Study: BP Dispersants killed plankton and disrupted food chain

A study on possible effects of the 2010 BP oil spill indicates dispersants may have killed plankton - some of the ocean's tiniest plants and creatures - and disrupted the food chain in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the nation's richest seafood grounds.

Scientists who read the study said it points toward major future effects of the spill. One called its findings scary. For the study, Alabama researchers pumped water from Mobile Bay into 53-gallon drums, then added oil, dispersant or both in proportions found during the oil spill to simulate the spill's effects on microscopic water-life in the bay.

Over more than 12 weeks in 2010, BP's well spewed nearly 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The company used more than 1.8 million gallons of dispersants - more than 770,000 gallons of it at the oil's source on the ocean floor - to break up the oil into tiny droplets.

The researchers found that, within days, the numbers of plant-like phytoplankton and ciliates - plankton that use hairlike cilia to move - increased under an oil slick. But they dropped significantly in the drums with dispersant or dispersed oil, while the numbers of bacteria increased. The study was published Tuesday in PLoS ONE, one of the peer-reviewed journals in the online Public Library of Science. Read more >>

Deepwater Spill Causing Gulf Damage 2 Years Later, Scientists Find

Platform supply vessels battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Biologists are finding signs of lingering — and perhaps growing — damage throughout the gulf, from the bottom of the food chain to the top:

Scientists have confirmed that tiny creatures called zooplankton accumulated toxic compounds from coming in contact with the Deepwater Horizon oil. Because small fish and crustaceans eat the zooplankton and are then eaten by larger fish, that means those compounds could now be working their way up the food chain, they said.

Three months after BP shut off the flow of oil, scientists searching the floor of the gulf found a colony of deep sea corals that were covered in what they described as “frothy gunk.” They were in the area where undersea plumes of oil had been spotted. Nearly half were dead. Extensive tests resulted in a finding, released just last month, that the culprit was in fact oil from Deepwater Horizon. More...

Panel challenges Gulf seafood safety all-clear

Image via Wikipedia'It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,' toxicologist says

A New Orleans law firm is challenging government assurances that Gulf Coast seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the BP oil spill, saying it poses “a significant danger to public health.”

It’s a high-stakes tug-of-war that will almost certainly end up in the courts, with two armies of scientists arguing over technical findings that could have real-world impact for seafood consumers and producers.

Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage. More.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40494122/ns/us_news-environment

Oil found in crab larvae plucked from Gulf coast

Image via Wikipedia

To assess how heavy a blow the BP oil spill has dealt the Gulf of Mexico, researchers are closely watching a staple of the seafood industry and primary indicator of the ecosystem's health: the blue crab.

Weeks ago, before engineers pumped in mud and cement to plug the gusher, scientists began finding specks of oil in crab larvae plucked from waters across the Gulf coast.

The government said last week that three-quarters of the spilled oil has been removed or naturally dissipated from the water. But the crab larvae discovery was an ominous sign that crude had already infiltrated the Gulf's vast food web — and could affect it for years to come.

"It would suggest the oil has reached a position where it can start moving up the food chain instead of just hanging in the water," said Bob Thomas, a biologist at Loyola University in New Orleans. "Something likely will eat those oiled larvae ... and then that animal will be eaten by something bigger and so on."

Tiny creatures might take in such low amounts of oil that they could survive, Thomas said. But those at the top of the chain, such as dolphins and tuna, could get fatal "megadoses."

Marine biologists routinely gather shellfish for study. Since the spill began, many of the crab larvae collected have had the distinctive orange oil droplets, said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.

"In my 42 years of studying crabs I've never seen this," Perry said. More...

Tulane researchers indicate COREXIT now in blue crab larvae from Florida to Texas

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floridaoilspilllaw.com

A report today from Fox 8 in New Orleans reveals that the “orange blobs found lodged in the bodies of tiny blue crab larvae collected from marshes that stretch from Texas to Florida” appear to contain Corexit, according to preliminary results from researchers at Tulane University.

The report says BP’s dispersant “may do more harm than the oil itself.”

University of New Orleans’ Martin O’Connell, Ph.D said, “No one really knows” if Corexit will bio-accumulate. “If you’re a small fish and you eat 1,000 of these small crab larvae and all of them have oil or Corexit droplets in them they could get into the fish — that little fish could be eaten and so on and so on.”

Pondering the future of the Gulf, O’Connell said, “I think they should be more concerned that we might be losing whole cohorts of these animals when they’re very small, and we won’t see the impact in the adults but three or four years from now.”

