Study: Undersea Dispersant in Gulf of Mexico Lingered in Deepwater Plume

By PAUL VOOSEN of Greenwire

A core ingredient of the dispersant injected deep underwater at BP's runaway oil well remained trapped in an undersea plume of oil, methane and other hydrocarbons, resisting decay even as it became vanishingly dilute, scientists reported yesterday in the first detailed study of undersea dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico.

During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the government and BP PLC injected some 771,000 gallons of dispersant directly into the stream of oil and gas erupting from the Macondo well, more than a mile underwater. The injections, which ended in mid-July, were an attempt to break apart the oil, keeping it far removed from sensitive shorelines while also increasing the amount of crude available for a bacterial feeding frenzy.

While a large portion of the oil and gas escaping from the well stayed in the dark deep -- subsequently consumed by microbes and spread thin over the Gulf's vastness -- it remains uncertain whether dispersants, or simple physics, caused this plume. And while that question remains unresolved, it is now clear that the dispersants stayed put, closely following the hydrocarbon plume's southwest tack, some 3,600 feet below the surface.

During this snaking undersea voyage, at least one dispersant component, a complex surfactant essential to divvying up oil, seems to have resisted microbial decay for several months, instead spreading in practically undetectable concentrations up to 180 miles from the well, according to Liz Kujawinski, a chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and lead author of the study, to be published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The surfactant's stubborn refusal to degrade -- which could be as much a function of its low numbers as its biochemistry -- came as somewhat of a surprise to Kujawinski, who, like most of the public, she said, "had the impression that the dispersant was supposed to have degraded faster."

When Kujawinski began to review past research, however, she saw few studies looking at the degradation of her chosen surfactant, dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, or DOSS, and none of those related to the cold, alien landscapes of deep water. What studies did exist were conflicting. "Turns out," she said, "there's not a whole lot of data out there on what should have happened."

"This was a pretty classic example of not having relevant scientific studies to base our expectations," added Dave Valentine, a geochemist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who co-authored the dispersant paper. "Yet everybody [had] expectations."

Gathering data

Valentine led scientific expeditions into the Gulf during early June and September, those trips providing grist for a series of previously published papers finding that nearly all of the hydrocarbon gas -- methane, ethane, propane -- escaping from BP's well remained underwater, digested by microbes over a few-month span. And while Valentine focused on the gas, he made sure to sample for dispersants, too.

Over several months, Kujawinski analyzed samples taken during Valentine's June trip, which stayed close to the spill's center, comparing the surfactant concentrations to methane. As Valentine's work has shown, methane did not begin to degrade until some days removed from the wellhead. The two chemicals moved together in concentration, and this ratio, among other comparisons, indicated that nearly all of the DOSS remained underwater in amounts that hewed closely to the average reported injection rate.

By Valentine's second trip to the Deepwater Horizon site, in September, U.S. EPA was reporting that it could no longer find any undersea dispersants. More than a month after their last application, they had effectively disappeared. It was a fair assessment to make at the time, Kujawinski said, since EPA's coarser, high-speed tools focused on detecting hazardous thresholds, rather than minute concentrations.

Using advanced lab-based imaging, however, Kujawinski found that DOSS remained in the September water samples, lingering in the parts per billion, 1,000 times below any known effects likely to prove toxic to undersea life. (By September, all the methane had vanished.)

While DOSS only constitutes some 10 percent of the dispersant, Corexit 9500A, used at the wellhead, it is one of the more toxic ingredients, and extrapolated dispersant concentrations also fell below safety thresholds, Kujawinski said.

This drastic reduction in DOSS -- the highest level Kujawinski measured in June was 12 parts per million -- was driven largely by simple dilution, rather than bacterial degradation.

Comparing her figures to the concentrations expected from known water dynamics and the steady undersea currents measured by Woods Hole researchers last summer, Kujawinski estimated that the surfactant would hit such low numbers without any of the bacterial assistance seen in degrading methane and oil, she said.

There are several reasons the bugs could have demurred, Valentine said. Unlike the gas and oil seeps that pepper the Gulf floor, surfactant is a largely foreign compound, so few microbes would have been primed to attack it. And the DOSS was in such low numbers that it may not have warranted the energy needed to adapt to it.

Microbes are smart consumers. "It has to be worth their time," he said.

