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Reports of a new oil sheen first surfaced on Aug. 18, close to the site of last year’s devastating spill. BP and Coast Guard officials deployed two submersible vehicles to the site, but BP said a visual inspection indicated there was no oil released from the Macondo well. The Coast Guard said last week that the oil was the result of natural seeps and/or permitted releases at other oil drilling sites, according to the Press-Register newspaper in Mobile, Ala.

Reporters from the Press-Register took some samples of their own and sent them to Louisiana State University, where scientists confirmed the oil was Louisiana sweet crude. It was chemically similar to the oil from the Macondo well, but remains unclear whether that is the source, according to the newspaper’s account.

Volunteers with the Gulf Restoration Network and a group called On Wings of Care have been taking aerial photos since Aug. 19, finding a variety of oil slicks in several spots in the Gulf. Bonny Schumaker, founder of On Wings of Care, said the group has posted several flight logs with dozens of pictures of the sheens. Check it out here.

Natural seeps have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico for millennia, so it’s certainly possible that they are causing these new sheens. But several scientists said their location — right near the Macondo well — is intriguing.

There are a few explanations beyond natural seeps, including the possibility that oil has been leaking from the broken riser pipe that connected the Deepwater Horizon to the well. Neither the pipe nor the well has been salvaged, the Press-Register points out. Or, heavier hydrocarbon constituents could have settled on the bottom during the spill, and as bacteria have broken them down, lighter-density hydrocarbons are now slowly making their way to the surface. The most troubling possibility, the newspaper says, is that the oil is leaking out of the ground beneath the capped wellhead.

As we wait for more answers, let’s hope that is not the case.

[via UPI]

Samantha Joye, a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, set sail August 21 on the research vessel Oceanus and has been posting blog updates throughout the mission. Over the weekend, she wrote that her team found a layer of oil in a valley on the seafloor, about 18 miles from the wellhead. It is two inches thick in some spots, and it rests on top of recently dead sea creatures like shrimp and tubeworms.

Joye expected to find some oil on the seafloor, she told the AP — just not that much. Her team is the second in as many months to announce finding oil at the bottom; last month, a University of South Florida crew reported finding oil droplets 1.4 miles beneath the surface.

The presence of seafloor oil is another blow to the theory that most of the spilled oil disappeared. Scientists previously said plenty of oil was floating in an invisible plume, and while yet another research team said microbes were eating it, not all of it could be accounted for. Several experts, including some government scientists, believe at least some of the oil sank to the bottom, and that’s what Joye’s research seems to prove.

Although she can’t be certain until they conduct further tests this week, the oil almost certainly came from the spill and not a natural seep, Joye said. It clearly came from above the seafloor, not below, she says in her blog post.

The oil layer is pretty dispersed, indicating that chemical dispersants broke it down into small droplets. In an interview with NPR, she also reported finding small tar balls that look like cauliflower heads. While dispersants likely helped some of the oil sink to the bottom, Joye said natural processes also played a role. As microorganisms break down oil, they excrete mucus, which eventually sinks to the bottom.

Government scientists acknowledge they have not done a good enough job looking for oil at the bottom of the sea. It’s partly because the environment is so difficult — teams have to use send 1,000-pound vessels to the seafloor where they can pull up core samples. The AP quoted a NOAA official saying government and BP vessels will plumb the depths in the coming weeks.

[AP]

Scientists have yet to agree on the scope of the disaster

But the new study is merely a rough snapshot of what is happening in the depths. Wide disagreement persists among scientists who study the Gulf and oil spills, and they say it could take generations to fully understand the leak’s scope. The best minds in marine science and geology can’t say yet how bad it will be.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers Richard Camilli and Chris Reddy followed the plume starting about three miles from the wellhead of the deep-sea Macondo well. Using autonomous submersibles, they took samples for 22 miles, until the approach of Hurricane Alex forced them to turn back.

As of now, they don’t know how much oil (of the estimated 4.9 million barrels leaked) is in the plume, and they can’t be certain how diffuse it is until they analyze more water samples, Reddy said. The researchers say the levels of dissolved oxygen within the plume had not dropped to levels that would suggest bacteria were breaking down the oil in significant volumes.

The report comes two weeks after a government study that most researchers said was widely misinterpreted. Other scientists dismissed the report as inaccurate or incomplete. That report, from the National Incident Command (NIC), said the majority of the oil had evaporated, been recovered or been dispersed — but dispersed does not mean gone.

Rick Steiner, a retired professor at the University of Alaska and marine conservationist who worked on cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill, called that report fatally flawed.

“The estimate that chemical dispersants were successful at dispersing 8 percent of the leaked oil [as stated in the NIC report] is, quite frankly, ludicrous,” he said in an e-mail message.