Florida toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer, who has been hired on behalf of sickened fishermen and cleanup workers, says “some of these chemicals are in great excess — of risk-based lethal levels — that the current hydrocarbon levels are capable of sterilizing our fisheries and estuary production zones.”

The Fox 8 report concludes, “Since so many fish and crabs feed on crab larvae, some scientists fear the oil and dispersant droplets threaten to kill critical areas in the Gulf of Mexico food web.”

Two drill pipes discovered inside wreckage of the well

Image via Wikipedia

Second pipe may have crippled BP well's defense mechanism
Jim Tankersley, Tribune Washington Bureau

The gushing BP oil well is a mystery still unfolding, and late last month, a team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist: Their sophisticated imaging equipment detected not one but two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well's blowout preventer on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

BP officials said it was impossible. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which drilled the well, used a single pipe, connected in segments, to bore 13,000 feet below the ocean floor. But when workers cut into the wreckage to install a containment cap this month, sure enough, they found two pipes.

The discovery suggested that the force of the erupting petroleum from BP's well on April 20 was so violent that it sent pipe segments hurtling into the blowout preventer, like derailing freight cars.

It also offered a tantalizing theory for the failure of the well's last line of defense, the powerful pinchers called shear rams inside the blowout preventer that should have cut the pipe and stopped the rising oil and gas from reaching the Deepwater Horizon 5,000 feet above. Drilling experts say those rams, believed to be partially deployed, could have been thwarted by the presence of a second pipe.

The doubled-up drill pipe joins a list of clues that is helping scientists understand the complexities of the Deepwater Horizon accident, and from that, craft changes in how deep-water drilling is conducted. More...

Methane gas and Corexit toxic rain will force evacuation and long-term abandonment of cities

Image by nasa1fan/MSFC via Flickr

Government Insiders: Get Ready for the Gulf "Dead Zone"
Wayne Madsen
Bad news concerning the Gulf oil disaster continues to come from WMR's federal government sources in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Emergency planners are dealing with a prospective "dead zone" within a 200 mile radius from the Deepwater Horizon disaster datum in the Gulf.

A looming environmental and population displacement disaster is brewing in the Gulf. The oil dispersant used by BP, Corexit 9500, is seen by FEMA sources as mixing with evaporated water from the Gulf and absorbed by rain clouds producing toxic precipitation that threatens to continue killling marine and land animals, plant life, and humans within a 200-mile radius of the Deepwater Horizon disaster site in the Gulf.

Adding to the worries of FEMA and the Corps of Engineers is the large amounts of methane that are escaping from the cavernous grotto of oil underneath the Macondo drilling area of Gulf of Mexico.

On a recent visit to the Gulf coast, President Obama vowed that the Gulf coast will "return to normal." However, federal officials dealing with the short- and long-term impact of the oil disaster report that the "dead zone" created by a combination of methane gas and Corexit toxic rain will force the evacuation and long-term abandonment of cities and towns within the 200-mile radius of the oil volcano.
Plans are being put in place for the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Mandeville, Hammond, Houma, Belle Chase, Chalmette, Slidell, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pensacola, Hattiesburg, Mobile, Bay Minette, Fort Walton Beach, Panama City, Crestview, and Pascagoula.

The toxic rain from the Gulf is expected to poison fresh water reservoirs and lakes, streams, and rivers, which will also have a disastrous impact on agriculture and livestock, as well as drinking water, in the affected region.

FEMA officials also claim that the $20 billion compensation fund set aside by BP is not nearly enough to offset the costs of the disaster. The FEMA sources say the disaster will cost well in excess of $1 trillion, and likely closer to $2-3 trillion.

Illness afflicting workers exposed to BP's oil disaster has a name: TILT

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TILT: The illness afflicting workers exposed to BP's oil disaster?
Workers cleaning up the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico have reported suffering from flu-like symptoms that may be the consequence of exposure to chemicals in the oil as well as the petroleum-derived solvent being used to disperse the spill.

The illness -- marked by headaches, fatigue, upset stomach, and problems with memory and concentration -- has been dubbed toxicant-induced loss of tolerance, or TILT. People suffering from TILT lose the ability to tolerate exposures to household chemical products, medication or even food, Dr. Claudia Miller of the University of Texas Health Science Center told WOAI TV:

"Things like diesel fuel, exposure to fragrances, cleaning agents that never bothered them before suddenly bother them," adds Dr. Miller.

Miller first described TILT in 1996, but it remains a controversial diagnosis among the medical community. The syndrome is also known as multiple chemical sensitivity and idiopathic environmental intolerance. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health, has defined the illness as a "chronic, recurring disease caused by a person's inability to tolerate an environmental chemical or class of foreign chemicals."

