9527 are produced by Naperville, Ill.–based Nalco, a company better known for its water purification work with the oil industry. "For every barrel of oil produced, 3.5 barrels of water are produced," explains chemist Mani Ramesh, chief technology officer for Nalco. "That needs to be treated before it can be released. That water treatment has been a core area for us."

But at the same time Nalco keeps busy cleaning the oil industry's water, it also provides COREXIT, a product to minimize the impact of any oil that spills into the water. Developed in a joint venture with ExxonMobil, the compound is largely made at facilities in Sugarland, Tex., and Garyville, La. The company expects to sell some $40-million worth of COREXIT as a result of the latest spill. "What the dispersant process enables is to prevent the oil from reaching the shore and converts that oil to easy food for naturally occurring microbes," Ramesh says. "If the oil reaches the shore the decomposition rate of oil is so low it would remain on the shore for probably 100 years."'

By last week, the EPA and Nalco had both released the ingredient list for COREXIT 9500 in response to widespread public concern. Its constituents include butanedioic acid (a wetting agent in cosmetics), sorbitan (found in everything from baby bath to food), and petroleum distillates in varying proportions—and it decomposes almost entirely in 28 days. "All six [ingredients] are used in day-to-day life—in mouthwash, toothpaste, ice cream, pickles," Ramesh argues. "We believe COREXIT 9500 is very safe."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agrees, noting in a document for health professionals that "the dispersants contain proven, biodegradable and low-toxicity surfactants," which are "detergentlike" and "in low toxicity solvents."

However, those solvents—petroleum distillates—are also known animal carcinogens, according to toxicology data, and make up 10 to 30 percent of a given volume of COREXIT. And those same everyday products can be deadly to wildlife. "It's the same products in Dawn dishwasher soap," Mitchelmore notes, which is being used widely to clean up oiled birds and other animals. "I wouldn't want to put a fish in Dawn dishwashing soap either. That would kill it."

As a result, the EPA ordered BP to stop spraying dispersants on the oil slick on May 26. The EPA also ordered BP to look for less toxic alternatives on May 20, and the company responded in a letter dated that same day that "BP continues to believe that COREXIT EC9500A is the best alternative." The dispersant continues to be sprayed onto the ongoing oil spill.

No alternative

One reason BP can make such claims is due to a lack of clear data on any of the alternative dispersants. As part of the National Contingency Plan required for offshore drilling, one of 18 EPA-approved dispersants must be on hand to handle spilled oil. Each of those dispersants has been preapproved for use, and each of those dispersants has been tested—by the companies that make them—for toxicity using representative species of estuarine shrimp (Mysidopsis bahia) and fish (Menidia beryllina). Specifically, these animals are exposed to a mix of one liter of dispersant for every 10 liters of heavy fuel oil in water.

Yet, the results of those tests vary wildly, from toxic impacts occurring at levels of just 2.6 parts per million for COREXIT to 100 ppm for another dispersant, NOKOMIS 3-F4. That suggests to experts that the tests which showed lower toxicity may have employed heavy fuel oil that had lost its potency. After all, volatile organic compounds in oil evaporate quickly when exposed to air and can even wash off in water. "These are order of magnitude differences," Mitchelmore notes. "A lot of that can relate to how those tests were set up."

Adds Nalco toxicologist Sergio Alex Villalobos, "If the oil is aged, then the oil loses its toxicity. Using an oil that is not very toxic, if you disperse that oil you are going to get very favorable numbers. Do those numbers really exist?"

EPA, for its part, did not show the best understanding of toxicological data in making its recommendations, urging BP to use dispersants with less than a certain cutoff of toxicity (pdf). Of course, in toxicology the lower the concentration the more toxic a given substance is. "They completely got that wrong," Mitchelmore says. EPA is now undertaking its own toxicology testing of COREXIT and Louisiana crude oil, but results are pending.

Nevertheless, just 20 ppm of COREXIT 9500—or one drop in 2.5 liters of water—inhibits growth of Skeletonema costatum, a Gulf of Mexico diatom, according to toxicology test data presented in the 2005 NRC report. It appears to inhibit the phytoplankton's ability to perform photosynthesis, specifically blocking part of the biochemistry that enables the photosystem II complex, Villalobos says. "Skeletonema seems to fall among the most sensitive ones," he says. "Like many aquatic plants, these are organisms that are resilient, that tend to come back even though you wipe them out in some cases chemically."

COREXIT is also not approved for use in U.K. waters because it fails the so-called "limpet test". That test involves spraying the dispersant and oil on rocks and seeing if limpets (a type of small mollusk) can still cling to them, a test which COREXIT and many other dispersants with slippery surfactants fail. "This is not a product for rocky shores," Villalobos says. "These are only for open sea waters."