Good news, bad news

For man and bug alike, the surfactant's complex structure also made it a difficult subject, for dining or study.

Half of the molecule likes to be in oily substances, while the other half likes to be in water, Kujawinski said. It cannot easily be separated from samples, like traditional liquids or gases, and it will stick to Teflon-lined containers.

You wouldn't want your dispersant to behave otherwise, Valentine added. "These are the same properties that make it effective in breaking up oil droplets," he said.

As for whether the deepwater dispersants did their job and caused the oil to divide? That's a physics question, Kujawinski said, outside the bounds of her study. (Using high-resolution video, several physical scientists are tackling the problem.)

The dispersant could have been taken up in methane and missed the oil completely, or it could be associated with the small oil droplets in the deepwater plume.

Both dispersant scenarios seem plausible, she said.

Kujawinski does not want to raise alarm with her study, which will likely provide the baseline calculations for future measures of what effect, if any, dispersants had on life in the Gulf's deep waters. While concentrations were low, the length of exposure hasn't been seen in past toxicity work, and needs to be considered, she said.

"The good news is that the dispersant stayed in the deep ocean after it was first applied," Kujawinski added in a statement. "The bad news is that it stayed in the deep ocean and did not degrade."

Copyright 2011 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

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A New Tyrannosaur Found!

Teratophoneus: Utah’s Monstrous, Murderous New Tyrannosaur

A line drawing of the Teratophoneus skull (a) and a reconstruction based upon the known pieces (b). From Carr et al., 2011.

It missed the 2010 Utah dinosaur rush by nearly a month, but a new tyrannosaur from the southern part of the beehive state makes up for its tardiness by helping to fill a gap in the famous group’s evolutionary history.

Almost one year ago, paleontologists Thomas Carr and Thomas Williamson described Bistahieversor sealeyi, a tyrannosaur from New Mexico and the first representative of this group to be described from the American Southwest. Now, in the journal Naturwissenschaften, Carr and Williamson join colleagues Brooks Britt and Ken Stadtman in describing a second southwestern tyrannosaur. They have named it Teratophoneus curriei, and it was a different sort of predator from its larger, northern cousins.

Found in the 75-million-year-old rock of Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Teratophoneus is known from a partial skull and additional elements from the rest of the skeleton. Its head was short—a departure from the typically long-snouted profiles of other tyrannosaurs—and it was a close relative of the northern forms Daspletosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. Based on its anatomy and its geographic place, Teratophoneus appears to be part of a unique radiation of southern tyrannosaurs.

Paleontologists have seen this pattern before. Just last year scientists described two new horned dinosaurs from the same place—Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops—which indicated that dinosaurs in the American Southwest evolved differently from their cousins to the north. There must have been some sort of barrier that kept dinosaur populations separate and caused the northern and southern groups to evolve in distinct ways. The peculiar anatomy of Teratophoneus adds further support to this idea.

Given its name—Teratophoneus roughly translates as “monstrous murderer”—you might think that this predator was a terrifying giant, but the new tyrannosaur was not quite as imposing as the famous Tyrannosaurus. Although it was a bit larger than the long-snouted genus Alioramus from Asia, Teratophoneus is estimated to have weighed about three quarters of a ton—about one tenth the mass of an adult Tyrannosaurus. (As the authors note, though, this first Teratophoneus specimen was a subadult, so they did grow a little bigger.) Just what it preyed on is as yet unclear, but hadrosaurs and horned dinosaurs have already been described from the same rock formations. Juveniles of these herbivores, at least, would have almost certainly been on the menu.

And Teratophoneus was not the only tyrannosaur found within the fossil-rich Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. During the 70th annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting, Utah Museum of Natural History scientist Mark Loewen introduced attendees to an older and even stranger tyrannosaur found there. This creature has yet to be fully described, but, along with Teratophoneus and Bistahieversor, it is one of the many specimens that is rapidly altering what we thought we knew about the evolution of the tyrant dinosaurs.

