Oil Rising Again from BP Gulf

[Noname]

La Brea tar pits; Athabasca tar sands, etc. created long before anyone had a need for petroleum products.

[hpeer]

Shameless cribbing from another forum to this one.

Deepwater trouble on the horizon: oil discovered floating near source of Gulf of Mexico spill (Photo gallery, video) | al.com

Deepwater trouble on the horizon: oil discovered floating near source of Gulf of Mexico spill

Oil is once again fouling the Gulf of Mexico around the Deepwater Horizon well, which was capped a little over a year ago.

Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of small, circular patches of oily sheen dotted the surface within a mile of the wellhead. With just a bare sheen present over about a quarter-mile, the scene was a far cry from the massive slick that covered the Gulf last summer.

Floating in a boat near the well site, Press-Register reporters watched blobs of oil rise to the surface and bloom into iridescent yellow patches. Those patches quickly expanded into rainbow sheens 4 to 5 feet across.

Each expanding bloom released a pronounced and pungent petroleum smell. Most of the oil was located in a patch about 50 yards wide and a quarter of a mile long.

The source of the oil was unclear, but a chemical analysis by Louisiana State University scientists confirmed that it was a sweet Louisiana crude, and could possibly be from BP PLC’s well.


Nowhere to Hide: New Damning Evidence That Oil At BP’s Deepwater Horizon Site Is From Macondo Well (PHOTOS) | Stuart H. Smith

Nowhere to Hide: New Damning Evidence That Oil At BP’s Deepwater Horizon Site Is From Macondo Well

BP’s renewed denials of our allegation that oil is rising from its Macondo Well are withering under damning new evidence. With all eyes once again on the site that launched the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, experts from LSU to UC Berkeley are weighing in on what is quickly becoming a brutal reality for BP, our federal government and, tragically, the beleaguered people of the Gulf Coast.

[zeehag]

but, ye know, according to our awesome presidunce and the oil compnay bp, there is NO oil in the gulf......oh yes, and thad allen, same guy who sed the "number one threat to national security is the recreational boater." geaux, guminkt....
there werwe pictures from underwater sources showing the seepings.... yet no one can believe it.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by roverhi

There was a report a week or two ago about a slick in the Gulf. Everyone denied it was theirs and no proof of it's origin at that time. The news has gone dead since. Was it just a smallish slick that was wandering about or leakage from a well site??

In any case, more oil seeps into the Gulf annually from natural seepage than was leaked by the BP site. There is a way to stop this seepage but that's by doing more drilling to relieve the pressures from these oil reservoirs under the gulf. Not popular with our current anti-oil administration and the rabid 'return us to the stone age' environmentalists.

I'd sure like to see the data on those natural leaks... for some reason it's not coming ashore like the BP leak. I dont know.... I think defending fossil fuels while our sons and daughters die in foreign deserts to make sure we have oil is the stone age. as well as ignoring tech advances to replace fossil fuel. The fuel cell is alive and being tested on the road etc. There appear to be thousands of wind gens in my state alone. frankly i dont like being at the mercy of the mideast either, before the mortgage crisi, what started the mess was nearly $5 gas. Anytime the mideast wants to cripple our economy all they have to do is raise the price or stop the flow... anytime.

[zeehag]

during the ortiginal spill there were pictures of underwater explorations showing seeping from the seabed. was impressive. was all in a straightish line, to me implying human intervention or a faultline of some sort. most interesting and very very impressive..

[S/V Illusion]

After over a year of listening to so many people get hysterical over the BP spill and seeing now the very small impact it made, it starts to be more than a bit ludicrous talking about national security, conspiracy theories, devastation by dispersants, continued leaks, etc... Can't wait to read how BP could be blamed for earthquakes and hurricanes too.

[zeehag]

the impact was small as the reporting was gagged and the impact is larger than reported. you just donot know that. find folks from the area and speak with them.
government and bp deny the oil was there in first place ..\lol..... go figger. the fella thad allen leading the disinformation rampant spill clean up was the same jerk saying recreational boaters are the number one threat to national security.

[easterly38]

Originally Posted by S/V Illusion

After over a year of listening to so many people get hysterical over the BP spill and seeing now the very small impact it made, it starts to be more than a bit ludicrous talking about national security, conspiracy theories, devastation by dispersants, continued leaks, etc... Can't wait to read how BP could be blamed for earthquakes and hurricanes too.

A lot of people did get hysterical about it, no doubt. But, I don't think we can yet measure the impact of the spill. All I can say for sure is "so good, so far" because I (along with a LOT of other folks) expected much worse.

