What's Going On In The Gulf?

Image by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center via Flickr

BP and the government decided that millions of gallons of dispersants should be dumped into the Gulf to sink and hide the oil.

They succeeded in sinking it. As ABC, CBS and NPR note, huge quantities of oil are blanketing the ocean floor, killing virtually all of the sealife which lives there.

And giant new underwater plumes have been found in the water column itself.

But officials don't want to hear about them. As one member of the oil spill recovery team said:

“My biggest concern is there’s [a plume of oil] five miles by 30 miles out there that was reported and no one responded. The Coast Guard said for days that they wanted to run tests, and if they don’t test it when it’s called in, they’ll never find it.” More...

BP: Pressure only rose to "about 6,700 psi"

"...the pressure rose to about 6,700 psi". And who knows if we can even believe that!

Washington's Blog

Initial Results from Well Integrity Test Are Inconclusive
As Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen has explained, sustained pressure readings above 8,000 pounds per square inch (psi) would show that the wellbore is more or less intact, while pressures of 6,000 psi or less would mean there could be major problems:

We are looking for somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 PSI inside the capping stack, which would indicate to us that the hydrocarbons are being forced up and the wellbores are being able to withstand that pressure. And that is good news.

If we are down around in the 4,000 to 5,000, 6,000 range that could potentially tell us that the hydrocarbons are being diverted someplace else, and we would have to try and assess the implications of that. And as you might imagine, there are gradations as you go up from 4,000 or 5,000 PSI up to 8,000 or 9,000. …

We will at some point try to get to 8,000 or 9,000 and sustain that for some period of time, and these will be done basically, as I said — if we have a very low pressure reading, we will try and need (ph) at least six hours of those readings to try to ensure that that is the reading. If it’s a little higher, we want to go for 24 hours. And if it’s up at 8,000 or 9,000, we would like to go 48 hours just to make sure it can sustain those pressures for that amount of time.

The former director of Sandia National Laboratories says the pressure readings so far have been ambiguous.

As the Washington Post points out:

The initial pressure readings are in an ambiguous range, and officials will have to make a difficult judgment call on whether to keep the well shut in or reopen it, according to Tom Hunter, retired director of the Sandia National Laboratories and a member of the federal government’s scientific team overseeing the test.

“If it were a lot higher, it would be an easier decision to make,” Hunter said.

***

Hunter, who witnessed the test from BP’s war room in Houston, told The Washington Post that the pressure rose to about 6,700 psi and appeared likely to level out “closer to 7,000.” He said one possibility is that the reservoir has lost pressure as it has depleted itself the past three months.

“It’s just premature to tell. We just don’t know whether something is leaking or not,” Hunter said.

We will need to wait another 24 hours or so – and engineers will have to continue monitoring sonar and visual images (both help determine if any oil is leaking from the seafloor), and seismic data (to determine if there are any new leaks below the seafloor) – before engineers can determine how stable the well is.

Chemotherapy in the Gulf of Mexico

Image via Wikipedia

Excerpted from ritholtz.com

The United States has approved and is supervising the administration of chemotherapy to the Gulf of Mexico. I have personally watched chemo too many times. It attempts to restrain the fast-growing cells by doing more damage to them than it does to the healthy cells, in a desperate attempt to keep the patient alive. There are many warnings in chemotherapy about longer-term damage and about unknowns. They are accepted because chemo for a cancer victim is viewed as a life or death option.

Dispersants in the GOM are similarly problematic. Think of them as chemotherapy to a 2000 mile coastline and to hundreds of square miles of sea.

Use them sparingly and on the surface and we have a pretty good idea what will happen – they seem to accelerate evaporation and natural processes that get rid of the oil.

Use them below the surface, however, and we have little experience and simply do not know what the longer-term effects will be. Oil on the sea floor is a naturally occurring phenomenon. There are natural processes that Mother Earth has to deal with it. Microbes eat it. And when it rises to the surface it is then broken down and evaporates. Yes, it’s toxic, and, yes, it does do damage.

Dispersants are manmade; no Mother Nature involved in this one. They are toxic chemicals that can do damage themselves.

When they are used in very cold water and a mile below the surface, we simply do not know what the outcome will be. And we do not know if the small droplets they create become an emulsion that travels for hundreds or thousands of miles. There is initial, but inconclusive, evidence that this is happening in the GOM. We will soon find out. I fear it will be the hard way.