References:

Carr, T., Williamson, T., Britt, B., & Stadtman, K. (2011). Evidence for high taxonomic and morphologic tyrannosauroid diversity in the Late Cretaceous (Late Campanian) of the American Southwest and a new short-skulled tyrannosaurid from the Kaiparowits formation of Utah Naturwissenschaften DOI: 10.1007/s00114-011-0762-7

Posted By: Brian Switek

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com

After the Great Spill: How the Gulf Cleaned Itself

By Bryan Walsh


As potential science experiments go, a massive oil spill resulting in severe environmental and economic damage isn't anyone's idea of a good field test. But while the more than 4 million bbl. of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico after the sinking of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last April mucked up coastlines and caused tens of billions of dollars' worth of damage to the Gulf Coast economy, it also gave scientists an unprecedented chance to examine how a major water system would respond to all those hydrocarbons. What would happen to the methane and other chemicals released with the crude? Where would the oil go? The National Science Foundation hoped to answer these questions, fast-tracking grants to eager marine scientists who organized field trips to the Gulf while the oil was still flowing in May and June and then followed up once the spill was capped.

While the jury is still out, the early evidence shows something surprising: the Gulf proved to be much more resilient to the oil spill than scientists might have expected. The vast majority of the oil and other hydrocarbons seem to be gone, less than six months after the crude stopped flowing. And the biggest heroes of the cleanup turned out to be not the thousands of workers who scoured oil from the beaches or the shrimp-boat captains who turned their vessels into oil skimmers. They were actually the microscopic bacteria in the Gulf that digested much of the hydrocarbons while they were still deep under the surface.

"This has really helped us understand the capacity of a natural system to handle this kind of event by itself," says John Kessler, a chemical oceanographer at Texas A&M University. "And it sort of does handle it."

Kessler is a co-author of a study, published in Science on Jan. 6, that examined specifically the fate of the methane that was spilled into the Gulf along with the oil. By weight, more methane was released from the wellhead — an estimated 200,000 tons; potentially far more — than any other single hydrocarbon. (Methane is the primary component of natural gas, which made up about 30% of the output of BP's Macondo well.) When the spill was active, scientists were concerned that the methane might eventually make its way into the atmosphere, where it could have an impact on global warming — and a big one: methane has about 21 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide. Kessler and his colleague David Valentine, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, took water samples from around the wellhead in June, when the oil was still flowing, and found significant amounts of methane and little evidence that bacteria were breaking down the chemical. "Methane levels were 10,000 times above background," Kessler says. "We assumed it would be around for years."

But when Kessler and Valentine organized follow-up sampling trips in August, September and early October, they found something shocking: the methane had largely disappeared. Working aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel Pisces, the scientists used sensors at 207 locations in an area of the Gulf larger than the state of Maine and found virtually no methane. That doesn't mean they found no sign that the hydrocarbon had been there — there were huge patches of water depleted of oxygen, evidence of action by bacteria, which use oxygen when consuming methane. "The only explanation for that large an amount of oxygen loss is methane consumption by bacteria," says Kessler. "But it's very surprising it happened so fast, with such large quantities." Further confirming that it was microorganisms that did the mopping up, Valentine and Kessler also found genetic fragments of methanotrophs (bacteria that feed off methane) and DNA evidence of an enzyme used to break down methane.

Bacteria also seem to have taken care of much of the oil that was released in the spill. During July and August, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory took nearly 200 samples of Gulf water, following the likely dispersal path of the oil, but couldn't find any Macondo crude. While there had been concerns earlier in the summer that large underwater plumes of oil might remain intact, researchers at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory haven't found much underwater oil since the spill was stopped. And a federal report released in November estimated that at most 22% of the oil spilled into the Gulf might still remain in the waters and that bacteria had likely broken most of that remainder down.

Even if that's true, it doesn't mean the ecological threat posed by the spill has evaporated as well. As bacteria suck oxygen out of the water, they create the risk of anoxic zones — known as dead zones — that threaten sea life. But in the case of methane, at least, Kessler says the highest oxygen-depletion levels he saw were 40%, short of the two-thirds reduction considered dangerous to fish. Still, it's possible that some oil could remain buried in the sediment of the sea floor, where it could disrupt the deep ecosystem. And it's possible too that researchers are simply missing some of the oil and other hydrocarbons as they take samples — the Gulf of Mexico is vast, and scientific resources are finite.

"I would be thrilled if I could sit here and tell you, 'Yeah, the methane is all gone. Isn't that wonderful?' " Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia, told the Christian Science Monitor. "But 500,000 tons of methane does not get microbially consumed in three months."

