Tag Archives: deepwater

Mandy Joye warns of danger of methane gas in Gulf oil plumes

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

8 minute interview 6/28/10 with transcript Transcript: June 28th, 2010 – Water Why is it so hard to plug the well in the Gulf of Mexico? Mandy Joye: The methane concentrations in these plumes are 100 to 10,000 times as much as you would normally find in Gulf of Mexico water. Mandy Joye is an oceanographer at the University of Georgia. In June 2010, Joye returned from an emergency research expedition in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She talked to EarthSky about the high concentrations of methane gas she discovered in oil plumes deep beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Mandy Joye: There’s also propane and butane, gases that derive from the same process of making oil. Are ocean currents likely to carry spilled oil to Atlantic? Dr. Joye said that there’s so much gas leaking into the Gulf that we might be looking at severe oxygen depletion in Gulf water. What happens, she explained, is that naturally occurring Gulf bacteria “eat up” the vast amounts of methane and other gases. Mandy Joye: But in the process, they’re consuming molecular oxygen from the water. The reason that’s a problem is that you could potentially have large volumes of water floating around in the Gulf of Mexico that don’t have any oxygen. Ocean life depends on oxygen. Oxygen depletion in the Gulf, Joye said, means lost habitat for wildlife, and potentially long-term repercussions on local fishing. Glenn Plumb and other scientists believe oil spill is harming base of Gulf food chain Mandy Joye: The degradation of this oil and gas being injected in the gulf of Mexico is going to cause oxygen depletion in the water, there’s no way around it. She explained that ocean plants like phytoplankton normally inject oxygen into marine systems, but the Gulf has been so chemically altered that even plants are having trouble surviving. Mandy Joye: The microbial community is going to break this down, but it doesn’t come for free, it comes at the expense of the oxygen budget of the system, and that’s something that’s not easily corrected. Joye said the this injection of gas is happening throughout the water column. Mandy Joye: And the consumption of oxygen is happening throughout the water column. It’s not just in these plumes where you have high rates of microbial activity. We measure elevated rates of activity all throughout the water column. They were highest in the plumes, because that’s where the concentration of methane is the highest. But the whole water column is being stimulated by the oil and gas coming from the spill. She said very little is known about the baseline methane cycle in the Gulf of Mexico, so there are many, many unknown surrounding the impact of the methane. She said that if scientists closely monitor the microbial activity and come to understand it, experts might be able to add an element (e.g., nitrogen) to speed of the breakdown of oil and dissolved gas. Mandy Joye: I suspect that the microorganisms that live in the plumes are probably going to run out of some critical nutrient or oxygen. So their activity is going to be limited at some point. And these plumes are going to spread to other areas because you’re going to run out of some critical thing the bacteria need in the core of the plume. Joye added that another science team affiliated with the University of Florida found a plume to the north of where she was working that spans 20 miles. She said other plumes likely exist, which means that large areas of the Gulf could be closed of to fishing for an indefinite period. Dr. Joye added that she does not believe dispersant, which was added to Gulf water by British Petroleum in an attempt to break up the oil, to be safe, because it has not been tested in open water at scale. Written by Beth Lebwohl added by: stacie69

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BP Oil Rig Engineer Testifies About Failures Ahead of Explosion, Including Blackouts and Glitches | Rig’s Captain Is Said to Have Ordered Injured Man Be Left behind