The rest of this commentary consists of quotes from the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency and other sources. They were extracted from public documents.

During the GIC meetings in Europe last week there were several discussions on the impacts of the GOM events. We owe great thanks to Jim Lucier for sharing his insight. His database on this subject is enormous.

The quotes follow. They are sequenced and lead to the issue of the use of Corexit. Remember, about 5 million liters of dispersants, mostly Corexit, have been used in the GOM in the last two months. About one-third of that has been at the wellhead, 5000 feet below the surface, in very cold, very high-pressure water. There are numerous reports of deeper-water oil plumes that are sufficiently subsurface to avoid easy measurement and detection. We will leave the rest of this to each reader to consider for her/himself.

As you read these extracts, please note that the UK has now banned Corexit. British oil comes from the cold and deep water off its coast.

First quote: “The EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard have authorized BP to use dispersants underwater, at the source of the Deepwater Horizon leak. Preliminary testing results indicate that subsurface use of the dispersant is effective at reducing the amount of oil from reaching the surface – and can do so with the use of less dispersant than is needed when the oil does reach the surface. While BP pursues the use of subsurface dispersants, the federal government will require regular analysis of its effectiveness and impact on the environment, water and air quality, and human health through a rigorous monitoring program.” Source: US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website: www.epa.gov

Second quote: “On May 26th, EPA and the Coast Guard issued a directive to BP requiring them to decrease overall volume of dispersant by 75 percent and to cease use of dispersant on the surface of the water altogether unless provided prior written authorization from the Coast Guard. EPA continues to allow BP to use undersea dispersant but only at a maximum of 15,000 gallons per day.”

Third quote: “BP’s scientific analysis of alternative dispersants, in response to EPA’s May 20th Directive, was found insufficient by both EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard. Therefore, EPA and other government scientists are independently verifying the alternative dispersant data presented by BP and will be performing independent scientific verification of the data BP presented. EPA is conducting its own tests to determine the least toxic, most effective dispersant available in the volumes necessary for a crisis of this magnitude and to understand if Corexit remains the most appropriate dispersant, as supported by the science for this situation.”

Fourth quote: “EPA listed the components of Corexit 9500 and 9527 — the two brands that BP has deployed to prevent oil from reaching shore. More than 1 million gallons of the chemicals have been used so far in response to the ongoing Gulf spill, including 317,000 gallons injected directly into the leaking well nearly a mile below the water’s surface — a first-time application EPA authorized last month. Among the chemicals in the Corexit brands are 1,2-Propanediol; Ethanol, 2-butoxy-; Butanedioic acid, 2-sulfo-, 1,4-bis(2-ethylhexyl) ester, sodium salt (1:1); Sorbitan, mono-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate; Sorbitan, mono-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate, poly(oxy-1,2-ethanediyl) derivs.; Sorbitan, tri-(9Z)-9-octadecenoate, poly(oxy-1,2-ethanediyl) derivs; 2-Propanol, 1-(2-butoxy-1-methylethoxy)-; and Distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated light.” Source: INSIDEEPA.COM, June 19, 2010

Fifth quote: “People working with dispersants are strongly advised to use a half face filter mask or an air-supplied breathing apparatus to protect their noses, throats, and lungs, and they should wear nitrile or PVC gloves, coveralls, boots, and chemical splash goggles to keep dispersants off skin and out of their eyes.” Source: EPA

Sixth quote: “The harm or toxicity of dispersed oil in the environment is generally associated with the oil rather than with the dispersant alone. However, use of dispersants breaks up a slick of oil on the surface into smaller droplets that can go beneath the surface. When applied on the surface before spills reach the coastline, dispersants will potentially decrease exposure for surface-dwelling organisms (such as sea birds) and intertidal species (such as mangroves and salt marshes), while increasing exposure to a smaller population of aquatic life found deeper in the water. It is unknown if dispersed oil has toxic implications to the human population because bioaccumulation through the food chain has not been evaluated.” Source: EPA

Seventh quote: “We are currently unaware of published scientific information in the peer reviewed literature about the biodegradation of the dispersant itself. We do have information about the individual components (ingredients) of the dispersant, provided by the manufacturer’s Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS).” Source: EPA