As scientists keep examining the Gulf, it may turn out that even if the ecosystem isn't perfect, it's much more resilient than expected. Part of that is not just biochemistry but luck. The relatively warm waters of the Gulf — and the fact that the spill took place more than 40 miles (65 km) out to sea — gave the bacteria the time and environment they needed to consume hydrocarbons. (Alaska's Prince William Sound, by contrast, has no natural oil seeps that would support crude-eating bacteria, so there were none around capable of breaking down oil after the Exxon Valdez spill.) The research done on the Gulf will help scientists develop better bioremediation techniques to clean up the next major spill — because you can't always count on nature to heal itself.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2041345-2,00.html#ixzz1AgIrkbJA

What Are the Best Dinosaur Movies Ever Made?

Movie reel, courtesy of Flickr user gomattolson

As sorry as I am to admit it, most movies with dinosaurs in them are not very good. It is far easier for me to think of bad dinosaur movies (I still have nightmares from Theodore Rex, and that was meant to be a comedy) than good ones, but there are a few shining examples of what dino-cinema can be if done right.

Jurassic Park (1993)

This is the high-water mark for dinosaur films. Based upon the novel of the same name, this 20th-century “Frankenstein” fable featured some of the best-looking dinosaurs ever seen on film and ushered in a new age of dino-mania. Sure, there were a lot of scientific problems and inaccuracies with the movie, but the fact of the matter is that, 17 years after it was released, Jurassic Park is still a lot of fun to watch. (The first film was followed up by two so-so sequels.)

King Kong (1933)

Even though a giant gorilla was the tragic star of King Kong, when I first saw it I was rooting for the dinosaurs. It didn’t matter that they were stop-motion creatures filmed in black-and-white five decades before I was born—the Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, and other assorted prehistoric monsters in the film were every bit as threatening as the movie’s star. The battle between Tyrannosaurus and King Kong, especially, is one of the most exciting confrontations ever projected onto the silver screen.

King Kong (2005)

Ok, it might seem like a bit of a cheat to list a remake as a separate movie, but I think the 2005 version of King Kong deserves special mention. While the story generally hewed to the one laid out in the 1933 original, the creature creators working on the 21st-century remake envisioned what the living descendants of prehistoric creatures might look like. The modern-day descendant of T. rex, dubbed Vastatosaurus rex, got most of the attention, but there were also “raptors” (Venatosaurus), Brontosaurus and a slew of other imaginary dinosaurs. In fact, more dinosaurs were imagined than made it into the film, and the book The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island describes them in detail.

The Land Before Time (1988)

Given the number of annoying sequels this film has produced, I had some qualms about placing it on this list, but since it was the first dinosaur movie I ever saw in theaters it holds a special place in my heart. The tale of a group of anthropomorphic misfit dinosaur trying to make it to the “Great Valley,” The Land Before Time fit in with the notion (still relatively new when it was released) that dinosaurs had family lives and were not just dumb reptiles. Spike, the mute Stegosaurus youngster, was my favorite character, and I think I still have a stuffed animal version of him around here somewhere….

Gojira (1954)

This movie monster, essentially a radioactive dinosaur, has starred in over 28 films to date, but the original 1954 Japanese film is by far the best. As much a social commentary on the use of atomic weapons on Japan during WWII as a straight-up monster flick, the first Godzilla film is arguably one of the most important movies ever made (if for no other reason that its star has had such enduring popularity—a series reboot is already underway).

What makes for a “good” dinosaur film is largely subjective, though. What are your favorites?

Darwins Letter To O.C. Marsh

Aug 31 1880

In the mid-19th century, paleontologists scrambling for fossils focused more on the prehistoric ancestors of contemporary creatures than on dinosaurs. But after Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859, the theory of evolution became one of the most controversial topics of the time.

When American paleontologist O.C. Marsh identified the Equus parvulus (now Protohippus), many biologists considered the skeleton to be validation of Darwin's theory. In this brief letter from Charles Darwin to O.C. Marsh, Darwin expresses his thanks for Cope's work in the field.

 Yale Peabody Museum

My dear Prof. Marsh

I received some time ago your very kind note of July 28th, and yesterday the magnificent volume. I have looked with renewed admiration at the plates, and will soon read the text. Your work on these old birds on the many fossil animals of N. America has afforded the best support to the theory of evolution, which has appeared within the last 20 years. The general appearance of the copy which you have sent me is worthy of its contents, and I can say nothing stronger than this.