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Oil rig engineer testifies about power failures Testimony at a federal hearing describes computer glitches and deferred maintenance. The rig's captain is said to have ordered an injured man to be left behind. Photo: Deepwater Horizon engineer Stephen Bertone testifies as joint Coast Guard-Interior Department hearings resumed Monday. (Brett Duke, Times Picayune / July 20, 2010) latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-hearings-20100720,0,1569438.story latimes.com Oil rig engineer testifies about power failures Oil rig engineer tells of failures ahead of blast By Julie Cart Testifying at a federal hearing, he says the rig had been experiencing blackouts and glitches, and had deferred maintenance. . By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times July 20, 2010 Reporting from Kenner, Louisiana Months before the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 men, the sophisticated drilling vessel experienced power blackouts, computer glitches and a balky propulsion system, and carried a list of more than 300 deferred maintenance projects. Under withering questioning during Monday's resumption of the Coast Guard- Interior Department investigation into the well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the rig's chief engineer revealed the possibility that alarms and other crucial systems were bypassed or not functioning at the time of the explosion. His testimony also introduced a sensational detail: As crew members scrambled onto life rafts to abandon the crippled rig, the vessel's captain ordered an injured man to be left behind. The injured worker was eventually loaded onto a life raft and evacuated. The day's first witness, chief engineer Stephen Bertone, was questioned sharply by panel members from the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, who laid out a pattern of lax maintenance on the Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean and leased to BP. The engineer said the rig had been experiencing mechanical failures for months before the explosion. Bertone, an employee of Transocean, said the vessel's thruster, or propeller system, had been “having problems” for the previous eight months. In addition, the computer station where the rig's driller sits had temporarily lost electrical power days before the blowout, he said. Bertone said on the night of the explosion, he heard no general alarm, there were no internal communications and no power to the engines, and none of the Deepwater Horizon's backup or emergency generators were working. “We were a dead ship,” he said. Because there was no power, the crew was unable to engage the emergency disconnect system that would have halted the flow of oil from the wellhead. He said there was at least one incident earlier in the day that had foreshadowed what was to come. While taking BP and Transocean officials on a tour, Bertone saw a large group in the drill shack, an unusual number of people crammed into a small space. “I had a feeling something wasn't right,” Bertone said, adding that he was told to keep the tour moving and didn't hear anything further about problems with the well. Under questioning from BP attorney Richard Godfrey, Bertone said that the entire Deepwater Horizon rig had lost electrical power in the past. He described it as a “partial blackout,” and said rig-wide electrical failures had occurred two or three times before the explosion. He did not say how long the failures had lasted. Panel co-chairman Jason Mathews of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement sought to portray managers of the drilling rig as having trouble keeping up with routine maintenance because of frequent employee turnover. The Deepwater Horizon was scheduled to be sent to a shipyard for maintenance in early 2011, a point that Mathews bore in on, despite frequent objections from attorneys representing Transocean. A maintenance audit conducted by BP in September 2009 — seven months before the disaster — found 390 maintenance jobs undone, requiring more than 3,500 hours of work. The report referred to the amount of deferred work as “excessive.” In questioning Bertone, Ronnie Penton, the attorney for the Deepwater Horizon's chief electronics technician, implied that some of the vessel's safety monitoring systems were regularly bypassed, including a general alarm and a device that purged trapped gas from the drilling shack. Another attorney implied that the gas-purging device, which is designed to expel any unanticipated buildup of natural gas, had not been operating for five years. A sudden surge of natural gas from the well is believed to have caused the explosion, according to previous testimony and investigation documents. In May, Douglas Brown, the rig's chief mechanic, testified that he believed a sudden influx of gas onto the rig's deck caused an engine to rev uncontrollably and touch off an explosion. A system to stop that scenario was not functional at the time, he said. “If I would have shut down those engines, it could have stopped [them] as an ignition source,” he told the panel. Also in Monday's hearing, an attorney for Halliburton asked Leo Linder, a drilling fluid specialist, if gauges monitoring the drilling mud had been bypassed. Linder said he did not know. Bertone testified to two incidents that called into question the conduct of Capt. Curt Kuchta immediately after the explosion. Bertone said Kuchta admonished a crew member for activating a distress signal. Then, as rig workers were climbing aboard a life raft, the captain gestured toward a stricken man lying on a gurney and said, “Leave him!” The captain's remarks were contained in a statement Bertone made to the Coast Guard in the hours after the incident, a document that has not been made public. The introduction of his statement prompted a lengthy and sometimes heated exchange among attorneys. julie.cart@latimes.com Times staff writer Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report from Kenner, La. added by: EthicalVegan