Eighth quote: “While dispersants have been used in previous oil spills, this is the largest application of dispersants at an oil spill response in the United States.” Source: EPA

Lastly, NOAA says that this spill seems to remain confined in the GOM for the time being. Here is the latest report (June 18):

“Recent satellite imagery analysis no longer shows the persistent patches of sheen to the S-SE of the main slick. However, non-recoverable sheens and tar balls previously observed in these regions may have been entrained into the large clockwise eddy (Eddy Franklin) that has pinched off the main Loop Current (LC). Trajectories indicate that most of these sheens will continue to move clockwise in Eddy Franklin. The connection between the spill source and Eddy Franklin has been cut off due to a change in the currents. The oil will biodegrade and photo-oxidize over the time frame of weeks to months. No recoverable oil is expected to enter the Florida current over the next 72 hours. The Loop Current is an area of warm water that comes up from the Caribbean, flowing past the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico. It generally curves east across the Gulf and then flows south parallel to the west Florida coast. An eddy is water that rotates.”

Remember: this NOAA analysis is derived from surface observations. There is no mention of subsurface movements or plumes. NOAA is now continually researching this issue of subsurface toxicity.

~~~
David R. Kotok, Chairman & Chief Investment Officer, Cumberland Advisors, www.cumber.com

Radar shows no decrease in Gulf oil flow

Image by SkyTruth via Flickr

miamiherald.com
A university professor says satellite images show no evidence that the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico decreased after a containment cap was placed over the undersea wellhead.

University of Miami professor Hans Graber said Thursday that the spill's footprint on the Gulf's surface would have shrunk by now if the cap had significantly decreased the flow. It has not.

The Coast Guard says the containment cap is capturing 630,000 gallons a day and pumping it to a ship at the surface. That amount could nearly double by next week to roughly 1.17 million gallons.

Graber could not explain the discrepancy.

One possiblity is that the amount of oil escaping the well increased when a pipe was cut to place the containment cap.

BP, law enforcement, Coast Guard, government officials, censoring Gulf media coverage

Image by .mw via Flickr

Efforts in Gulf to Limit Flow of Spill News
New York Times
JEREMY W. PETERS
When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast Guard-Federal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request.

A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.

“We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?” recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. “The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: ‘Not allowed.’ ”

Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.

To some critics of the response effort by BP and the government, instances of news media being kept at bay are just another example of a broader problem of officials’ filtering what images of the spill the public sees.

Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of information that has emerged from BP and government sources. Three weeks passed, for instance, from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and the first images of oil gushing from an underwater pipe were released by BP.

“I think they’ve been trying to limit access,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who fought BP to release more video from the underwater rovers that have been filming the oil-spewing pipe. “It is a company that was not used to transparency. It was not used to having public scrutiny of what it did.”

Officials at BP and the government entities coordinating the response said instances of denying news media access have been anomalies, and they pointed out that the company and the government have gone to great lengths to accommodate the hundreds of journalists who have traveled to the gulf to cover the story. The F.A.A., responding to criticism following the incident with Southern Seaplane, has revised its flight restrictions over the gulf to allow for news media flights on a case-by-case basis.

“Our general approach throughout this response, which is controlled by the Unified Command and is the largest ever to an oil spill,” said David H. Nicholas, a BP spokesman, “has been to allow as much access as possible to media and other parties without compromising the work we are engaged on or the safety of those to whom we give access.”

Anomalies or not, cases continue in which reporters and photographers are blocked from covering aspects of the spill.

Last week, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, tried to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the gulf on a Coast Guard vessel. Mr. Nelson’s office said the Coast Guard had agreed to accommodate the reporters and camera operators. But at about 10 on the evening before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.

“They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same ‘federal asset,’ ” said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator. “No further elaboration” was given, Mr. Gulley added.

Mr. Nelson has asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for an official explanation, the senator’s office said.

