Gulf Oil Update: Day 108

Looking for the oil? NOAA says it's mostly gone

By SETH BORENSTEIN,
AP Science Writer
Thu Aug 5, 1:42 am ET

WASHINGTON – With a startling report that some researchers call more spin than science, the government said Wednesday that the mess made by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is mostly gone already.

Out of sight, though, doesn't mean out of danger, nor is the Gulf now clean. The harmful effects of the summer of the spill can continue on for years even with oil at the microscopic level, a top federal scientist warned.

U.S. officials announced that nearly 70 percent of the spilled oil dissolved naturally, or was burned, skimmed, dispersed or captured, with almost nothing left to see — at least on top of the water. That declaration came on the same day they trumpeted success in plugging up the leaking well with drilling mud,

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey announced in the five-page report that only 52.7 million gallons of oil are left in the Gulf. That is about 31 percent of the 172 million gallons that spewed into the water from the broken BP well.

What's left in the water is still almost five times the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

Nevertheless, Wednesday was a day of cautious celebration by a White House that has had little to cheer about from the oil spill.

"I think it is fairly safe to say ... that many of the doomsday scenarios that we talked about and repeated a lot have not and will not come to fruition," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said at a briefing with NOAA's top scientist.

Much of the reasoning behind the disappearing oil has to do with the natural resilience of the Gulf, which is teeming with microbes that eat oil. On top of that is the natural tendency of oil in seawater to evaporate and dissolve to half its volume in about a week — something even critics acknowledge.

The federal calculations are based on direct measurements for only 18 million gallons of the oil spilled — the stuff burned and skimmed. The other numbers are "educated scientific guesses," said NOAA emergency response senior scientist Bill Lehr, an author of the report. That is because it is impossible to measure oil that is dispersed, he said.

That's what worries some outside scientists.

"This is a shaky report. The more I read it, the less satisfied I am with the thoroughness of the presentation," Florida State University oceanography professor Ian MacDonald told The Associated Press. "There are sweeping assumptions here."

NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco acknowledged the numbers could be off by as much as 10 percent. One of the scientists who peer-reviewed the work and is mentioned in the report, Ed Overton of Louisiana State University, said he wasn't comfortable with NOAA's putting precise percentages of how much oil is left in the Gulf. What would be more accurate would be a much broader range of, say, 40 million to 60 million gallons, he said.

Still, Overton thought the report was mostly good work. He said the Gulf itself deserves much of the credit, describing the body of water in two words: "incredibly resilient."

The White House claimed only 26 percent of the oil remained in the Gulf, but that was based on a 206-million-gallon figure for the spill that included oil that spewed from the pipe but was captured by BP and never got into the Gulf. Using the 172 million gallons that got into the Gulf, 31 percent of the oil remains.

So what happened to the oil?

Thank nature more than the federal government. Burning, skimming and chemically dispersing the spill got rid of 35 million gallons of oil, while natural processes of dispersion, evaporation and dissolving got rid of 84 million gallons, according to the report.

"Mother Nature is assisting here considerably," Lubchenco said. She cautioned that the oil that's left can harm wildlife for years or even decades to come, saying: "Diluted and out of sight doesn't necessarily mean benign."

Still, outside scientists said this was a just too-simple explanation for a complex oil that has confounded federal scientists at every turn.

"This is just way too neat," said Larry McKinney, director of the Texas A&M University research center on the Gulf of Mexico. "How can you even do this at this point? There's a lot of oil still floating out there."

McKinney said he most worried that this overly optimistic assessment would cost the government — and save BP — billions of dollars in the damage assessment process. McKinney, who has served as a state of Texas trustee in the process, said, "BP attorneys are placing this in plastic and putting this in frames."

White House energy adviser Carol Browner said, "We are going to continue to ensure BP is held accountable for damage they did."

MacDonald said the core of the idea here — that oil in water essentially has about a half-life of a week — makes sense, but what happened from there doesn't.

"There's some science here, but mostly, it's spin," he said. "And it breaks my heart to see them do it."

MacDonald pointed out that NOAA spent weeks sticking with its claim the BP well was spewing only 210,000 gallons a day. Now, after several revisions, the federal government said it really was 2.2 million gallons a day. So he has a hard time believing NOAA this time, he said.

When Lubchenco was asked about that at the Washington news conference, Gibbs stepped in to defend the agency's credibility. Gibbs and Lubchenco said NOAA provided the best information at the time and updated estimates when it had better data and tools.

"Is there uncertainty to this? Of course there is," said NOAA's Lehr. But he said there was no political interference.