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The New Containment Cap on BP’s Oil Well Appears to Be in Place | But Will It Work? | Underwater Photo

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

PART ONE… http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/12/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN… Containment cap on BP well appears to be in place By the CNN Wire Staff July 12, 2010 7:56 p.m. EDT An underwater camera captures efforts to put a new sealing cap on the breached well. STORY HIGHLIGHTS * NEW: BP appears to have placed a new containment cap on well in Gulf * Sen. Landrieu calls new deepwater drilling ban “economic disaster for Gulf Coast” * Ship Helix Producer begins recovering oil from crippled well New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — BP appears to have placed a new containment cap on its well in the Gulf of Mexico that's been leaking oil since an explosion and fire April 20. BP hopes the new cap will be able to completely contain the gushing oil, but tests are still needed to determine its effectiveness. Earlier Monday, the U.S. Interior Department said Monday it was issuing a new moratorium order in a second effort to block deepwater oil and natural gas projects. The new moratorium is to “protect communities, coasts, and wildlife” while oil and gas companies implement safety measures to reduce the risks of blowouts and oil spills associated with deepwater drilling, the government said. The ban will be in effect through November 30, 2010, or until Interior Secretary Ken Salazar determines that deepwater drilling operations can proceed safely. “More than eighty days into the BP oil spill, a pause on deepwater drilling is essential and appropriate to protect communities, coasts, and wildlife from the risks that deepwater drilling currently pose,” Salazar said in a statement. “I am basing my decision on evidence that grows every day of the industry's inability in the deepwater to contain a catastrophic blowout, respond to an oil spill, and to operate safely.” He added, “I remain open to modifying the new deepwater drilling suspensions based on new information.” But Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana called the moratorium “unnecessary, ill-conceived and a second economic disaster for the Gulf Coast.” She spoke before a presidential commission, tasked with reviewing the response to the oil spill and the priorities going forward. Landrieu called the BP oil spill the “exception instead of the rule” and said the deepwater drilling moratorium will kill jobs. The National Oil Spill Commission is holding meetings in New Orleans Monday and Tuesday. Shallow water drilling activities can continue to move forward, under the Interior Department's order, if operators comply with all safety and environmental requirements. The department said that's because they don't present the same type or level of risks that deepwater drilling operations can, it said. A previous six-month ban issued in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster was thrown out by a federal judge in New Orleans. Last week, a federal appeals panel rejected the government's request to overturn the lower court judge's decision. Like the initial drilling ban, the new moratorium probably also will face stiff opposition from commercial interests in the Gulf region. Michael Hecht, president and chief executive officer of the economic development group Greater New Orleans Inc., told the the National Oil Spill Commission, “Economically speaking, the BP oil spill is really a tale of two impacts: it's the impact of the oil spill itself and the impact from the moratorium on deepwater drilling.” The commission is a presidential panel tasked with investigating the Gulf oil gusher and making recommendations about the future of offshore drilling, What's next New containment cap that has a better fit appears to have been placed over the well. BP and U.S. officials will conduct a “well integrity test” to determine the pressure inside the well. If it works, oil will stop flowing and oil collection via Q4000 and Helix Producer will cease. BP will then close in on the perforated pipe. This process, which is still a temporary measure, might take up to 48 hours. The first relief well BP plans to use to shut down the well is 5 feet away from the main well and 30 feet above the hoped-for intersection point. The ban would prevent further deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico until officials determine what went wrong in the April 20 explosion and fire at an oil rig that led to oil gushing into the ocean 5,000 feet below the surface. A new sealing cap could cover the breached well as early as Monday, the man in charge of the federal response team told CNN's “American Morning.” Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Monday that once the cap is placed on the well, scientists will be able to gauge the pressure inside the well, then determine whether the cap is holding the oil in or if crews will need to continue siphoning up oil. Crews were going through final checks Monday afternoon before installing the cap. Once it's installed, the next critical step is making sure there's no hydrate buildup, according to BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles. He said testing the well's integrity could begin Tuesday, with a monitoring period that could take anywhere from six hours to two days. While robots replace the old cap, crude is leaking out. Scientists estimate that 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil are spewing daily from BP's breached well. But now, more of that gushing oil is being collected, Suttles added. He said the oil-gathering ship, the Helix Producer, began recovering oil from the ruptured well Monday. He said it should “ramp up to full capacity” in several days after two setbacks Sunday delayed its implementation. CONTINUED… added by: EthicalVegan

