NEW ORLEANS – The only thing keeping millions more gallons of oil out of the Gulf of Mexico right now is a rush job: an experimental cap that has held for more than two weeks but was never meant to be permanent. As soon as this week, crews will … Read ahead
Source: news.yahoo.com
That means that over the course of the 87 days that the well was uncontrolled in the Gulf, about 192 million gallons of oil were released. Subtract from that the 45 million gallons BP said it collected with its cap, skimmed off the Gulf’s surface or burned, and that leaves about 147 million gallons of oil. Some of that oil has already washed up on beaches and marshes, but the lion’s share remains unaccounted for. Officials with BP PLC, the well’s majority owner, declined to comment on how much oil had flowed into the Gulf and referred the Press-Register to federal officials. BP and federal officials have been scaling back spill response, saying that less and less oil is being found on the Gulf’s surface. Rob Kiene, a scientist with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, said the big question is whether there is more oil hidden below the waves. “Has the oil mixed down into the water column? Is it spreading around? Will it be coming up?” he asked. “All of those questions are being investigated.” Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said last week that the government was in the process of “putting together what we call an oil budget” that would provide a rough estimate of what happened to the oil. Allen, who is leading the government response to the spill, said scientists “will continue to basically slowly fill out what I would call an MRI of the Gulf, where you take slices and look at the presence of hydrocarbons moving forward. “But we’re in kind of a new area here,” he added, “where we’ve never had this amount of oil in the water before.” Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University chemist who has been analyzing oil samples for the federal government and the Press-Register, said the Gulf had done a remarkable job of breaking down the oil. Many of the samples he has been looking at show the oil has almost entirely degraded, he said. “I think the worst is past us,” Overton said. “We’re going to continue seeing oil coming ashore, and there will be impacts, but the bacteria in the Gulf are doing a better job of handling the oil than anybody expected.” Dispersants, he said, “helped put the oil in a form where that bacteria could work on it.” Asked then if underwater dispersant use had been effective, Overton said it appeared that it had, at least by breaking up oil and keeping it from beaches and marshes. But he added that the jury was still out on all of the biological implications of dispersant use. Harriet Perry, who studies crabs at the University of Southern Mississippi, reported a month ago finding crab larvae with globs of oil beneath their shells, one of the first examples of oil moving into the food chain. Perry said she believed the dispersant had broken the oil down into small enough particles that it was able to work its way beneath the larval crabs’ shells. Perry said her concern is that the larvae are important food items for many fish and other creatures in the Gulf. Monty Graham, also of the Sea Lab, predicted scientists would be able to detect the oil’s fingerprint in nature for a long time. Full ecological impacts will become apparent over years, not just months, he said. “We are talking about a lot of oil that was released. It is still out there, even if it has been degraded,” Graham said. He pointed to studies from Exxon Valdez showing that spill’s impacts linger today, more than 20 years after the spill. … Read ahead
Source: blog.al.com
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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil giant BP Plc rejected a request from Texas for a $25 million cash advance to clean up shorelines sullied by the Gulf oil spill, and got a scathing response from top Texas officials, according to letters given to Reuters on Thursday. BP denied a July 5 request from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott for a $25 million "block grant," similar to cash advances for clean up that BP gave to all other Gulf Coast states, the letter from BP to Abbott showed. While BP will not grant the cash advance, it promised to pay Texas for clean-up costs as they arise, and pledged $5 million for the Texas Coastal Protection Fund, which is meant for oil spill responses. Some tar balls linked to BP's Gulf of Mexico spill have hit Texas shores, although damage has so far been small compared to widespread fouling of beaches in other Gulf states. The BP letter, dated July 12, was given to Reuters by Abbott's office. In a scathing response letter, dated July 22, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Abbott urged BP to advance more clean-up funds quickly. "BP has taken steps to ensure every other Gulf Coast state is prepared to respond, yet you shortchange the state in which you have chosen to domicile – and whose beaches you threaten with tar balls," reads one passage of the response letter given to Reuters. London-based BP has its U.S. headquarters in Houston and holds billions of dollars in Texas assets. In another passage, Governor Perry, a