Gulf of Mexico Hydrocarbon Plume

[SquidInk]

- source

Tracking Hydrocarbon Plume Transport and Biodegradation at Deepwater Horizon

Richard Camilli,1,* Christopher M. Reddy,2 Dana R. Yoerger,1 Benjamin A. S. Van Mooy,2 Michael V. Jakuba,3 James C. Kinsey,1 Cameron P. McIntyre,2 Sean P. Sylva,2 James V. Maloney4

The Deepwater Horizon blowout is the largest offshore oil spill in history. We present results from a subsurface hydrocarbon survey using an autonomous underwater vehicle and a ship-cabled sampler. Our findings indicate the presence of a continuous plume over 35 km in length, at approximately 1100 m depth that persisted for months without substantial biodegradation. Samples collected from within the plume reveal monoaromatic petroleum hydrocarbon concentrations in excess of 50 µg L–1. These data indicate that monoaromatic input to this plume was at least 5500 kg day–1, which is more than double the total source rate of all natural seeps of the monoaromatic petroleum hydrocarbons in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Dissolved oxygen concentrations suggest that microbial respiration rates within the plume were not appreciably more than 1 µM O2 day–1.

1 Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
2 Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
3 Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia.
4 Monitor Instruments Company LLC, Cheswick, PA 15024, USA.

Translation: BP made the oil disappear.

[SquidInk]

Gee, I'll bet they're confused over at Benevolent Petroleum. They chanted, "abracadabra" , they waved their Limited Edition Visconti pens around in unison and yelled, "hocus pocus!" "money! money! money!".

But that didn't "git 'er done". Huh. I wonder what went wrong.

White House claims that the worst of the BP oil spill was over were undermined yesterday when a senior government scientist said three-quarters of the oil was still in the Gulf environment and a research study detected a 22-mile plume of oil in the ocean depths.

Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) departed from an official report from two weeks ago which suggested the majority of the oil had been captured or broken down.

"I would say most of that is still in the environment," Lehr, the lead author of the report, told the house energy and commerce committee.

The growing evidence that the White House painted an overly optimistic picture when officials claimed two weeks ago the remaining oil in the Gulf was rapidly breaking down fuelled a sense of outrage in the scientific community that government agencies are hiding data and spinning the science of the oil spill. No new oil has entered the Gulf since 15 July, but officials said yesterday the well is unlikely to be sealed for good until mid-September.

Under questioning from the committee chair, Ed Markey, Lehr revised down the amount of oil that went into the Gulf to 4.1m barrels, from an earlier estimate of 4.9m, noting that 800,000 barrels were siphoned off directly from the well.

By some estimates, as much as 90% of the oil was unaccounted for. Lehr said 6% was burned and 4% was skimmed but he could not be confident of numbers for the amount collected from beaches.- source