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Corporatism 101: [1990] Congress artificially limits Oil companies liability to a meager $75 million dollars.

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

If you took a barrel of oil and dumped it into a stream on your property you would be fully liable for damage to the property and person of anyone down stream. So when BP’s oil well ruptures, dumping millions of gallons of oil into the gulf the company is fully responsible for the damages it caused and those affected should be fully compensated to be made whole again, right? Unfortunately, the 1990 Oil Pollution Act caps an Oil company’s liability for economic damages relating to an oil spill at $75 million. (As of May 3rd the economic Cost of the BP Oil Spill: was $12.5 Billion, so that only leaves $12,425,000,000 of damages unpaid.) source: http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/05/03/oil-spill-cost/ Luckily the Act provides that if the courts determine BP was “grossly negligent or engaged in conduct in violation of federal regulations,” the $75 million cap disappears, so BP is not of the hook yet right? Wrong. Unfortunately, a little known government agency, the Minerals Management Service, “approved BP's application to drill under the Deepwater Horizon and …and approved the blowout preventer that failed to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil spill without assurances that its last-ditch mechanism would work on the drill pipe the company was using.” [1] And the rigs strong track record of passing inspections prompted the regulatory agency to “herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.” [2] The chances of a court finding that BP was “grossly negligent” or in violation of federal regulations, are nil when the very agency that oversees BP not only routinely found the well in compliance with the federal regulations but also hailed it as a model for industry safety. So congress has been caught with its pants down, because the special privilege of a liability cap they created for the oil companies, the judiciary or anyone else can't punish -through punitive damages – or even hold BP liable for more than a fraction of the amount of damage they caused. Which raises an important question: absent a congressional created cap on liability of only $75 million, would BP have drilled an unprecedented 5,000 ft well , without knowledge, technology or experience of capping wells at that depth, if they had unlimited liability and had to pay the actual full amount of the potential damages?($12.5 billion as of May 3.) http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/oil_spill_liability_whos_on_th… [1.] http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/updates_from_oil_rig_e… [2.] http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/federal_inspections_on… added by: Dagum

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U.S. Oil Reponse is literally "Sketchy"!