Regardless of whether the illness being reported in Gulf cleanup workers and residents ends up being confirmed as TILT, the fact remains that the chemicals people are being exposed to in the oil and dispersants are known to have health impacts including eye, skin and respiratory irritation, as well as headaches, dizziness, weakness, nausea and confusion. An analysis of EPA air testing data has found levels of these chemicals in coastal communities exceeding safety standards.

As of this week, the Louisiana Department of Health has documented 109 reports of illnesses among residents exposed to the spill, with 74 of those complaints coming from cleanup workers, according to ProPublica. In Alabama, another 19 cases of illness have been reported among people exposed to chemicals in the spill. More...

One million times the normal level of methane found in Gulf

Methane in Gulf "astonishingly high": U.S. scientist

(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, 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 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. More...

Tony Hayward, Goldman Sachs, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, UBS, all dumped BP stock before well blowout

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Excerpted from Darren Weeks, newswithviews
We now know from John Byrne at Raw Story that prior to the Gulf oil mess, not only did Goldman Sachs short shares of TransOcean, the owner of the failed Deepwater Horizon rig, they also ditched 4,680,822 shares of BP stock, worth $250 million and representing 44% of their holdings. “Goldman’s sales were the largest of any firm during that time,” writes Byrne. “Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP’s stock during the quarter.”

Byrne also noted other financial institutions that also dumped BP holdings.

“Other asset management firms also sold huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter — but their sales were a fraction of Goldman’s. Wachovia, which is owned by Wells Fargo, sold 2,667,419 shares; UBS, the Swiss bank, sold 2,125,566 shares.”

If that weren’t enough of a “coincidence,” we also had The Telegraph out of London reporting that the chief executive of BP, Tony Hayward, also sold 223,288 shares, worth £1.4 million of stock in his own company (over $2 million) on March 17th — only weeks before the BP Gulf mess. The paper noted that by doing so he “avoided losing more than £423,000 ($614,449) when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began six weeks ago.”[13] He took the money and paid off the mortgage on his family mansion in Kent.

At this point, a question should be coming to mind: What did these people know that the rest of us didn’t? How is it that stock in BP and Transocean suddenly seemed so unattractive to those closest to the disaster? Ah, the coincidences! But it gets even better.

On April 10th, The Houston Chronicle reported that Halliburton — the company of which former Vice-President Dick Cheney was CEO — was in the process of acquiring Boots & Coots. Reuters reported that the deal was announced on Friday, April 9th — just eleven days prior to the explosion.[14] The Chronicle noted that “Boots & Coots has become well known for putting out some of the world’s largest oil and gas fires.”[15] The company’s website lists services they provide, including “deepwater application and well inspections, as well as blowout prevention and control counsel or assistance…”[16] According to the Orlando Sentinel, their expertise is already being put to use in the Gulf, as they are “one of two primary companies designing relief-well strategies for the BP blowout.”

So when the acquisition deal is formerly approved by the government, Halliburton — the company famous for profiting from no-bid government contracts in war zones — will have collected for themselves yet another “slick” profit.

This is especially intriguing in light of the fact that, according to NPR, Halliburton’s cementing work — completed only hours prior to the explosion — has become a “central focus” of the Congressional investigation.[18] The Wall Street Journal quotes unnamed “experts” as saying the timing of the cementing in relation to the blast “points to it as a possible culprit.”

But Halliburton isn’t the only company that stands to make a killing off the crisis. The Times Online out of the UK reported that TransOcean itself took out a $560 million insurance policy on the Deepwater Horizon rig. The dollar amount was well above the rig’s value. According to the paper, insurance payouts amounted to a $270 million profit from the disaster.

“The windfall, revealed in a conference call with analysts, will more than cover the $200m that Transocean expects to pay to survivors and their families and for higher insurance costs.”

A number of people have questioned why Corexit — a chemical banned in the UK[21] and is much more toxic than the oil itself — was used as a dispersant in the Gulf. Assuming for the moment that chemical dispersants had to be used, the New York Times reported on May 13th:

“Of 18 dispersants whose use EPA has approved, 12 were found to be more effective on southern Louisiana crude than Corexit, EPA data show. Two of the 12 were found to be 100 percent effective on Gulf of Mexico crude, while the two Corexit products rated 56 percent and 63 percent effective, respectively. The toxicity of the 12 was shown to be either comparable to the Corexit line or, in some cases, 10 or 20 times less, according to EPA.”