Many others agree, and at least two studies emerged this week that appear to directly contradict the government’s findings. But none of them proves anything conclusively. Reddy said government scientists, along with those at universities and private institutions, are trying to account for all the oil like balancing a checkbook. But a checkbook is difficult to balance when none of the numbers being used are firmly accurate.

“This data that we’re waiting for, as it becomes available, they will be able to put it into their calculations,” he said. “When we have analyzed those samples, we’ll be able to constrain what the inventory of those compounds was in there. And at that point, we may be able to see whether it’s a penny in a big checking account, or maybe it’s bigger.”

The problem is that every variable is couched in terms of estimates. Without a firm grasp on where the oil settled — at the surface, in the middle, or at the bottom of the sea — it’s nearly impossible to say what happened to it. The Woods Hole study uses oxygen as a proxy for microbial degradation, for instance. But scientists don’t have good baselines for pre-existing oxygen concentrations, so it’s hard to tell what has changed.

“In truth, no one really has any idea whatsoever of how much oil has gone where,” Steiner said.

Some estimates suggested 80 percent of it went to the surface, and if that’s so, then it’s reasonable to assume much of it is gone, according to Louisiana State University emeritus professor Ed Overton. Oil at the surface would quickly evaporate and be consumed by naturally present bacteria, he said.

Overton reviewed the NIC report and generally accepts its findings, though he believes the government may have underestimated how much oil remains below the surface. He said the visible evidence looks promising — surface slicks are disappearing, and things seem to be returning to normal. He went swimming off the coast of Alabama last week and said it was wonderful, though he did find a few tar balls. Work, not oil, forced him to return home.

“I could still be swimming if there wasn’t so much work to do associated with the spill,” he said.

Others don't seem quite as eager to dive in. Ron Kendall, chair of the department of environmental toxicology at Texas Tech and director of the university’s Institute for Environmental and Human Health, believes the oil’s persistence, as well as the profligate use of dispersants, could lead to entirely new environmental effects. He compared the dispersants to mineral spirits used to clean up oil spots in a garage.

“If you pour mineral spirits on your skin, it’ll burn. You breathe it, it’ll be very antagonistic to your sinuses. You drink it, it’ll be very harmful,” he said. “There were a lot of organisms that came into contact with the use of dispersants deep in the ocean, and on the surface.”

He thinks dispersants probably contributed to the plume’s presence. If the oil had not been dissipated into microdroplets as it was spewing from the well, more of it would have floated to the surface, he said.

“A lot of that oil, and the toxic constituents in that oil, has probably been dispersed into the water column, and that is what these scientific discoveries are finding out — there appear to be these plumes,” he said.

Adding to the confusion is the tricky element of politics. Plenty of research will be wrapped up in lawsuits, and scientists who are being hired by BP and legions of attorneys are being caught in the middle. Last month, NPR reported that BP is essentially buying the silence of prominent Gulf researchers. The public radio network quoted University of South Alabama's Bob Shipp, who said BP's lawyers tried to hire his whole Department of Marine Sciences to do research for them. Under the deal, the scientists could only disclose their findings if BP gave them a green light. Otherwise, they'd have to keep it secret for three years, NPR said.

“A lot of this event has been politicized, versus letting the scientists do their jobs and get the best science possible,” Kendall said. “It’s really hard for the science to rise to the top when everybody is getting ready for a big lawsuit, including the government.”

There’s at least one area in which scientists can agree: The impact on Gulf ecosystems will not be clear for years to come.

Kendall believes most of the leaked oil remains in the environment, and said it will take years to understand its impacts on wildlife like sea turtles, whales and bluefin tuna.

“It takes 10 years before those female (turtles) come back to nest, in the case of the coast of Texas, so we won’t know for a decade. So let’s not race to judgment. This is a time for good science,” he said.

Overton said more work is still needed to at least determine where the oil went.

“As soon as that damn oil quit coming into the Gulf, the amount of oil at the surface nearly disappeared. Now that doesn’t mean there is zero oil. There’s still oil on the marshy grass, some buried a foot or so down ... coastal erosion changes those beaches a lot. There’s tar balls out there like the ones I found.

“But what if, instead of 20 percent being spread at the bottom, what if 80 percent was down there, and all we were seeing at the surface was 20 percent? If that’s the case, then 80 percent of that oil is still down there, minus what is being degraded.”

Overton said he would not be surprised if there is still plenty of diluted oil beneath the surface — which the Woods Hole study suggests is plausible.

“The question is, can the dilute oil cause environmental impacts? We don’t know. We can’t know, because we don’t know very much about deepwater environments,” Overton said. “This is a question that may never be answered.”

If all this uncertainty indicates anything, it’s that much more data is needed before anyone — scientists or policymakers — attempts anything resembling declarative statements. Science is incremental, as Reddy said in today’s conference call. Individual studies are usually designed to address narrow questions, such as today’s glimpse at the plume’s size and spread. Further studies will address its toxicity, density and impacts on fish and other wildlife. It will be a long time before everything is tied together to paint a complete picture of this disaster.