With cordial thanks, believe me yours very sincerely

Charles Darwin

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience

Dinosaur Wars - Chapters 6 & 7 - End of the Feud -Credits

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Dinosaur Wars - Chapter 5 - A Public War

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Dinosaur Wars - Chapter 4 - Discovery in Como Bluff

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Dinosaur Wars - Chapter 3 - Supporting Darwin

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Dinosaur Wars - Chapter 2 - Fossil Hunting in the Badlands

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Dinosaur Wars between Charles Marsh and Edward Cope

In the late 19th century, paleontologists Edward Cope and O.C. Marsh uncovered the remains of hundreds of prehistoric animals in the American West, including dozens of previously undiscovered dinosaur species. But the rivalry that developed between them would spiral out of control, permanently damaging their careers and threatening the future of American paleontology.

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience

The Oil Spill by the Numbers

A timeline of the Gulf oil spill, from the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that began it, to the containment cap that has slowed the flow of oil

http://www.time.com/

Through Our Eyes: the BP oil spill by the Times-Picayune photo staff

When the BP oil spill erupted in the Gulf of Mexico, members of our Times-Picayune photo staff sprang into action to cover this tragedy. Here's a look at what it was like to cover the spill, in the words and photographs of some of those staffers. The interviews conducted here and the photo selection was done by staff photographer John McCusker.

A nesting ground of Maiasaura was discovered in 1978

Jack Horner's 1978 discovery of a Maiasaura ("good mother dinosaur") nesting ground in Montana demonstrated that parental care continued long after birth among the ornithopods.

Scope and Pace of Gulf Cleanup Is Criticized

http://www.nytimes.com

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

BAY JIMMY, La. — Eight months since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill began, the cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico goes on, with over 5,000 people and more than 300 boats still at work. Tar balls are still washing up on beaches. Visible sheen is still showing up in certain places in the wake of motorboats. Oil is being washed out of some areas, where it was buried, only to show up someplace else.

Billy Nungesser, left, president of Plaquemines Parish, expressing frustration Friday
to Cmdr. Dan Lauer of the Coast Guard over the oil spill cleanup.
Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

And so the debates among the responders go on as well, though perhaps not as publicly and fiercely as they once did.

On Friday, state and local officials ferried a group of reporters to this stretch of marshland, one of the hardest-hit areas on the Gulf Coast, and criticized BP and federal agencies for not mounting a sufficiently aggressive response operation.

It was the first such news conference in some time, though the parameters of the debate were not particularly new. Federal officials spoke of the need for testing, assessment and proper procedures to forestall unnecessary environmental damage in the cleanup, while state officials denounced what they saw as indifference and inaction in the face of the environmental damage that was already taking place.

“It has never been acceptable to leave oil this thick in the marsh,” said Todd Baker, a biologist program manager for the state’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, pointing to thick, glistening mats mixed with oil and vegetation slumping upward to the healthy marsh grasses. The longer this oil remains, Mr. Baker said, the more likely the healthy grasses will die and the underlying root system will suffocate, permanently damaging the marsh. Furthermore, he said, the exposed oil is a danger to birds — dozens of white pelicans were crowded onto a nearby island.

But Scott Zengel, a shoreline cleanup and assessment team coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that tests were still being done to devise cleanup methods that would not do more harm than good.

“It’s not that nothing has been done here,” he said, pointing out that everyone had agreed in October that the original cleanup method — vacuums — was no longer working. “Things have been tried, but you have to keep in mind that in marshes there are no easy answers.”

Some scientists, he said, thought the best course of action was to sit back and allow for natural recovery, as any aggressive treatment would lead to more erosion. But others disagreed, Mr. Zengel said, adding that he expected they would start attacking the oil here one way or another before springtime.

According to NOAA, there are few remaining areas like Bay Jimmy. Out of roughly 3,000 miles that have been scouted, there are 323 miles of Louisiana coastline where oil was seen as of the most recent survey. Of those, some 260 miles are in one of the various stages of the treatment process, though state officials say they are unhappy with the pace and rigorousness of that work in some areas.

In some places, oil may have been seen, but further treatment is deemed unnecessary at this time. (Follow-up surveys will be conducted of all of the oiled areas this spring.)

That leaves a little less than 10 miles like Bay Jimmy, a heavily oiled area that remains in limbo as possible cleanup methods are discussed — and whether to clean up at all is debated. But the visibly poor state of Bay Jimmy has made it a focal point of frustration for state and local officials.