Yet, despite the EPA data ranking it “far above dispersants made by competitors” for toxicity, BP chose to dump more than 400,000 gallons of Corexit into the Gulf, order 805,000 more gallons with plans of hundreds of thousands of additional gallons should the spewing continue. Why? More...

Subsea landslide could cause massive eruptions of explosive methane gas

History Channel "Mega Disasters" series. This explores the controversial paper published by Northwestern University's Gregory Ryskin. His thesis: the oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas... enough to cause global catastrophe on a regular basis!

Also See: How the ultimate BP Gulf disaster could kill millions

Chemotherapy in the Gulf of Mexico

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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

Even TEN relief wells will be unable to plug the hole

Rumors abound regarding the nature of subsea operations and the true status of the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher. I've long since dismissed most main stream media accounts as propaganda, and seek out information from web citizens for a clearer picture of the truth.

While most of us realize that not all reports made by citizens are entirely reputable, contrary to corporate-owned media who have historically served as stenographers for the power elite, in most cases, citizens have no vested interest in lying about events.

The compromised well casing has already been mentioned by main stream media. Bearing that in mind, here's a rather disturbing post by "Rob Kall" at "Life After The Oil Crash" forum.

By Rob Kall
June 17, 2010

(...)

Here's the latest report I just received from my contact inside BP:

Ok, here's the deal.

Size of reservoir - estimated by BP and its partner, Andarko to be between 2.5B and 10B bbl. (that's 100,000,000,000 gallons and 400,000,000,000 gallons.
Yes - all of those numbers are BILLIONS.

BP has admitted in at least 3 interviews that the well casing is compromised (broken). So, when they tried the Top Kill - and then the Junk Shot - the stuff shot out the sides and didn't go much down the hole. A REAL top kill should just take a few hours - or it's not going to ever work.

The casing was undoubtedly broken apart by the natural gas 'explosion' at the bottom of the well, which was the result of methane coming out of solution (ie. the methane hydrates melting and expanding dramatically). Much like when your washer's water line has air in it and you shut off the valve and the line 'hammers', the well 'hammered' when the BOP shut (the guess is 80%), and the dramatic upshot in pressure, as well as the acoustic shockwave, broke the casing.

The Question of the Day is: Did the explosion rupture the casing for its entire length?

If that is so, then a relief well will be unable to plug the hole. TEN relief wells would be unable to plug the hole.

The consensus seems to be, among oil people I've spoken with, that this is exactly the case.

If that's so, then the well will run until Obama nukes it. That is the only thing that could close it.

If they can't plug it via the relief wells, and if they don't nuke it (it can't be conventional explosives, for a few reasons), then about 1/2 of the oil and gas will run out. That would be 50 BILLION to 200 BILLION gallons of oil, over a 10 year period. Although, like the interest you pay on a house note, the biggest part would be up-front.

Gulf of Mexico: "This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history"

Matthew Brown

It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico's fragile ecosystem.

The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.

That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.

"This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history," Kessler said.

Methane is a colorless, odorless and flammable substance that is a major component in the natural gas used to heat people's homes. Petroleum engineers typically burn off excess gas attached to crude before the oil is shipped off to the refinery. That's exactly what BP has done as it has captured more than 7.5 million gallons of crude from the breached well.

A BP spokesman said the company was burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the source of the leak, adding up to about 450 million cubic feet since the containment effort started 15 days ago. That's enough gas to heat about 450,000 homes for four days.

But that figure does not account for gas that eluded containment efforts and wound up in the water, leaving behind huge amounts of methane.

BP PLC said a containment cap sitting over the leaking well funneled about 619,500 gallons of oil to a drillship waiting on the ocean surface on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a specialized flare siphoning oil and gas from a stack of pipes on the seafloor burned roughly 161,700 gallons.

Thursday was focused on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers chastised BP CEO Tony Hayward.

Testifying as oil still surged into the Gulf at between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons a day, coating more coastal land and marshes, Hayward declared "I am so devastated with this accident," "deeply sorry" and "so distraught."

But he also said he was out of the loop on decisions at the well and disclaimed knowledge of any of the myriad problems on and under the Deepwater Horizon rig before the deadly explosion. BP was leasing the rig the Deepwater Horizon that exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the environmental disaster.

"BP blew it," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House investigations panel that held the hearing. "You cut corners to save money and time."

As for the methane, scientists are still trying to measure how much has escaped into the water and how it may damage the Gulf and it creatures.

The dangerous gas has played an important role throughout the disaster and response. A bubble of methane is believed to have burst up from the seafloor and ignited the rig explosion. Methane crystals also clogged a four-story containment box that engineers earlier tried to place on top of the breached well.

