I have found and watched a pretty interesting video describing a batch of microbes being released into and on a spill. Impressively effective in the video. It would be interesting to know if this is being utilized and if it would be used at these depths and temperatures. It certainly seels to be a great idea for using it in the marshes and onshore areas. I hope someone here has more knowledge on the effectiveness.

Oil Eating Microbes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VfypUzx1tI&feature=youtube_gdata

Another difference is the release pressure. I imagine natural seeps to be...seeps rather than 2,000+ psi.

I saw a video a few weeks ago (can't find the link now) that compared oil being released under very high pressure with oil just being spilled on the bottom. The experiment was in a lab - certainly a deep-water release will have other complicating factors. The spilled oil surfaced in the big blobs that would be easy to skim from the surface. The high pressure release was an underwater aerosol in a subsurface plume.

I'm glad this subject is being addressed, as it appears that there is a growing body of disinformation out that which, deliberately or inadvertently, serves to downplay the environmental impact of the ongoing oil release.

The fact that there are natural oil seeps scattered throughout the Gulf of Mexico is almost totally irrelevant to the problem at hand. Adverse environmental impacts are almost always a matter of too high a concentration of a toxic substance in too small of an area.

Sure, if we could take the ongoing oil release and distribute it perfectly evenly over the entire massive inventory of water in the Gulf such that it would be perfectly mixed, the oil would be at a virtually undetectable concentration and have no serious impact. Unfortunately, such is hardly the case. Large and important portions of the ecosystems in the Gulf are going to experience oil constituents at levels well into the toxic range for a considerable amount of time. There will be major and long-lasting damage to be sure.

So, it would be well to keep an eye out for what is being said about natural oil seeps and who is saying it.

The comparison I look for is to the Ixtoc spill. Granted the Gulf was a much healthier ecosystem in that event, and depth differentials make comparisons problematic. But I would appreciate any references or discussion on effects and lag times of that spill.

Dr Cleveland implies that the well is releasing about 15 times more oil than is released naturally. But the natural releases have been happening for millenia, while the well has only been releasing for a few weeks!

Therefore, millions of times more oil has been released natually than the oil through this well. Cheers, Dr Cleveland. That puts things into perspective.

The well is just a "drop in the ocean" compared to the natural releases (assuming it gets fixed tonight).

So what is all this squaking about? BP drills for oil because we need it for our cars, unless we want to buy it from the middle east, of course.

very interesting satellite discoveries. got to wonder if a lot of those natural leaks aren't leaks from other producing wells. Check this out from SkyTruth.

http://blog.skytruth.org/

Who or what is leading the strategic effort on keeping BP's already-leaked oil plumes away from shores? I believe that should BP's surface and underwater oil plumes escape the Gulf of Mexico, we may yet deflect it from entering selected embayments and perhaps even bays along the USA's southeast coast, by doing something that ocean windmills do: create barricades of chill water that divert warmer plume waters away. Here's what and how:

* Surface oil plumes and underwater oil plumes travel with their respective prevailing currents. When a water current strikes an obstruction, it goes under or over it; failing that, it is deflected around the obstacle. (Grotesquely simplified, given all the other variables from tide to salinity)

Using existing technologies, one can create localized -in place- thermal chilled water barriers that, properly situated, and movable to reflect changing circumstances, will constitute sufficient obstacle from surface to seafloor to force any portion of that warmer oil-rich bit of Gulf Stream current that strikes it to either (1) deflect away from the barrier and continue on its merry way northeast without entering the embayment being protected or (2) split off as a gyre that again stays away from the shore while remediation is applied to it.
See crude map of concept off Port Royal Sound, South Carolina

One produces the chilled seawater aboard freezer or reefer vessels that are capable of pumping seawater aboard, chilling it significantly, and discharging it into towed or anchored semisubmersible arrays of diffuser pipes and hoses that is as wide and long as feasible. The tens of millions of gallons per day cold sea water discharged 24/7 in place will produce a half mile wide and as many miles long as long as the diffusers can be deployed. Incoming and outgoing tides will spread the chill zone. This continuously replenished barrier of cold dense seawater in front of the plume is impenetrable to the oily warmer plume water. The oily plume will be forced to go around this obstacle. "Around" is either off into a gyre, where mitigation can be applied away from shore, or onward aboard the Gulf Stream and into the North Atlantic Drift. But the key thing is that the oily water surface and demersal is deflected away from inlets and sounds and embayments along the coast. At least those that use the tech.

a lot of freezer trawlers out there that have no shrimp or fish to keep cool could be press ganged into performing this activity with a little financial help from Uncle Sam or Granny Google to pay 'em and to refit with with the necessary gear.