This latest outcry was prompted by a suggestion several weeks ago that BP no longer manage the network of hazing cannons, noisemakers that scare birds and wildlife from oiled areas. The plan was to have state wildlife and fisheries officials take over.

While state officials have been fiercely critical of BP’s management of the cannons, they interpreted this new proposal as a sign that BP was shirking its responsibility, especially since seven dead pelicans were found with oil stains at Bay Jimmy last month.

Billy Nungesser, the pugnacious president of Plaquemine Parish who was an ever-present gadfly on CNN during the early months of the Gulf Coast oil spill, was particularly unhappy.

Mr. Nungesser has been relatively quiet recently; he had been staying off of the television as a gesture of good faith, he said to a Coast Guard commander who was along for the trip. But he was getting tired of being quiet.

And so, with a crowd of reporters watching, he told the commander to do something that cannot be printed here.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill continues to foul 168 miles of Louisiana coastline

By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune

Louisiana's coastline continues to be smeared with significant amounts of oil and oiled material from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, with cleanup teams struggling to remove as much as possible of the toxic material by the time migratory birds arrive at the end of February, said the program manager of the Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment Teams, which are working for BP and the federal government.








BP cleanup worker Toney Edison was photographed Dec. 16 holding chunks of tar that were found buried underneath a layer of sand on East Grand Terre Island.



There are 113 miles of Louisiana coastline under active cleanup, with another 55 miles awaiting approval to start the cleanup process, according to SCAT statistics. Teams have finished cleaning almost 72 miles to levels where oil is no longer observable or where no further treatment is necessary.

But that's not the whole story for the state's coastline. According to SCAT statistics, there's another 2,846 miles of beach and wetland areas where oil was once found but is no longer observable or is not treatable.

Gary Hayward, the Newfields Environmental Planning and Compliance contractor who oversees the SCAT program, said that large area will be placed into a new "monitor and maintenance" category, once Louisiana state and local officials agree to the procedures to be used for that category.

"With rare exceptions, most of the marshes still have a bathtub ring that we have all collectively decided we aren't going to clean any more than we already have because we'd be doing more harm to the marshes than the oil is going to be doing to them," Hayward said.

The cleanup protocols for each state have been approved by state and local governments, federal agencies and BP, he said.
gulf_oil_east_grand_terre.jpgView full sizePatrick Semansky, The Associated PressWorkers were photographed Dec. 16 digging up sand impacted by the BP oil spill on East Grand Terre Island.

Louisiana's senior coastal official says the state is monitoring the cleanup, and remains concerned with end-of-year conclusions that the cleanup is almost complete.






Workers were photographed Dec. 16 digging up sand impacted by the BP oil spill on East Grand Terre Island.





"The reality is we still have hundreds of miles of oiled shoreline today," said Garret Graves, chairman of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. "We still have oilings on a regular basis in areas of Jefferson and Plaquemines Parish, and there's still a lot of oil buried back in the marshes where it was carried during high water events.

"The threat is absolutely still there and the oil is absolutely still there," he said.

'We know we're not done'

Hayward does not disagree.

"We know we're not done. We're still working," he said. "We have some challenges ahead of us, including winter weather that will slow us down a bit. But we've made a lot of progress."

At the height of the oil recovery and cleanup effort over the summer, the response program included 48,200 workers and 9,700 vessels. As of Dec. 23, there were still 6,170 workers and 260 vessels, although not all of those are participating in the cleanup.
gulf_oil_auger_east_grand_terre.jpgView full sizePatrick Semansky, The Associated PressWorkers were photographed Dec. 16 looking into a hole dug by an auger, left, while searching for buried layers of tar from the BP oil spill on East Grand Terre Island.

Hayward said that the aim is for the cleanup to evolve into a long-term monitoring program for both beaches and marshes by the end of April all along the coast, but that could depend on shoreline re-evaluations scheduled for April and May.

"We'll be assisted by very low tides in April and May, where we can really see how things have worked out in the winter," he said.





Workers were photographed Dec. 16 looking into a hole dug by an auger, left, while searching for buried layers of tar from the BP oil spill on East Grand Terre Island.