Now it is being looked at as an environmental concern. More...

Obama cuts deal to shield BP assets

Image by Floyd Brown via Flickr

Tom Eley
President Barack Obama reiterated his defense of oil giant BP after a White House meeting with the company’s CEO Tony Hayward and board chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.

After the meeting, Obama and BP announced the establishment of an independently operated escrow account, the Independent Claims Facility, funded by up to $20 billion paid out over the next four years. BP said it would delay dividend payouts over the remainder of the year estimated at $10 billion. Other details of the escrow account remain vague.

The US media presented the meeting and announcement as a humbling of BP. It was nothing of the sort.

In fact, the meeting was a choreographed event with two purposes: to diffuse popular anger against both BP and the Obama administration, and to assure the financial markets that BP is in no danger of bankruptcy or criminal prosecution. There will be no serious consequences for the disaster that killed 11 workers on April 20 and has since pumped upwards of 60 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Even were it clear that the $20 billion will really be made available to the blowout’s many economic victims—and it is not—this is a preposterously small sum for a catastrophe whose real cost will run into the hundreds of billions, if not trillions. All the costs of environmental cleanup are to be paid out of this fund, according to the Financial Times. There can be no doubt that this alone will far surpass $20 billion.

The deal ensures that the overwhelming burden of the costs of the disaster will be borne by the government, and ultimately the working class.

“I’m absolutely confident BP will be able to meet its obligations to the Gulf Coast and to the American people,” Obama said in a short press conference after the meeting. “BP is a strong and viable company and it is in all of our interests that it remain so.”

With these words, the Obama administration indicated that it would not seek to force a BP bankruptcy, let alone seize the company, and its goal is that BP continue to be a profitable concern, paying out dividends and gargantuan executive salaries for years to come.

The financial markets were cheered by Obama’s comments. In the hours after the press conference BP’s share price increased sharply, then finished the day up about 22 cents.

Though the administration had done nothing to punish BP, Obama had been under pressure from financial circles to throw it a lifeline. The preceding weeks had seen BP shares tumble by half and on Tuesday Fitch downgraded the company’s credit rating by six notches.

The escrow account is meant to shield BP from potentially hundreds of billions, or even trillions, in damages. While both Obama and BP promised that the account did not mean a $20 billion cap on liability had been put in place, the Independent Claims Facility is a preemptive blow against the tens of thousands of lawsuits BP is likely to face over the coming years.

While it remains extremely vague, the escrow account will be BP’s first line of defense in determining what are “legitimate claims,” a phrase both Obama and company executives have repeatedly used. Those claimants deemed “illegitimate” might turn to the court system for redress, but having been ruled unfounded by a supposedly neutral observer, they will have a black mark hanging over them, and US courts are already notorious for defending corporate privilege.

This is the fate that awaits the blowout’s financial victims. Millions of Gulf Coast residents are likely to suffer financially through layoffs which will ripple through the economy far beyond the fishing and tourism industries, through declining home values in a region already devastated by the real estate collapse, and through, in all probability, an epidemic of health problems.

If there are 10 million such victims—less than the combined population of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the three states hardest-hit so far—the miserly $20 billion escrow account would mean a mere $2,000 per person. More...

Dead sperm whale found in Gulf

Image via Wikipedia

MyFoxTampaBay.com staff report

GULF OF MEXICO - Scientists have spotted a dead sperm whale in the Gulf of Mexico, and are doing tests to see if the oil spill had anything to do with its death.

The whale was found floating 77 miles due south of the Deepwater Horizon spill site.

It is the first dead whale spotted since BP's rig exploded on April 20.

The whale was not found in oiled waters, but scientists can't yet say where or how it died.

They say its condition suggests it has been dead for several days to more than a week, and they are taking samples from it to glean information on how and where it died.

It's estimated that between 1,400 and 1,660 sperm whales live year-round in the Gulf of Mexico. According to NOAA, they spend most of their time in the upper Gulf offshore area.

They live at depth in areas where subsurface dispersants and oil are present, and feed on deepwater squid, which may also be impacted by the oil and dispersants.

The sperm whales are an endangered species, and some scientists say that just a few sperm whale deaths could endanger the long-term survival of the Gulf's entire native sperm whale population.

The NOAA ship that spotted the whale is due back in port July 2. After that, they say full analysis of the samples will take several weeks.

Scientists fear mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen

Image via Wikipedia

winonadailynews.com

Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange _ and troubling _ phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.

The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.