Republican, tells BP executive Doug Suttles that "you are essentially asking Texas to just trust you." BP did not immediately return phone calls or emails requesting comment on the letters. The company said in its letter to Abbott that Texas shores may face only "the occasional random scattering of tar balls," citing an estimate from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Chemical analysis of sludgy tar balls found at McFadden Beach near Port Arthur, Texas, showed the oil was from BP's spill. BP has paid around $4 billion so far to respond to the massive spill caused by its Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout on April 20. The company has provided "block grant" advances of $50 million to other states affected by the spill. "BP contends that Texas' request for financial assistance to defend its Gulf Coast is "premature" and that BP "expects" that any risk to Texas is "limited," Perry and Abbott wrote. "These predictions about the future are entitled to no weight, and offer no comfort to Texans impacted by the spill," they added. BP has received more than 100,000 oil spill claims so far. According to Perry's letter to BP, more than 4,400 are from Texas, and BP has paid out more than $5 million to Texas claimants. (Editing by David Gregorio) … Read ahead
Source: news.yahoo.com
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, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday. Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler, just back from a 10-day research expedition near the BP Plc (BP.L) oil spill in the gulf, says methane gas levels in some areas are “astonishingly high.” Kessler’s crew took measurements of both surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP’s broken wellhead. “There is an incredible amount of methane in there,” Kessler told reporters in a telephone briefing. In some areas, the crew of 12 scientists found concentrations that were 100,000 times higher than normal. “We saw them approach a million times above background concentrations” in some areas, Kessler said. The scientists were looking for signs that the methane gas had depleted levels of oxygen dissolved in the water needed to sustain marine life. “At some locations, we saw depletions of up to 30 percent of oxygen based on its natural concentration in the waters. At other places, we saw no depletion of oxygen in the waters. We need to determine why that is,” he told the briefing. Methane occurs naturally in sea water, but high concentrations can encourage the growth of microbes that gobble up oxygen needed by marine life. Kessler said oxygen depletions have not reached a critical level yet, but the oil is still spilling into the Gulf, now at a rate of as much as 60,000 barrels a day, according to U.S. government estimates. “What is it going to look like two months down the road, six months down the road, two years down the road?” he asked. Methane, a natural gas, dissolves in seawater and some scientists think measuring methane could give a more accurate picture of the extent of the oil spill. Kessler said his team has taken those measurements, and is hoping to have an estimate soon. “Give us about a week and we should have some preliminary numbers on that,” he said. … Read ahead
Source: wkrg.com
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PITTSBURGH—Around suppertime on June 3 in Clearfield County, Pa., a geyser of natural gas and sludge began shooting out of a well called Punxsutawney Hunting Club 36. The toxic stew of gas, salt water, mud and chemicals went 75 feet into the air for 16 hours. Some of this mess seeped into a stream northeast of Pittsburgh. Four days later, as authorities were cleaning up the debris in Pennsylvania, an explosion burned seven workers at a gas well on the site of an abandoned coal mine outside of Moundsville, W.Va., just southwest of Pittsburgh. The back-to-back emergencies were like a five-alarm fire for John Hanger, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. For a brief moment, the cable news channels turned their attention away from the BP PLC oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico to the apparent trouble in the nation’s expanding onshore … Read ahead
Source: scientificamerican.com
Not just flora and fauna are getting caked in oil. So is the Gulf of Mexico’s barnacled history of pirates, sea battles and World War II shipwrecks. The Gulf is lined with wooden shipwrecks, American-Indian shell midden mounds, World War II casualties, pirate colonies, historic hotels and old fishing villages. Researchers now fear this treasure seeker’s dream is threatened by BP PLC’s deepwater well blowout. Within 20 miles of the well, there are several significant shipwrecks — ironically, discovered by oil companies’ underwater robots working the depths — and oil is most likely beginning to cascade on them. … Read ahead
Source: detnews.com
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BP PLC’s 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig are riddled with omissions and glaring errors, according to an Associated Press analysis that details how BP officials have pretty much been making it up as they go along. The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company’s preparedness to deal with one. … Read ahead
Source: nola.com