Hurricane Alex

The biggest remaining problem in Louisiana, Hayward said, is a large area of marsh along the shores of Bay Jimmy in northernmost Barataria Bay, west of Port Sulphur, that was fouled when storm surge from Hurricane Alex in late June pushed oil into the bay system, even though Alex went ashore near the Mexico-Texas border.

"There was enough high water in the tide surge and enough oil on top of the water that it came down on the marsh surface and flattened the grass along a 40- or 50-foot swath along the marsh front," he said. "And when it did that, it pushed the grass over and left an oily mat on the surface. That has since dried and has become a very crusty surface, underneath which there is still gooey oil."


Cleanup contractors have tried several methods over the past few months to remove that oil.

"We tried burning and that didn't work," Hayward said. "We tried various methods of cutting the marsh and raking the black tarry mat up, and met with some success. We've tried four different ways to cut the marsh and let the young sprouts come through.

"But oddly, what we saw was that even though that marsh was quite heavily impacted, before the growing season stopped, the marsh sprouts were coming up through that stuff," he said. "So we feel pretty confident that even though it looks like hell, that area will recover in the spring when things start to green up again."

February target date

The target date of February is aimed at removing the threat of oil from areas along Louisiana's shoreline by the time migratory birds return to roost or rest on their way from Central and South America in the spring, Hayward said. The hope is also to assure clean beaches in advance of the tourist season on Grand Isle, Elmer's Island and Fourchon Beach.

BP oil spill Enlarge Times-Picayune Staff DAVID GRUNFELD / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, left, who hasn't had much sleep in the past week, listens to BP 1st Global Properties Director Dave Kinnaird while he addresses the shrimpers and residents of Plaquemine Parish who gather to volunteer and learn how to use booms during a training session at old Boothville/Venice School in Boothville, LA., Friday April 30, 2010. According to the U. S. Coast Guard, oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil platform that exploded and sank over a week ago has reached Louisiana land in the Mississippi Delta Friday.


The 3,086 miles of targeted coastline in Louisiana, which makes up the SCAT western district, dwarfs the 1,598 miles of mostly beaches targeted for clean-up in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, which comprise the eastern district. Hayward said cleanup efforts also are aimed at February completion in those states.

"There's a lot of pressure to get it done because of the loss of the last tourist season, and they want to get open for the winter months and they want to get open for spring breakers," he said.

Unlike Louisiana's rough texture beaches, a mix of sand, Mississippi River sediment and organic material, beaches to the east, especially along the Florida Panhandle, are a sugary, powdery white sand that's more difficult to separate from the weathered remains from the BP spill.

"It's really not oil. It's not sticky, it's not tacky, it's basically a very crumbly, weathered oil residue," Hayward said. "You can pick it up in your fingers and crumble it and it will just disintegrate."

Mats of weathered oil

However, the cleanup plan is still struggling with tar balls and other material washing ashore from mats of weathered oil that are located in the surf zone just off several key beach areas, including Pensacola, Fla.; Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge at Gulf Shores, Ala.; and the barrier islands off Mississippi's coast. Officials are concerned submerged tar mats may also be the source of tar balls that continue to be spotted along Grand Isle, Elmer's Island and Fourchon Beach.

"People are concerned about the chunk of oil that they can't find counted" in the federal description of how much oil remains in the Gulf of Mexico, Hayward said, and the tar mats explain a small part of the missing oil.

"These tar mats can be three or four or five yards wide and a couple hundred meters long, and they're discontinuous," he said. "They're being found in 2 or 3 feet of water, just below the low-tide line."

"These are areas where tar balls keep washing ashore," Hayward said. "The shallow water (where the tar mats are believed to be located) precludes a lot of vessel activity. It's a very turbulent area."

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3327.

With Senator Dole Careers & Disabled Expo ' 93

The Peak Oil Crisis: 2011 – A Pivotal Year?

By Tom Whipple


Wall Street is getting nervous. As oil prices continue to creep up and as more evidence accumulates that the age of ever-growing energy production and economic growth is coming to an end, a specter is haunting the great investment banks and brokerage houses of New York. For five years now Wall Street and its chorus in the financial media have ignored or denied that global oil production has reached a plateau after 150 years of steady growth. Those who did admit to a problem were quick to assert that the markets would find substitutes first in the form of endless quantities of coal waiting to be exploited and more recently 100 years' worth of shale gas would come seamlessly to the rescue.