Kendall said that research is only just beginning.

“To me, we’re still in the very early phases of this,” he said. “Quite frankly, we may not fully figure out the ultimate impact of this for many years to come.”

Aeros (Airborne Robotic Oil Spill Recovery System) is a fleet of airplane-deployed robots that cordon off the oil and use centrifuge-like oil/water separators to collect oil for refining. Each ’bot can purify up to 3,000 gallons of water a minute. Several could clean an 11-million-gallon, Exxon Valdez–size spill in a few days.

Global Response Group, Aeros’s developer, is building its first prototype robot to test on an experimental oil spill next year. The company is also in talks with the Chinese government to establish the first Aeros airbase, which will deploy ’bots to protect that country’s fishing waters from offshore drilling. It will cost $800 million, a small fee compared with the billions of dollars in damage that a spill can cause.

Spills present challenges for any cleanup. “Booms don’t work well with big waves,” says oil expert Greg McCormack of the University of Texas. But the industry is eager for new strategies, he says, and will embrace Aeros if the prototype works. Aeros’s inventor, Myron Sullivan, says it will. “It needs fine-tuning,” he says, “but the technology is proven. There will be another disaster. All we can do is prepare for it.”

How It Works
1. ’Bots Away! Planes drop minivan-size water-cleaning robots and inflatable booms near the spill site.
2. Trap the Spill Once inflated, the U-shaped booms surround the oil. Robots use GPS to get behind a boom’s flap, which directs water into the ’bot’s cleaning system.
3. Clean The robot sucks oily water into a cone that spins the liquids, sending denser water to the outside and creating a stream of oil in the center. Low pressure at one end draws oil away while the heavier—and 99 percent clean—water flows out the other side.
4. Collect the Black Gold A bladder collects the oil, which crews pick up later to recycle. One robot can clean up to 3,000 gallons of water per minute, scrubbing the affected area in just a few days.

To help understand, consider your kitchen sink

So what exactly does oil dispersant do?

The good news, if there is any, is that crude oil in itself is largely biodegradable. It is made of dinosaurs, after all, and naturally occurring bacteria and other underwater microorganisms will feed on crude oil and break it down. The trouble (beyond the devastating effects of 11 million gallons) is that oil’s cohesive properties—the same qualities that make oil-coated measuring cups a pain to wash—mean a vast oil slick like the one currently blanketing the Gulf presents very little molecular surface area to the bacteria that would take it down.

The primary natural force behind the breakdown of a large oil slick is turbulence, dispersant or no. In a sink full of water, swishing that oily measuring cup vigorously gets more oil off than gently gliding it around. But if you add a bit of soap, the measuring-cup cleanup is even easier. Oil dispersant is that dish soap, lowering the tension between oil and water and allowing small droplets of oil to break away from the larger clumps.

Corexit, the dispersant BP is currently using, contains six chemicals. The exact recipe is a secret, according to Corexit’s manufacturer, Nalco, but it contains a surfactant and a solvent. Surfactants are long molecules that are hydrophilic (water-seeking) on one end and oleophilic (oil-seeking) on the other. One end grabs an oil molecule, the other, a water molecule. By reaching across the oil-water boundary, the surfactant lowers the tension that keeps the two substances separate.

A single blob of oil, mixed with dispersant, breaks up in a turbulent flow. The original glob is about a millimeter across. The video comes from a study in the February issue of Physical Review Letters, and appears courtesy of the researchers, Balaji Gopalan and Joseph Katz.

Smaller, dispersed droplets are less threatening for two reasons: they present more surface area to the water, so ocean bacteria can degrade the oil faster; plus, the small droplets are much slower to rise to the surface, keeping the oil at sea instead of in coastal wetlands and giving the bacteria more time to do their magic.

But natural turbulence is key: in calm water, the dispersant won’t help much, just as the measuring cup resting at the bottom of the soapy sink won’t clean itself. So in tranquil waters, cleanup crews must turn to other methods, like absorbent booms and controlled burns. Those techniques are being used along the shore. Most of the Gulf of Mexico isn’t particularly calm at the moment—hurricane season begins on June 1, after all—so for the time being, dispersants are the better choice away from shore.

After the dispersant is applied, the tiny droplets of oil follow the water currents in underwater plumes. Keeping that oil away from coastal wetlands is good, but what about ocean life that’s further afield, like corals and oysters? BP and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are monitoring the offshore conditions, which is the best they can do right now.

Dispersants have never been applied on this scale, leaving environmental scientists guessing about the consequences. Corexit may have caused seven cleanup workers to be admitted to the hospital with shortness of breath and nausea. Last week, the EPA requested that BP switch dispersants because of toxicity issues, though BP responded that Corexit was not as harmful as the EPA claimed. As of this writing, BP is compromising by using Corexit only under water, rather than on the surface. The underwater application means the dispersant can be used at a lower concentration, in a oil-to-dispersant ratio of 50-to-1.