That question got raised because of the coordination of the media rollout of the report. Browner was on all four morning TV shows saying "the vast majority of oil is gone," and the report was leaked to The New York Times. The version of the report sent to Congress was created by a former campaign spokesman for President Barack Obama who is now the Commerce Department's public affairs chief.

The scientific report, which has four pages of text followed by one page of credits, is small compared to other similar reports. Initially, NOAA said there was a fuller, 200-page report, but then retracted that. There is a second report that is 10 pages. The initial report cites no scientific references — those, Lehr said, are in his head.

Gulf OIl Update: Day 102

Dispersants from BP Spill May Have Entered Gulf Food Chain
Click HERE for Toxicity Update...

Newsinferno
Published: Friday, July 30th, 2010

Scientists have raised yet another alarm about the dispersants BP has used in unprecedented amounts to break up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. According to GulfLive.com, researchers have found an oil and dispersant mix beneath the shells of post-larval blue crabs. The discovery is one of the first signs that the BP disaster is impacting the Gulf of Mexico food chain.

More than 1.8 million gallons of dispersant chemicals have been dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in attempts to break up the oil moving in from the Deepwater Horizon’s broken well. Concerns about the dispersant being used, Corexit 9500, prompted the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to mandate that BP switch to a less-toxic alternative, but BP never complied.

Ultimately, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson order the agency to conduct its own testing of Corexit, along with seven dispersants from its approved list. According to the EPA, those tests showed Corexit to be slightly less toxic than the manufacturer’s data had suggested, so BP was allowed to continue using it.

Now it appears that dispersants have broken the oil up into droplets tiny enough to easily enter the food chain. According to GulfLive.com, scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory’s Center for Fisheries Research and Development said tiny droplets are visible under the transparent shells of 2-millimeter-sized post-larval blue crabs collected in Mississippi’s Davis Bayou.

To confirm their findings, the scientists sent some crabs to a testing firm in Pensacola, Florida, which also found evidence of hydrocarbons. In addition to blue crabs, the droplets were also seen in fiddler crab larvae.

The post-larval blue crabs are vital to Gulf Coast fisheries, GulfLive said, as they serve as food for all types of fish and shore birds.

One of the scientists involved in the study also told GulfLive.com that there is a good chance that many young crabs will be lost because oil is covering so much of the ground 41 percent – where the larvae are.

According to a report on Huffington Post, other scientists involved in the study from Louisiana’s Tulane University used infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the droplets. In doing so, they discovered the chemical marker for Corexit. Two independent tests are being run to confirm those findings.

“Corexit is in the water column, just as we thought, and it is entering the bodies of animals. And it’s probably having a lethal impact there,” (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) Susan Shaw, director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, told Huffington Post.

2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Gov. Bobby Jindal asks feds for help in feeding, training those affected by Gulf of Mexico oil spill
By Ed Anderson,
The Times-Picayune
May 01, 2010, 8:40PM

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal called on federal agencies Saturday to make available supplies and funds to help feed and provide jobless benefits to workers thrown out of jobs by by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Jindal asked the federal Departments of Labor and Agriculture departments to let him know by the end of business Monday if they can grant the requests.

In separate letters to the agencies, Jindal pointed out that BP, the oil company that leased the rig that topped and is spewing oil into the Gulf, will ultimately be responsible for making payments to those affected.

He said that was making the requests "in an abundance of caution" in case BP's plans "fall short of meeting the needs of our people."

Jindal said the requests are also being made in preparation for "a worst-case scenario." .

In his letter to federal agriculture officials, Jindal asked them to make available food supplies to the state and disaster relief organizations -- possibly for distribution to shelters, mass-feeding sites and individual households, if needed.

He also asked federal agriculture officials to authorize the use of emergency food stamp benefits to persons who may be out of work or are losing income because of the oil spill.

Jindal said that 10 teams from the state Department of Social Services will be in coastal parishes Monday to interview people who might qualify for the emergency benefits.

Applications can also be obtained HERE..., he said.

Jindal has asked the labor department to approve financing of disaster-related "workforce training and job placement services" for fishers and others who may be out of work as a result of the spill.

He also asked officials for approval of unemployment benefits for workers "displaced as a result of the oil spill."

Federal officials have already approved the pay of up to 6,000 Louisiana National Guard troops for up to 90 days to help in the spill clean-up and related activities. So far, Jindal said, 300 have been assigned to Plaquemines Parish, 300 have been deployed to St. Bernard Parish and another 1,000 are on standby.

Jindal said the Guard will be used to provide security and communications and will help in the clean-up activities