"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

The nearly two-month-old oil spill has created an environmental catastrophe unparalleled in U.S. history as tens of millions of gallons of have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Scientists are seeing some unusual things as they try to understand the effects on thousands of species of marine life.

Day by day, scientists in boats tally up dead birds, sea turtles and other animals, but the toll is surprisingly small given the size of the disaster. The latest figures show that 783 birds, 353 turtles and 41 mammals have died _ numbers that pale in comparison to what happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989, when 250,000 birds and 2,800 otters are believed to have died. More...

Even in the face of new flow estimates, Obama Admin attempts to minimize report of BP oil flow

Andre Damon with WSWS writes:
Even in the face of the new estimates, Obama administration officials are seeking to minimize the rate of flow to the extent possible. On Sunday, Allen put the flow rate at about 40,000 barrels a day, and claimed absurdly that the true rate will only be known “when we have it completely capped, control the flow, can actually measure” it.

At the same time, Allen defended BP, saying that earlier estimates “were never BP’s figures. They were our figures. We have several different methods of trying to establish the flow rate, from taking overhead satellite imagery of the oil on the water to using very high resolution video to try to assess the volume of the flow and velocity at which it’s rising.”

What Allen did not mention is that earlier independent figures based on these methods—and in the face of attempts by BP to block access to imagery of the leak itself—conform to the current high estimates. Weeks before the government increased its initial estimate, independent experts analyzed a video of the spill to conclude that the well was leaking 70,000 barrels per day.

The Alabama Press-Register reported on a video released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showing scientists discussing a rate of spill of 64,000 to 110,000 barrels per day.

The Obama administration is scrambling to respond to a growing political crisis and contain popular anger. Obama will be traveling to the Gulf of Mexico Monday, after which he will deliver a public address at the White House on Tuesday evening. The following day he will meet with BP executives in the attempt to reach an accommodation with company.

Obama is calling for the creation of an escrow account to pay out claims from residents and workers. Leading Democrats suggested a figure of $20 billion for this account—a tiny fraction of the damage caused by the spill. A study released by Earth Economics, a Seattle-based environmental group, estimates the economic value of the Gulf of Mexico environment at $1.3 trillion, implying that the economic damages of the spill could in reality amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.

BP is seeking assurances that its liabilities will be limited. Obama spoke with UK Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday, reassuring him that he had no intention of “undermining” the stock market value of BP. More...

"If pipe in bore hole is perforated, we are in serious trouble"

The evidence is growing stronger and stronger that there is substantial damage beneath the sea floor. Indeed, it appears that BP officials themselves have admitted to such damage. This has enormous impacts on both the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf, and the prospects for quickly stopping the leak this summer. Washington's Blog

Excerpt from Solve Climate.com, May 24th, 2010
By the end of 2008...even industry insiders were starting to acknowledge that the deepwater drilling boom had grown beyond the safety capacity of the oil and gas companies to manage properly. With profits on the line, rig crews were stretched thin and staffed with less experienced operators, as this article from Drilling Contractor acknowledged.

Independent Investigator

The 60-page report which opens the window on these revelations was authored by Dan Zimmerman, an independent environmental investigator of the Northcoast Ocean and River Protection Association (NORPA). He has worked with numerous groups since 1975, especially on pesticide, forestry and salmon habitat issues. The executive director of Californians for Alternatives to Toxics, Patty Clary, told SolveClimate she has worked with Zimmerman for 14 years and called him "a brilliant researcher."

Zimmerman said that he sent his report last September to hundreds of environmental organizations and individuals, but got no response.

"It's become a popular topic now," he said, with attorneys and environmental groups now examining his report.

Yet Zimmerman was more interested in discussing the Gulf oil spill than his report, expressing concern about the condition of the blowout preventer on the sea floor and the pipe in the bore hole. If the pipe in the bore hole has been perforated, he said, a "top kill" being planned by BP may not stop the leak.

"My concern is that cratering has now occurred and a flow path has been established outside the well bore. If this has occurred we are in serious trouble, more than we currently think."

"If there are plumes of gas and oil rising from the sea floor around the pipeline," Zimmerman said, "that would be an indication. They have submersibles. They should be examining the area around the blowout."

His concerns seem well-founded. One of the most complete and factual chronologies of the events leading up to the BP Gulf of Mexico blowout recounts this situation five minutes before gas shot out of the drill column on the surface of the ocean.

Standpipe pressure increased and decreased twice between 21:30 and 21:42 (standpipe pressure generally reflects bottom hole pressure). This, along with a steady increase in mud pit volume, suggests that surges of gas were entering the drilling fluid from a gas column below the wellhead, and outside of the 7-inch production casing. Gas had probably channeled past the inadequate cement job near the bottom of the well and, by now, had reached the seals and pack-offs separating it from the riser at the sea floor.