Capt. Ron LaBrec, a Coast Guard spokesman, said that about a week into the cleanup response, the Coast Guard started enforcing a policy that prohibits members of the news media to accompany candidates for public office on visits to government facilities, “to help manage the large number of requests for media embeds and visits by elected officials.”

In a separate incident last week, a reporter and photographer from The Daily News of New York were told by a BP contractor they could not get access to a public beach on Grand Isle, La., one of the areas most heavily affected by the oil spill. The contractor summoned a local sheriff, who then told the reporter, Matthew Lysiak, that members of the news media had to fill out paperwork and then be escorted to the beach by a BP official.

BP did not respond to requests for comment about the incident.

“For the police to tell me I needed to sign paperwork with BP to go to a public beach?” Mr. Lysiak said. “It’s just irrational.”

In the first few weeks after the oil rig explosion, BP kept a tight lid on images of the oil leaking into the gulf. Even when it released the first video of the spewing oil on May 12, it provided only a 30-second clip. The most-detailed images did not become public until two weeks ago when BP gave members of Congress access to internal video feeds from its underwater rovers. Without BP’s permission, some members of Congress displayed the video for news networks like CNN, which carried them live. More...

Another oil leak from offshore oil platform #23051 in the Gulf

skytruth.org
Routine Gulf Monitoring - Here's Why We Need It
Three days ago we blogged about a possible small, but persistent, leak from offshore oil platform #23051 in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the ongoing Deepwater Horizon spill. We asked for confirmation from anyone who might happen to be in the vicinity. Ask, and ye shall receive:

Photograph taken 6/5/10 of apparent oil leak in the vicinity of Platform 23051, courtesy J Henry Fair. Semisubmersible drill rig in foreground; workboat at left where the plume originates at the surface. Note a second plume apparently originating from platform in the background at upper right; this may be Platform 23051 (not yet confirmed).

Professional photographer J Henry Fair flew over the site yesterday using the MMS platform location in our blog post, and took photos of what he found. Here are the two he sent us today. There is an obvious plume of oil in the water next to a semisubmersible drill rig. J Henry identified it as the Ocean Saratoga rig (nice picture here), owned by Diamond Offshore.

The May 17 rig status report available on Diamond Offshore's website (which prominently features a photograph of Senator Mary Landrieu, with the caption "Credit where credit is due") shows the Ocean Saratoga is currently under contract to drill for the same company that owns and operates Platform 23051. The platform may be the one visible in the background of the photo above, apparently trailing another oily-looking plume. So it's possible that we've actually discovered two separate leaks or spills in the same vicinity.

A closer look at the semisubmersible rig, work boat, and apparent plume of oil near the location of Platform 23051 in the Gulf of Mexico, taken June 5, 2010. Photo courtesy J Henry Fair.

J Henry described the workboat at the end of the oil plume as "churning the oil" as if to disperse it more quickly. It's unclear from these pictures if the workboat is itself the source of this oil plume, or if indeed it's motoring around where an oil plume is emerging at the ocean surface in an attempt to break it up. In any event, this spill is certainly large enough to require reporting to the Coast Guard.

Other than us - is anybody watching what's going on out there?

This is why we think America needs publicly transparent, routine satellite monitoring wherever we allow offshore oil and gas drilling.

BP, Coast Guard & Feds Withheld Videos Showing Massive Scope of Oil Spill

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

ABCNews
New videos show more clearly than ever how BP, with little resistance from the Coast Guard or other federal agencies, kept the public in the dark about just how bad things were beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

On May 1, 11 days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, and nine days after oil began spilling into the Gulf, the Coast Guard had still only released a single image of oil leaking a mile beneath the surface -- a fuzzy photograph of a broken pipe spewing oil.

But inside the unified command center, where BP and federal agencies were orchestrating the spill response, video monitors had already displayed hours of footage they did not make public. The images showed a far more dire situation unfolding underwater. The footage filmed by submarines showed three separate leaks, including one that was unleashing a torrent of oil into the Gulf.

BP officials said they made all the video available to federal officials.

"The video has been available to the unified command from the very beginning," said Mark Proegler, a BP spokesman. "It's always been here from the beginning. They had it."

Coast Guard officials told ABC News that BP refused to allow them to release the more startling images, arguing they were proprietary. But at the time, the agency was doing little to convey to the world what the images were showing. Coast Guard Admiral Mary Landry was sticking with estimates, calculated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which put the spill's size at about 5,000 barrels a day for several weeks. Coast Guard officials said they were focused on the response, and advised the public not to worry about just how much oil was pouring into the water.