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

” It could be one of the sloppiest engineering plans the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has ever seen—a hand-drawn plan illustrating how engineers would fill in a channel in Dauphin Island to prevent oil from reaching sensitive wetlands. The corps posted the permit application and asked for comment from agencies and public in just a few hours. The project could be a good idea, scientists say, but it's hard to tell given the rough plans, and it's equally hard to have confidence in such a quick evaluation. “It's very symptomatic of this whole episode,” says George Crozier of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, referring to the Deepwater Horizon leak. “There is a lot of panic and uncertainty.” But federal agencies evaluating the project say they have enough expertise to evaluate the risk of problems, such as whether the project might cause erosion problems or harm endangered species. Over the last decade, hurricanes have cut a wide channel through Dauphin Island, a 23-kilometer-long barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico. After the Deepwater Horizon accident, the Dauphin Island Restoration Task Force and other groups asked the Governor of Alabama to fill in the channel so that oil can't pass through and enter Mississippi Sound. Much about the proposal remains unclear. The official applicant for the USACE permit to fill the gap is BP, which did not return calls. Observers suspect that the Governor's office asked the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to draft the permit application, but ADEM spokesperson Scott Hughes could not confirm this. “The Department's role is to ensure that any permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is consistent with the requirements of Alabama's coastal program,” he writes in an e-mail. Another mystery is who created the drawings. One of them, simply initialed “C.J.”, has a Post-it note covering up letterhead for Jordan Pile Driving in Mobile, Alabama. D. S. Jordan, the chairperson of the company, says he received drawings from Thompson Engineering in Mobile. The project manager there couldn't be reached. The plans first became public on 27 May, when USACE posted them on its Web site in the morning. One option described in the proposal is to block the 2.2-kilometer-wide channel with sheet piling. The other option is to drop in 76,000 cubic meters of rock. Either measure would be removed within a year. USACE asked for comments on two options by 3 p.m. the same day. Coastal geologist Robert Young of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, says he was stunned by the short deadline. Young, who says he often comments on permit applications for coastal engineering projects, only came across the proposal later that evening. “This makes me wonder how many of these emergency permits are out there that I haven't seen.” Young and other experts were also flabbergasted by the rough plans. “They're done by hand on a piece of notebook paper. I've never seen anything like this in my life.” Young says it's difficult to tell from the drawings exactly what the consequences of filling the channel might be. And then there's the vague note on the map indicating “various buried pipelines.” http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/emergency-oil-spill-responseho… added by: DeliaTheArtist

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Computer simulations show oil reaching up the Atlantic coastline and toward Europe

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

“The possible spread of the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon rig over the course of one year was studied in a series of computer simulations by a team of researchers from the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The simulations suggest that the coastlines near the Carolinas, Georgia, and Northern Florida could see the effects of the oil spill as early as October 2010, while the main branch of the subtropical gyre is likely to transport the oil film towards Europe, although strongly diluted. Eight million buoyant particles were released continuously from April 20 to September 17, 2010, at the location of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The release occurred in ocean flow data from simulations conducted with the high-resolution Ocean General Circulation Model for the Earth Simulator (OFES). “The paths of the particles were calculated in 8 typical OFES years over 360 days from the beginning of the spill,” says Fabian Schloesser, a PhD student from the Department of Oceanography in SOEST, who worked on these simulations with Axel Timmermann and Oliver Elison Timm from the International Pacific Research Center, also in SOEST. “From these 8 typical years, 5 were selected to create an animation for which the calculated extent of the spill best matches current observational estimates.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706103408.htm added by: DeliaTheArtist

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Massive MZ-3A Blimp Expected to Arrive in the Gulf Coast to Help Track Oil Slick