The nervousness of course is that once global energy production starts to decline, capitalism as we have known it for the last few centuries will no longer be the same. While some new form of an economic system will evolve, the transition is likely to be long and painful. Many, if not most, jobs in the financial industry will simply melt away. Hence, for many, putting off the fateful day when we have to admit the inevitable is much preferred solution.

The events of 2008 when oil shot up briefly to $147 a barrel and the global economy trembled for months are still fresh in many minds. The western world's banking system and Detroit had to be bailed out by the increasingly insolvent U.S. and European governments. Had not oil prices quickly reversed as demand for oil products faltered and oil plunged to $32 a barrel, we would have been living in a different world right now.

As we enter 2011, the denials that significant change is coming continue. Oil prices continue to rise, but until recently they have been met with the idea oil that could go up a bit more, but certainly not enough to damage the economic recovery. Oil may get to over $100 a barrel shortly it certainly will not go much further. In the last few weeks, however, a few as yet faint voices in the media have been adding a sentence or two to the effect that all might not be as well as hoped.

So where are we? A few weeks ago the most ominous news of year came out of Beijing when it was announced in muted voice that from here on out China's coal production would probably not be growing much further. Chinese coal, of course, is among the miracles of our time. Starting at around 100 million tons per year when Mao Zedong took over the country, by the turn of the century annual production had increased to 1 billion tons. Then production really took off with output climbing to circa 3.2 billion tons a decade later. With oil production faltering and production of much of the world's industrial output shifting to China, it was this steady increase in coal production that fueled China's and therefore much of the world's economic growth for the last decade.

Now, with this final surge in the world's production of fossil fuels coming to an end the outlook for the global economy changes dramatically. Beijing, which is wedded to achieving an annual GDP growth of 8-10 percent, is already stepping up its imports of coal and is vigorously pursuing means of locking up as much foreign fossil fuel resources as the foreigners are willing to sell. If Beijing is unsuccessful in increasing its coal imports to the extent needed in the next few years, then it is likely to turn to increasing imports of oil and LNG.

As we enter 2011, the denials that significant change is coming continue.
The IEA says that during 2010 global demand for oil grew by 2.5 million barrels a day (b/d) and reports that during the 3rd quarter the annual rate of demand increased to a "giddy" 3.3 million b/d. As rates of growth in consumption this fast obviously cannot go on much longer in the face of very slow to flat increases in production, the IEA is saying that the increase in demand in 2011 will slow to an average of 1.3 million b/d.

Just to support the 3rd quarters increase in demand, global stockpiles have been dropping by 1.3 million b/d. Thus far Saudi Arabia, which is the only country claiming substantial surplus production capacity, has shown little inclination to increase production.

Trends for the next few months do not suggest that a major drop in demand is yet in sight. The northern hemisphere from Chicago through Europe to Japan is gripped by some unusually cold weather which will guarantee higher oil and coal consumption. China is still beset by widespread coal shortages and the accompanying power outages which guarantees demand for imported coal and oil to run auxiliary power generators will stay high.

Some are already saying that the IEA's forecast of a 1.3 million b/d increase for next year is much too low. The big unknown for the coming years is the size and availability of OPEC's spare capacity. If much of the 5 or 6 million b/d of productive capacity that OPEC claims to have in reserve does not really exist or cannot be opened in a timely manner, then much higher oil prices seem likely by spring. This, of course, will reduce demand again and we are off on another cycle of falling demand, more economic damage, and eventually lower prices. No matter what happens, 2011 is shaping up to be an interesting year - it could just be a pivotal one.

http://www.fcnp.com/commentary

Tom Whipple is a retired government analyst and has been following the peak oil issue for several years.

Leak shuts Exxon Mobil platform in Gulf of Mexico

http://www.reuters.com

HOUSTON | Mon Jan 3, 2011 11:26am EST

HOUSTON Jan 3 (Reuters) - An Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) oil and gas production platform in Gulf of Mexico block West Delta 73 has been shut due to a small leak, a filing with the U.S. National Response Center said Monday.

The leak was described as a "pinhole" leak in a fuel scrubber that caused a discharge of about 5 gallons of natural gas condensate into the Gulf, creating a mile-long sheen.

An Exxon Mobil spokesman was unable to comment immediately on the report. (Reporting by Janet McGurty; Writing by Bruce Nichols)

Environmental Questions Persist in Post-Spill Gulf

PBSNewsHour