Novel use

Of course, in the case of the oil spewing from BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, COREXIT is being used in another unapproved way. A wand from one of the remote-operated robots has sprayed more than 1.5 million liters of dispersants directly onto the escaping oil and natural gas roughly 1,500 meters beneath the ocean's surface. "I don't think anybody knows what would happen by applying the dispersants at depth," Ramesh says. "We do not have any knowledge that would allow us to predict what would happen."

In addition to creating subsurface plumes (and providing a rich feast for oil-eating microbes), it remains unclear what kind of dosage of dispersed oil sea life throughout the water column is facing. NOAA measurements show that levels reach 100 ppm of dispersed oil in the first half-meter of water, dropping to 12.5 ppm at 10 meters and unknown levels even deeper. "There isn't any information on what is the environmentally relevant level of dispersant," Mitchelmore notes. "Dispersed oils are going to be toxic, particularly in the top 10 meters that contains all the sensitive life stages. Anything that has sensitive membranes can be affected by dispersants and dispersed oil."

Sunlight falling on the dispersed oil may make the problem worse through a phenomenon known as phototoxicity. Compounds in the oil act as a catalyst to transfer some of the sun's energy into oxygen, converting the latter to a more reactive state that can literally burn up cells. And as fish and other sea life ingest the dispersed oil, it can be broken down into more toxic by-products. "What do these things break down into?" Mitchelmore says. "In toxicology it's quite often not the original compound that's the toxic entity."

Ultimately, the problem is that too little is known about the dispersants and the dispersed oil. "Given that this is a billion-dollar industry, why were those data gaps not filled?" Mitchelmore asks. "The whole issue regarding limited toxicity data—that's not just common to dispersants, that's common to tens of thousands of chemicals we're putting out into the environment daily."

After all, it was only after decades of using bisphenol A, polybrominated flame retardants and other chemicals that significant concerns began to manifest. In effect, usage replaced safety testing—and that's exactly what is happening with dispersants and the massive spill in the Gulf. Different regulation of chemicals and the chemical industry might forestall toxicological mysteries like those surrounding dispersants—and their thousands of chemical cousins—in the future.

"We're using an awful lot of dispersants," said EPA administrator Lisa Jackson during the same May 12 press briefing on the chemical's use at which NOAA's Lubchenco spoke. "This is going on longer than one might have known on day three or four. We're still dealing with a constant release of fresh oil and we need to continue to disperse."

Gulf Oil Update: Day 131

The search begins anew

By Samantha Joye
The Gulf Oil Blog HERE...
Published: August 19, 2010 2:16am

The R/V Oceanus will depart Gulfport at 12AM on August 21. The science party consists of microbiologists, isotope geochemists, chemical ecologists, physical oceanographers, geologists, and biogeochemists from the University of Georgia (UGA), Georgia Institute of Technology, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), the University of California Santa Barbara, the University of Maryland, and the University of Southern Mississippi. We’ll be conducting joint operations with the R/V Cape Hatteras, which will house scientists from the University of Texas, UGA, and LDEO. We’ll be visited by journalist from the BBC, CBC, and National Public Radio while we are at sea.

We’ll be conducting many operations similar to those we conducted on our May/June cruise but our collaborators be doing a lot of work at higher trophic levels to see how oil and gas are moving through the food web and we’ll be collecting sediment cores to see how much oil is on the bottom. Our cruise plan is ambitious. We want to locate and map (again) the mysterious deepwater plumes that were discovered on the Pelican cruise in May. We will be further documenting the plume’s distribution and following up the rate measurements we did in May/June with additional rate measurements and a suite of geochemical constituents.

We are all eager to get back out on the water. This week has been filled with packing, packing and more packing. The truck was loaded tonight and leaves at the crack of dawn tomorrow. The rest of the UGA crew arrives Friday morning. We’ll get everything set up and be ready to sail early Saturday morning. We should be on station mid-day Saturday and I’ll post updates as frequently as I can manage to find some time to put my thoughts to the keyboard.

As we did on the Walton Smith cruise, we will use an instrument called a “CTD rosette” to characterize the water column and collect water samples from specific depths. The CTD rosette contains an instrument with sensors that quantify temperature, salinity, depth, chlorophyll (an indicator of phytoplankton biomass), colored dissolved organic matter (“CDOM,” which includes oil), and transmissometer (which essentially detects particles in the water). The rosette also contains special bottles for collecting water at a specific depth. We trigger the bottles at depths where we see interesting signals in the CDOM, and we use the water for measuring methane gas concentration and oxygen consumption rates on board the ship. We’re also collecting samples for analysis of oil, basic geochemistry, nutrients, and microbiology; those samples will be analyzed back at the UGA laboratory.