Disputing scientists’ claims of large oil plumes suspended underwater in the Gulf of Mexico, BP PLC’s chief executive on Sunday said the company has largely narrowed the focus of its cleanup to surface slicks rolling into Louisiana’s coastal marshes. … Read ahead
Source: huffingtonpost.com
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This image made from video released by British Petroleum (BP PLC) shows equipment being used to try and plug a gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 during a maneuver known as a ‘top kill’ that has never before been tried 5,000 feet underwater. The oil giant’s chief executive earlier gave the procedure a 60 to 70 percent chance of working, and President Barack Obama cautioned Wednesday there were ‘no guarantees.’” height… Read ahead
Source: boston.com
BP’s mile-long tube is only collecting about one-fifth of the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, its executives said Monday. The energy giant’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, said the tube has been siphoning more than 1,000 barrels a day, or 42,000 gallons, in an interview Monday with NBC’s “Today Show.” BP has estimated about 5,000 barrels a day, or 210,000 gallons a day, has been leaking out. Suttles said they hope to be able to collect more oil as they ramp up the effort but they won’t be able to get all of it. In a major step toward containing the massive oil leak, BP PLC crews on Sunday hooked up the tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship. However, millions of gallons of crude are already in the Gulf. The contraption was hooked up successfully and sucking oil from a pipe at the blown well Sunday afternoon after being hindered by several setbacks. Engineers remotely guiding robot submersibles had worked since Friday to place the tube into a 21-inch (53-centimeter) pipe nearly a mile (1.6 kilometers) below the sea. Kent Wells, BP’s senior vice president for exploration and production, said during a news conference that the amount being drawn was gradually increasing, and it would take several days to measure it. Company spokesman Mark Proegler at the joint spill command center in Louisiana had initially said the tube was containing most of the oil coming from the pipe, which is contributing an estimated 85 percent of the crude in the spill. In a statement Sunday, BP said that the tube was “successfully tested and inserted into the leaking riser, capturing some amounts of oil and gas.” “While not collecting all of the leaking oil, this tool is an important step in reducing the amount of oil being released into Gulf waters,” BP said. Previous attempts to use emergency valves and a 100-ton container had failed to stop the leak that has spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, threatening sea life, commercial fishing and the coastal tourism industry from Louisiana to Florida. BP PLC has also been burning small amounts of floating oil and spraying chemical dispersants above and below the surface. The tube’s success gave crews partial control of the leak for the first time in more than three weeks. Oil has been spewing since the rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 people and sinking two days later. The government shortly afterward estimated the spill at 210,000 gallons (795,000 liters) — or 5,000 barrels — a day, a figure that has since been questioned by some scientists who fear it could be far more. BP executives have stood by the estimate while acknowledging there’s no way to know for sure. Researchers warned Sunday that miles-long (kilometers-long) underwater plumes of oil from the spill could poison and suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could endure for a decade or more. Researchers have found more underwater plumes of oil than they can count from the blown-out well, said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia. She said careful measurements taken of one plume showed it stretching for 10 miles (16 kilometers), with a 3-mile (5-kilometer) width. The hazardous effects of the plume are twofold. Joye said the oil itself can prove toxic to fish swimming in the sea, while vast amount of oxygen are also being sucked from the water by microbes that eat oil. Dispersants used to fight the oil are also food for the microbes, speeding up the oxygen depletion. “So, first you have oily water that may be toxic to certain organisms and also the oxygen issue, so there are two problems here,” said Joye, who’s working with a group of scientists who discovered the underwater plumes in a recent boat expedition to the Gulf. “This can interrupt the food chain at the lowest level, and will trickle up and certainly impact organisms higher. Whales, dolphins and tuna all depend on lower depths to survive.” She said it could take years or even decades for the ecosystem to recover. BP has been casting about for ways to contain the leak since it was discovered several days after the blast. First robot submarines were unable to get valves to work on machinery at the well head called the blowout preventer. Then the company failed to capture the oil with a 100-ton box after icelike crystals formed in it. A relief well, considered the permanent solution the leak, is still being drilled and is months away from completion. … Read ahead
Source: foxnews.com