By the way, if you find yourself along the Gulf Coast, especially south Louisiana, I wouldn't advise anyone to say the impact was "very small." At no point should that seem like a smart idea.

The impact may seem small to some, but it has been life-changing for many.

[S/V Illusion]

Originally Posted by easterly38

A lot of people did get hysterical about it, no doubt. But, I don't think we can yet measure the impact of the spill. All I can say for sure is "so good, so far" because I (along with a LOT of other folks) expected much worse.

By the way, if you find yourself along the Gulf Coast, especially south Louisiana, I wouldn't advise anyone to say the impact was "very small." At no point should that seem like a smart idea.

The impact may seem small to some, but it has been life-changing for many.

I agree completely. the environmental impact assessments are far fro complete but given the magnitude of the spill and it's potential, it certainly appears that any long term impacts were highly localized.

[zeehag]

louisianna got hit by the spill particularly hard. has been sad to watch.

[sdowney717]

The Oil Drum | Natural Oil Seeps and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster: A Comparison of Magnitudes
natural oil seeps are still a lot of oil seeping out.
Which if the wells were drilled and pumped means less oil to seep out around the macondo well.
I have no doubt the seafloor has cracks and oil seeps out. You dont just cap a broken well this big, you got to pump it and exploit it, the pressures are large and the volumes high so the more exploitation the less seepage at this site. But they dont do they.

The Deepwater Horizon site releases 3 to 12 times the oil per day compared to that released by natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico. By May 30, the Deepwater Horizon site had released between 468,000 and 741,000 barrels of oil, compared to 60,000 to 150,000 barrels from natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico over the same 39 day period.

Natural seeps are not constantly active; the volume of oil released can vary considerably throughout the day and from day to day. As a result, only a small area around the source is actually exposed to "fresh" non-degraded oil, which is its most toxic state.

Marine and coastal organisms and ecosystems presumably have adapted to the natural rate of oil input. Indeed, most organisms living in the regions near natural oil seeps have no special adaptations to the oil. Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the University of California/Santa Barbara studied natural seeps off the coast of California. They found that as the oil moved upwards in the water column, a wide range of microbes consume the oil and produce intermediate products, and that those intermediate products are then converted by another group of microbes to natural gas and other compounds. Their research suggests that oil from natural seeps normally stays in the water for between ten hours to five days.

[S/V Illusion]

Originally Posted by zeehag

the impact was small as the reporting was gagged and the impact is larger than reported. you just donot know that. find folks from the area and speak with them.
government and bp deny the oil was there in first place ..\lol..... go figger. the fella thad allen leading the disinformation rampant spill clean up was the same jerk saying recreational boaters are the number one threat to national security.

I don't know? And all this time, working as an environmental engineer for over 30 years specializing on environmental emergencies of all types and magnitudes all over the world, I thought I might be somewhat informed but I guess not... Please don't tell the communities along the Gulf coast for whom I worked for the first 6 months of this spill providing technical assistance to them and others during which I spent almost every day of that period on scene. Never could figure out one thing - how this spill threatened national security more than a bunch of foreign vessels traveling around the Gulf totally anonymously.

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by S/V Illusion

............ - how this spill threatened national security more than a bunch of foreign vessels traveling around the Gulf totally anonymously.

Care to say a little more about that, you kinda lost me there.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by S/V Illusion

After over a year of listening to so many people get hysterical over the BP spill and seeing now the very small impact it made, it starts to be more than a bit ludicrous talking about national security, conspiracy theories, devastation by dispersants, continued leaks, etc... Can't wait to read how BP could be blamed for earthquakes and hurricanes too.

Aparr
antly you havent seen the well done news report on the 2" of oil sludge throughout the area. A real gooey mess creating a dead zone on the bottom. Problem was they used detergent to get rid of the visible oil and it sank to the bottom smothering everything.

[S/V Illusion]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

Aparr
antly you havent seen the well done news report on the 2" of oil sludge throughout the area. A real gooey mess creating a dead zone on the bottom. Problem was they used detergent to get rid of the visible oil and it sank to the bottom smothering everything.

All wildly exaggerated stories. There are pockets of oil both in and on the sediment at depths where no oxygen exists, i.e., no life exists so what impact the oil causes in these isolated areas is debatable. My view is that whatever oil still exists at depth is far preferable there than in mangroves, estuaries, fisheries, shellfish beds or other equally sensitive ecosystems. The reports to which you refer and some of the comments here are precisely the hysterical reporting that I find misleading.