Failure of a "top kill" — if it doesn't make matters worse — would leave well control experts with only one final known option for stopping the leak in the Gulf: drilling a relief well. The idea is to reach the oil reservoir with a well drilled on a tangent to the original, and seal it closed. But an industry publication published in 2009 indicates that drilling a relief well to 18,000 feet below the sea bed is beyond the edge of the technical capability of well control experts.

The detection tools used to locate the blowout wells have been successfully used for many years. However, there have been very few relief wells drilled deeper than 16,000 ft. A very deep intercept greater than 20,000 ft will be a challenge to any relief well team. If the deep intercept cannot be made, a shallower depth will need to be chosen. This complicates the kill operation as it will not be made close to the reservoir.

Ocean Boiling with Methane
Zimmerman devotes more than ten pages of his report to a partial listing of blowouts caused by drilling into or through methane hydrates. It is a sobering listing that includes photographs and links to disturbing videos, including one that shows a drill room on a platform at the moment a blowout occurs, and another that shows the ocean boiling with methane escaping around a drilling rig.

A longtime environmentalist, Zimmerman sometimes becomes indignant in his report:

GHG release from offshore O&G operations should be thought of as the O&G industries dirty little secret. Massive releases of methane and CO2 have been occurring from these offshore operations for over 45 years, with little concern shown by the O&G industry for the deadly impacts they have generated...

This pattern of extracting first and asking questions later has always been the method of operation for the oil, gas and coal industries. And they are often helped along by politicians and regulatory agencies. More...

BP - White House Attempt Cover-up Worst Oil Spill in Human History

Image by DigitalGlobe-Imagery via Flickr

Tom Eley
The history of a cover-up
New evidence undermines latest BP-White House estimate of spill size
On Thursday, BP and Obama administration efforts to conceal the size of the Deepwater Horizon spill were delivered another blow when teams of scientists estimated that the rate of the oil spill as of early last week was between 30,000 and 50,000 barrels (1.2 million to 2.1 million gallons) per day, and possibly higher.

The figures are staggering. Fifty-three days after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 workers, somewhere between 63 million and 107 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the latest estimates. Between every five and nine days the spill equals the Exxon Valdez, which dumped about 11 million gallons into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989.

An Associated Press analysis notes that, even taking the low-end estimate, “if those 63 million gallons of oil were put in gallon milk jugs, they would line up side by side for nearly 5,500 miles.”

Some scientists, among them Ira Leifer of the government-sponsored Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG), believe that BP’s decision to cut the riser pipe in order to siphon off a portion of the oil may have actually made the spill far worse. The well could feasibly release as many as 10 million gallons per day, according to a worst-case scenario revealed in paperwork BP submitted for each of its two relief wells.

It appears the spill will continue at least until mid-August—a minimum of 60 more days—and will perhaps drag on into September. This is when relief wells drilled diagonally to intercept with and plug the Deepwater Horizon’s may be completed—although there is no certainty that these can succeed. If it has not done so already, the BP spill by then will have easily eclipsed the worst oil spill on record, the 140 million gallons the Ixtoc I rig dumped off of Mexico’s Gulf coast in 1979 and 1980. According to marine biologists, the environmental and human impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are already far worse than the Ixtoc I, which was mitigated by its location and favorable currents.

The worst oil spill in human history has been, since its first days, the subject of a cover-up carried out by BP and the White House. The Obama administration and the oil giant have repeatedly been forced to increase their estimates in the face of scientific criticism, even as they collude to deny scientists and engineers access to the spill site. But each new official estimate, it has been revealed, was only the latest lie.

The effort to obscure the spill’s dimensions—based on profit calculations for BP and the Obama administration’s desire to promote deep-sea oil drilling—has, from the beginning, made it impossible to determine the best way to respond to the spill. The distance the spill can travel—and the level of the toxicity it can maintain—are based largely on its volume.

When the explosion took place on the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, there was a very high likelihood that the rig would collapse, in which case the riser connecting it to the ocean floor one mile below would crumple and burst. This is in fact what happened. But neither BP nor the Obama administration took practical steps to prepare for that eventuality.

On April 23, even after the rig collapsed, BP insisted there was no spill. This was seconded by Coast Guard officer Mary Landry, who for weeks functioned as spokesman for BP. Oil visible on the surface, BP and the Coast Guard claimed, was fuel from the collapsed rig.