Besides the issues surrounding Corexit itself, environmental scientists also don’t know what the long-term effects of dispersed oil will be. BP and NOAA are monitoring the dispersed oil closely. In the meantime, they have their fingers crossed that the dispersant at least prevents the oil from washing ashore, where it mucks up delicate coastal ecosystems. “It’s the lesser of all the evils,” said Nancy Kinner, co-director of the Coastal Response Research Center, speaking by phone from the New Orleans airport.

No solution is ideal, and at the moment, environmental scientists think dispersants are the best option. Kinner just finished two days at a meeting of government officials and scientists from the EPA, the NOAA, the Coast Guard, and researchers from Canada and Norway. Among the 50 or so assembled there, she said, the strong consensus was that for this oil spill, underwater dispersants are the right choice. “It’s the tool in the toolbox that has to be used to keep the oil out of the sensitive wetlands and out of the near-shore coastal habitats,” she said.

Plus, Bill Nye explains: What the #&$% is a top kill?

The Coast Guard gave BP the go-ahead this morning, and the latest attempt to seal off the Gulf oil leak that is quickly turning into the biggest ecological disaster in history began at 2 p.m. eastern time. And as BP scrambled to get its controversial "top kill" underway, the media scrambled to figure out exactly how to describe this riser-capping procedure to the public.

But (perhaps unexpectedly) CNN went directly to the best possible source for all things technical, a video explanation so thorough that we've included it below. The top kill, as explained by Bill Nye The Science Guy.

Of course, the chances of the top kill succeeding are good but not great; BP's CEO admits the chances of stopping the oil flow with a drilling mud/concrete one-two punch sit somewhere between 60% and 70%. If it fails, it could make the environmental mess even worse, releasing the toxic materials present in drilling mud -- which can be a variety of things but usually includes some trace amounts of elements like zinc, nickel, chromium, copper, lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury -- into the Gulf's ecosystem. Check out the live feed of the top kill below and keep your fingers crossed.

If the top kill doesn't work, BP will have to turn to yet another backup plan. Right now, it seems that plan is to use what's known as a low marine riser package (LMRP) to try to seal off the flow of seawater into the well. Even if engineers can't keep the oil in, they might at least be able to keep the seawater out, preventing the formation of the methane ice that thwarted the earlier effort of deploying the containment dome.

Why hasn't BP already deployed the LMRP? That's unclear. In fact -- and we're not trying to demonize here, but it is getting a bit annoying -- BP doesn't seem very receptive to ideas coming from outside the company. The public has drummed up a range of solutions, everything from deploying oil absorbent materials laced with petrol-eating microbes to the SQUID, an admittedly condom-like system that seems like it could quickly help contain the mess (perhaps it's worth noting that the success rate for the average Trojan is better than 60%).

BP says it could be a couple of days before we know if the top kill was a success. If not, it's on to the next idea (which happens to sound a lot like most of the old ideas). Since BP doesn't seem to be doing much thinking outside of the containment dome, feel free to share your leak-plugging schemes in the comments.

[CNN, Fast Company, Discovery News]

Two Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft will help contain what may be the greatest oil spill disaster in history

Two of four modified C-130s have deployed to the Gulf of Mexico from the 757th Airlift Squadron at Youngstown ARS, Ohio. They typically spray pesticides or fire retardant using the Modular Aerial Spray System (MASS), although other Air National Guard units have the Modular Aerial Fire Fighting System (MAFFS). A newer MAFFS 2 version can dispense 30,000 pounds of retardant in just 3 to 5 seconds from one nozzle at almost 14,000 pounds of thrust. Last year, PopSci took a tour of a firefighting 747 that uses similar technology.

Such flying behemoths are just the latest weapon being thrown into the desperate battle to contain the oil slick. The Macondo well has been spilling an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank on April 20. Controlled burning has only had limited impact on the spill, and robot submarines have failed to activate a cutoff valve to cap the undersea well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP has corralled almost 106,000 gallons of dispersant -- one third of the world's supply -- to try and break up the oil slick. But the unfolding disaster has already shut down fishing between the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana and Florida's Pensacola Bay. That area provides the majority of U.S. production of oyster and shrimp, as part of the $1.8 billion seafood industry in the Gulf that's second only to Alaska, Reuters reports.

As if to underline the magnitude of the event, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has an open submission form for anyone with a tech solution to the oil cleanup problem. Just make sure to note the cost, because BP already faces perhaps the most expensive oil cleanup ever -- and that's not including the collateral environmental damage which may very well cripple the Gulf fishing and tourism industries.

[via Ares Defense Blog]