"I would caution you not to get fixated on an estimate of how much is out there," said Adm. Landry.

Two days later, as oil continued to spew, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said much the same thing.

"This fixation on the number of barrels is a little bit misleading," said Napolitano.

BP officials said everyone inside the Unified Command center in Louisiana agreed that the 5,000 barrel figure was the best they could offer.

But Dr. Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer and oil expert at Florida State University said he disagrees, and he remains "baffled and bothered" by the decision to keep under wraps the images that he believes indicated the spill was much bigger.

"We need to know what's coming at us," he told ABC News. "You know, we are Americans, we respond to threats. Don't sugarcoat it. Tell us the truth and we'll do the best we can. And I think that's exactly what didn't happen here. The government, I'm sorry to say has been behind the information curve every step in this process."

Sen. Bill Nelson , a Florida Democrat, said the apparent suppression of the tapes prevented an independent analysis of how much oil was spilling, a move that might eventually save BP millions, since federal fines are based on $1,000 a day per barrel.

The difference between a spill of 5,000 barrels a day and 20,000 barrels a day is $15 million a day. "It clearly tells us why they drug their feet to release these tapes," Nelson said. "I guess they were hoping that they could get it under control and this whole problem would go away."

BP Bows to Pressure for Oil Leak Livestream

CBS
Hours after hearing a demand from a congressional chairman, BP announced the oil company would provide a live broadcast of the oil spill from a government website.

“This may be BP’s footage, but it’s America’s ocean," Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman who made the demand, said in a statement. "Now anyone will be able to see the real-time effects the BP spill is having on our ocean."

The chairman of a congressional subcommittee called on BP to release live video feeds of the oil gushing from a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

Earlier Wednesday, Markey demanded the broadcast so independent scientists could more accurately calculate the flow rate. He questioned why such data wasn't readily being made public.

"BP thinks it's their ocean," Markey said while chairing a House Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing Wednesday.

Markey didn't stop with BP, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. He blasted the Coast Guard for what he described as letting BP call the shots.

Coast Guard officials were on a boat with BP contractors who stopped CBS News cameras from viewing an oily beach, and the Coast Guard - which is in charge of the investigation - admits it's had access to live video since Day One but wouldn't let Congress or the public see it, Attkisson reports.

Markey said there was "no excuse for withholding live video for 23 days."

Markey's demand came after BP released some video footage of the leak after other pressure from Congress. BP uses several remotely controlled submersibles to record video of the leak site 24 hours a day, according to a statement the subcommittee released.

“Congress and the American public have the right to know what is happening in real time, so that they can understand and react to the situation as it develops," Markey said in a statement.

Two professors at the hearing supported Markey. Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, said uncompressed video from BP will help more accurately measure the leak. Otherwise it will be difficult to engineer appropriate solutions, Wereley said.

Wereley estimates the leak lets 70,000 barrels a day into the Gulf, much higher than the BP's estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

Frank Muller-Karger, a University of South Florida professor of biological oceanography, told committee members an on-land system such as satellites are needed for measuring weather to know what is going on below the ocean surface.

Government agencies have set up a task force to focus on how much oil is spilling, but BP America President Lamar McKay said under questioning at the hearing that officials still don't know which estimates are correct.

"It's theoretically possible," that the larger estimates are accurate, he said. "But I don't think anyone who's been working on this thinks it's that high."

Oceanography professor: oil spill already greater than Exxon Valdez

washingtonpost.com
No one is sure how much oil is leaking. The Coast Guard initially said there was no leak, then said there was a leak of 1,000 barrels a day, then upped the estimate to 5,000 barrels. Adm. Thad W. Allen, the leader of the federal response and commandant of the Coast Guard, has cautioned against putting too much credence in any estimate.

Ian MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, has calculated the amount of oil based on satellite imagery and established models of oil dispersion and believes that the quantity is already greater than that dumped in Alaska by the Exxon Valdez in 1989. He estimated last week that 9 million gallons of oil are already in the water, compared with 10.8 million gallons in the Valdez disaster.

But he acknowledged that the real amount could be different. In any case, he said, the comparison to the Valdez spill is misguided, because the coastal gulf is far more economically significant than the sparsely populated coast of Alaska. More...