We’ll be doing a lot more measurements at sea on this cruise so will be much busier than we were during the May/June cruise. Stay tuned for updates!

Gulf Oil Update: Day 78

BP Oil Spill Health Update: Corexit Being Sprayed from Coast Guard Planes



"They've turned a two dimensional problem of oil floating on the surface to a three dimensional problem with oil now dispersed throughout the entire water column!" "We're producing an experiment in the Gulf the likes of which no one has ever seen."More from warisacrime.org HERE...

Gulf Oil Update: Day 75

Editor's NOTE:

Reader's should be aware that Corexit (the dispersant agent being utilized by BP) works by distributing the oil eminating from the well throughout the entire water column which in this case is over 5000 feet deep. Micro-organisms respond to the dispersed oildroplets and plumes by attempting to ingest the carbonaceous material. In the process, molecular oxygen is depleted which might lead to large Gulf of Mexico "dead zones" in which no aquatic life can survive. It is extremely troublesome that we have literally no practical experience and no scientific data on the short or long term effects of the release of this much oil dispersant. Unfortunately, BP has not complied with the Obama administration's order to decrease the amount of Corexit it uses by 75%. To date, it has reduced it by <20%.

The use of Corexit or any other dispersant in these volumes is extremely worrisome.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert


Evidence of BP oil spill health risks confirm Gulf coast public fears of Corexit toxic cloud

June 30, 3:49 PM
Tampa Gulf Oil Spill Examiner
MARYANN TOBIN

As it turns out, the fears of Gulf coast residents, particularly those in the Tampa Bay area who are worried about a media blackout over health threats, may not be concerned without reason.

“In a shocking interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on June 29th, Allegiance Capitol Corporation V.P. Fred McCallister said that BP is deliberately sinking oil with the toxic chemical disbursant Corexit, to hide the size of the oil spill. By sinking the oil before it can be collected, BP won’t have to pay fines on it.” The San Francisco Chronical reports, “Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco of Naperville, Illinois. Corexit is four times more toxic than oil (oil is toxic at 11 ppm (parts per million), Corexit 9500 at only 2.61ppm)."

Russian Scientists have conducted studies on BP’s chemical disbursant. Their conclusion; “Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters is designed to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak.”They further report, “When combined with the heating Gulf of Mexico waters, its molecules will be able to “phase transition” from their present liquid to a gaseous state allowing them to be absorbed into clouds and allowing their release as 'toxic rain' upon all of Eastern North America.”Testimony before a Senate investigative panel on Thursday by Allegiance Capitol Corporation V.P. Fred McCallister expected to reveal what many have suspected about BP all along; they don’t care about the environment, the animals that are dying, and the lives that are being destroyed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

McCallister told CNN, “Everybody in Europe, where the standard practice is to raise the oil and collect it, is scratching their heads, and quite honestly laughing at what’s happening in the Gulf.” He added, “Everyone is looking at us and wondering why we’re allowing this to happen.”


NOAA Gulf oil spill map shows deadly oil plume moving closer to St. Petersburg, Florida


MORE...

RFK Jr: BP has incentive to hide size of Deepwater Horizon oil spill
July 3, 1:38 AM
Political Spin Examiner
Examiner.com Louisville
Maryann Tobin

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, BP has been trying to hide as many details about the spill as possible. Everything from the oil spill rate, to discussion of the third leak which has gone unmentioned since May, to the geological surveys on the Macondo well field that would provide solid evidence of the truly volatile environment under the fatally wounded well.

Reuters reports, "We are concerned about continuing reports that journalists are being denied access to sources and public places necessary for them to fully cover this important story,"
CNN’s Anderson Cooper has aired similar stories about access denied.

Just about everything related to the risks and damages from the BP disaster are tied to the amount of oil being spilled, according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has filed several lawsuits against BP.

In reality, the spill rate has been something of a mystery from day-one, and continues to be immeasurable on day 73. And the amount of oil spilled affects everything from how much chemical disbursant is used, to clean up costs, to EPA per gallon fines. It also affects human health.

Scientists have found “astonishingly high” levels of methane gas in and around the spill. According to Reuters, “As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone. Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler and a crew of 12 scientists found concentrations that were 100,000 times higher than normal,” Reuters reported.

In the video below, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Suggests that BP has no motivation to clean up the oil spilled, nor any reason to be concerned about the long-term risks to public health, the environment, or resulting damage to the US economy. BP is concerned about their stockholders.

As long as Americans remain wastefully dependent on oil - no matter where it comes from - BP and other oil companies will continue to run our country, control our lives, and in this case, control the ultimate outcome of the worst oil spill disaster in American history.

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