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Blimp expected to arrive to help track oil slick By the CNN Wire Staff July 6, 2010 3:44 a.m. EDT New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — A massive, silver-colored blimp is expected to arrive in the Gulf Coast on Tuesday to aid in oil disaster response efforts. The U.S. Navy airship will be used to detect oil, direct skimming ships and look for wildlife that may be threatened by oil, the Coast Guard said Monday. The 178-foot-long blimp, known as the MZ-3A, can carry a crew of up to 10. It will fly slowly over the region to track where the oil is flowing and how it is coming ashore. The Navy says the advantage of the blimp over current helicopter surveillance operations is that it can stay aloft longer, with lower fuel costs, and can survey a wider area. The Coast Guard has already been pinpointing traveling pools of oil from the sky. “The aircraft get on top of the oil. They can identify what type of oil it is and they can vector in the skimmer vessels right to the spot,” Coast Guard Capt. Brian Kelley said. But the problem since last Wednesday has been the ability to clean it up before it approaches land. Rough seas have hampered cleanup efforts and tests by the boat billed as the world's largest skimmer. Tests of A Whale's ability so far are “inconclusive,” meaning the massive converted oil tanker–which is 3.5 football fields long — has yet to prove its Taiwanese owner's claim that it can skim between 15,000 and 50,000 barrels of oil off the sea in a day. So far, crude oil floating in the sea has not been concentrated enough for A Whale to skim effectively, according to oil company BP, even though it appears the ship has been surrounded by pools of oil just a few miles from the gusher. “We've got oil coming up from over a mile below the surface. And it doesn't always come up in one spot. It's not always predictable. So, in fact, we need to locate the oil first, and then assign the ship to the areas of heaviest concentration,” BP spokesman Hank Garcia said. Bad weather has hindered cleanup efforts, he said. “When you've got 6-foot, 8-foot seas, it's not going to lend itself to good capture of the oil.” On Monday, authorities said tar balls linked to the crude gushing from BP's ruptured deepwater well had reached into Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain and hit the beaches near Galveston, Texas. The Coast Guard reported over the weekend that a shift in weather patterns could send more oil toward sensitive shores in Mississippi and Louisiana, and bad weather over the past few days has significantly hampered cleanup efforts. Anne Rheams, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, said Monday that the pattern was expected to persist for at least three more days. The National Hurricane Center said early Tuesday morning that a low-pressure area located near the Louisiana coast was producing a few showers and thunderstorms, but was not likely to develop into a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours. Federal estimates say between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels (about 1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons) of oil have been gushing into the Gulf daily since April 22, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank in the Gulf, two days after it exploded in flames. The accident left 11 workers dead and uncorked an undersea gusher that BP has been unable to cap for 11weeks. CNN's Allan Chernoff contributed to this report. added by: EthicalVegan

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BP’s Tar Balls from the Gulf Disaster Have Reached the Shores of Texas and Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

PART ONE… http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/05/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?hpt=T1 By the CNN Wire Staff July 5, 2010 6:52 p.m. EDT New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — Tar balls linked to the worst oil spill in U.S. history have reached into Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain and hit the beaches near Galveston, Texas, authorities in those states reported on day 77 of the disaster. Easterly winds and high waves that hindered skimmers drove blobs of weathered oil up into the eastern end of the lake, which sits north of New Orleans, said Anne Rheams, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. She estimated the amount of oil that has reached the lake at less than 100 barrels, with no hydrocarbon smell. “They are about the size of a silver dollar, maybe a little bigger, kind of dispersed in long intervals. It's not as dense as it could be, so we're thankful for that,” she said. The Coast Guard reported over the weekend that a shift in weather patterns could send more oil toward sensitive shores in Mississippi and Louisiana, and bad weather over the past few days has significantly hampered cleanup efforts. Rheams said that pattern was expected to persist for at least three more days. Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft said Friday that the prospect of oil reaching up into Lake Pontchartrain “is where I'm losing the most sleep right now.” “I'm going to look, and if I see even sheen, I'm going to push to make sure that we're moving every and all available resources to respond to this particular area,” he said. Tar balls had previously been spotted in Rigolets Pass, which connects the lake with Mississippi Sound. Officials in Orleans and St. Tammany parishes have been using heavy booms, barges and skimmers to defend Pontchartrain since the early days of the disaster, but Rheams said high waves and strong easterly and southeasterly winds have complicated the effort. “The main thing is that they are an indicator that it could be coming more so this way,” she said. State officials closed a swath of the southern part of the 630-square-mile lake to fishing following the discovery, but there was no sign of an impact on wildlife as of Monday, Rheams said. And in Texas, about 400 miles west of the ruptured offshore well at the heart of the spill, Coast Guard Capt. Marcus Woodring said the total volume of tar balls found over the weekend amounted to about five gallons. And while authorities weren't sure how they made it that far, tests confirmed that at least the first batch collected came from the Deepwater Horizon spill off Louisiana, he said. None were found Monday, and the area's beaches and waterways remained open, Woodring said. The tar balls were less weathered than researchers would expect, leading to suspicions that the oil was either stuck to the side of a ship's hull or mixed in with ballast water from a passing vessel, Woodring said. Tar balls are fairly common along the Texas coast, in part because of seepage from undersea oil deposits or from sunken vessels, he said. CONTINUED… http://media.nola.com/2010_gulf_oil_spill/photo/barges-rigoletsjpg-a6271db372480… added by: EthicalVegan