At the time, BP hoped that the failed blowout preventer could be activated by robots to cut off the flow. This proved impossible.In these first four days after the explosion, the attempts of BP and the Obama administration to dismiss the possibility of a spill cost the Gulf Coast dearly. Some experts say that if booms could have been used to encircle what was then a very small spill area, a much larger disaster could have been averted. No such steps were taken.

It was not until a large spill, many miles in diameter, became visible on the ocean’s surface on April 24 that BP admitted there was a spill beyond the fuel that had been aboard the rig. By then the spill was so large booms could not be used to contain it. Presenting no evidence, BP next claimed that a maximum of 1,000 barrels (42,000 gallons) per day were spilling into the Gulf—a large spill, to be sure, but nothing in comparison to the Exxon Valdez. The claim could not be verified because BP—backed by the Obama administration—refused to allow independent scientific analysis, and refused even to release images of the pipe.

Nonetheless, scientists soon refuted BP’s claims. Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University, analyzed only the surface spill to estimate that 9 million gallons of heavy crude had been spilled by April 28, a clip of about 30,000 barrels (1.3 million gallons) per day. SkyTruth, a non-profit environmental analysis firm, put the figure at 12.2 million gallons by May 2, about the same rate. These rates, if they held, would mean that upwards of 60 million gallons would now be spilled—similar to the low-end FRTG released on June 10.

Criticism from these and other scientists finally forced the White House to acknowledge the spill was larger than BP claimed. On April 28, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), estimated that the spill could be at most 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons). The statistic came under immediate and sharp criticism from scientists who noted it was based on a methodology not at all applicable to the BP spill. The 5,000 barrel figure was nonetheless seized on by the media—and after several more days of sticking to the 1,000 barrel claim—by BP as well. Particularly dishonest was the New York Times. The Times had earlier penned an editorial demanding that Obama not relinquish his expansion of deep-sea drilling. On May 4, the newspaper published an absurdly-reasoned “news analysis” (“Gulf Oil Spill Is Bad, but How Bad?”) that attempted to raise doubts over whether the spill was a significant event at all. (See, “New York Times minimizes Gulf oil spill”).

BP reportedly has had 12 video cameras providing live footage of the spill from the ocean floor since soon after the explosion, but for weeks it refused to allow the public—and possibly even the Obama administration—the right to view this footage. After mounting criticism, BP on May 12 released a brief, pre-recorded clip of one of what was reported to be three leaks in the collapsed riser pipe.

A journalist from National Public Radio (NPR) took the footage to three experts for separate types of scientific analysis. The results were shocking. Timothy Crone, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, put the spill rate at 50,000 barrels (2.1 million gallons) per day. University of California astrophysics professor Eugene Chaing put it in a range of 20,000 to 100,000 barrels daily. Steven Wereley of Purdue University used particle image velocimetry to establish a spill rate of 70,000 barrels per day—which he soon increased to 95,000 barrels—with a margin of error of 20 percent.

In the face of this evidence, the Obama administration and BP steadfastly clung to the official rate of 5,000 barrels per day, repeatedly claiming that there was no way to know how much oil was gushing forth on the ocean floor, and that in any case, knowledge of the dimensions of the spill would not impact the response.

These were both lies. In fact, there were a number of means for calculating the spill rate. BP was aware of at least one of these, since it had recruited two scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts to oversee the implementation of a sonar device for measuring the spill rate. Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, who have performed many similar measurements, “were poised to fly to the gulf to conduct volume measurements,” the Times reported on May 14. “But they were contacted [just before their departure] and told not to come, at around the time BP decided to lower a large metal container to try to capture the leak. That maneuver failed. They have not been invited again.”

Scientific criticism, mounting popular anger, and the enormous spread of the spill finally forced NOAA to authorize the FRTG study. On May 27, the Obama administration revealed that the group had established a range of the spill of between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels per day. This too was a lie. In fact, the 12,000 to 19,000 figure represented the range of absolute minimum figures of the various scientists involved. They had not yet come up with a high-end range. Finally, yesterday, on June 10, the scientists on the FRTG released a new range for the rate of the spill of between 30,000 barrels, low-end, and 50,000 barrels.

This data, however, is based on the leak before the riser cut. Leifer told the New York Times on Tuesday that the spill was emitting “way more than it did before [the cut]. I don’t mean by 20 percent. I mean multiple factors.” For his part, Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu—who, as a University of California researcher received a huge grant from BP—insisted that cutting the riser pipe did not significantly increase the rate of flow. He also told Reuters that he felt confident that the moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling could soon be lifted.