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BP Exceeds Chemical Dispersant Threshold (As "Science Experiment"), Despite EPA’s "Scale-Back" Directive | Video

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Dispersants flow into Gulf in 'science experiment' By Ed Lavandera, CNN July 2, 2010 1:20 p.m. EDT New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — Chemical dispersants keep flowing into the Gulf of Mexico at virtually unchanged levels despite the Environmental Protection Agency's order to BP to “significantly” scale back, according to a CNN analysis of daily dispersant reports provided by the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command. When the May 26 directive was issued, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said dispersant use should be cut by 75 percent. Public statements at the time made by the EPA administrator gave the impression that federal officials were trying to cut down overall dispersant use. “We expect to see a substantial reduction in the overall amount of dispersant used,” Jackson said in May. Before May 26, BP used 25,689 gallons a day of the chemical dispersant Corexit. Since then, CNN's analysis shows, the daily average of dispersant use has dropped to 23,250 gallons a day, a 9 percent decline. Gulf Coast environmentalists say it's another sign that the federal agencies monitoring dispersant use are not being tough enough with BP. “I think the EPA has been struggling to respond to this crisis,” said Aaron Viles with the Gulf Restoration Network. “It's all really a giant science experiment and we're terribly concerned that in the long run the impacts are going to be significant and we really don't know what we're doing to the ecosystem.” But the EPA argues it deserves credit for getting alarming dispersant use under control. The directive states that BP must ramp down dispersant use by “75 percent from the maximum daily amount used.” And that's the catch. The highest recorded amount of dispersant used occurred on May 23, when 70,000 gallons were injected into the Gulf of Mexico. EPA officials say they feared that number would have become the norm and that's why, they say, the directive was issued. “This escalation was quickly reversed, ensuring BP only uses the lowest volume of dispersant needed,” said Adora Andy, a spokeswoman for the EPA. But even by the EPA's own standards, BP still routinely exceeds the daily threshold. The EPA and Coast Guard say they're trying to keep dispersant use to around 18,000 barrels a day. But according to CNN's analysis, BP has gone over that amount 50 percent of the time since the May 26 directive was issued. To do so, BP must request permission from the U.S. Coast Guard. Coast Guard officials say dispersant use is “evaluated daily” and that it's using the “safest and most effective methods available” to protect the sea environment. “The EPA-Coast Guard directive has been successful in ensuring that BP uses the lowest volume of dispersant necessary,” U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Erik Halvorson, a spokesman with the Unified Area Command. The EPA continues testing the chemical dispersant Corexit 9500, which has been used by BP since the beginning of the oil disaster. So far more than 1.6 million gallons of the chemical have been injected into the Gulf of Mexico. But the struggle over daily dispersant use has caught the eye of Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, one of the loudest critics of BP's response in cleaning up the oil spill. “I think it is obvious we can never again allow for a repetition of what is happening right now, where the science experiment is being conducted without having any idea what the impact on marine life long term will be,” said Markey. added by: EthicalVegan

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Bad News Blows In: Storm Could Disrupt Deepwater Clean Up

Posted on June 26, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

photo via flickr As clean up efforts from the Deepwater Horizon extend in to almost their 70th day, bad news has blowing in the form of warning of a tropical storm strong enough to halt clean up efforts. The stoppage could result in an additional half-million of barrels of spilled oil, adding to the record amounts already beginning to how up on Gulf beaches and marshlands. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Bad News Blows In: Storm Could Disrupt Deepwater Clean Up

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