Hmm, those comparisons look a little disingenuous Gail. If you are going to compare Deepwater Horizon to previous events, it seems only reasonable to compare with Ixtoc, rather than tanker spills, after all tanker spills are limited and put the oil on the surface, not throughout the volume. Good numbers on Ixtoc seem hard to find, but a central estimate of 3,000,000 barrels (11,000 bpd for 9 months) gives:

which puts a different complexion on things. Even if DH goes on till mid-August, it still doesn't hit the same volume as either of your rate scenarios.

Thanks for posting some real seep vs. blowout numbers, Dr. C. C. and Gail. Too bad JC's reply trying to spin this key post was hardly to be unexpected.

The Deepwater debacle is another hammer blow in the relentless succession of blows the ocean systems are receiving at our hands.

"I dunno' how much more she can take, Captain!"

So you guys just believe anything then eh?

I saw the oil seeps con in California many years ago. The petroleum cartel created front groups like this hilarious one to spread fear about the dangers of natural oil seeps.

They put out bogus reports and lied about the extent of natural seepage. And a lot of slow, uninformed, or outright dimwitted people fell for it. And now they're pulling it out again for the Horizon gusher.

Come on. You've even cited reports from the American Petroleum Institute, as though they have any credibility at all.

I'm new here. So please inform me. Is it the general consensus here that the API is a legitimate, respectable organization? Or that they are an organized crime syndicate?

An in depth analysis of the 1979 Ixtoc spill, regarding oil contamination effects, would seem to be in order, because the size and location are similar.

I Googled TOD and didn't see anything relevant on the fate of the Polycyclic Aromatics, PAHs, being released into the Gulf. This looks like a huge long term issue for marine life and fisheries.

article on GOM spill PAHs

http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/gulfspill-pahs

perhaps a TOD contributor could do a new post on the PAHs

According to the history detailed across several reputable publications, BP has (B)roken (P)romises again and again, and has continued for decades on a path of transparent disregard for the safety of its workforce, and of contempt for the law, and cruel disdain for the biosphere that sustains each and every one of us.

Notably, but not widely known, is BP's involvement in the misdeeds of Alyeska surrounding a total lack of preparedness in Prince William Sound, despite their repeated assurances to the contrary. If the preparations they claimed they had made had actually been in place on that fateful day, those 11 million gallons could have been contained around the Exxon Valdez and effectively siphoned off with relatively small impact. Instead, the crude was left to drift into 1200 miles of pristine coastline devastating the habitat and populations of numerous species - including seven that have never recovered - leaving a mess that persists in its lethality two decades later.

This current GOM catastrophe is in part the result of the lack of an additional $500,000 emergency shutoff component, for which the requirement was waived by the previous administration. We can also point to the faulty hydraulics and the dead battery in the BOP - both the result of the firm's lax maintenance practices and the 50% cuts in the maintenance staff at the rig in the months before the explosion. Of course, hindsight being 20/20, in light of their $70 billion stock loss and $150 million and rising mitigation expenses, the execs at BP likely now have come to regret those decisions - but that's all oily water under the bridge now.

Harsh sanctions are not only defensible, but wholly essential. If not now, when are we ever going to prohibit such neglegent companies from operating where they can inflict such devastation? This is an especially important question when BP is responsible for such brazen business-as-usual crimes (to include three felony convictions and the corporate equivalent of probation when this latest assault on the planet occurred).

Should we let paper animals like this hold us captive, even as they inflict mayhem upon our quality of life for decades, merely because they have become - yet again - too big to fail?

There are many debatable matters that are taking up a lot of regular folk’s productive time and energy: How big is the spill, really? How much damage will it do to the biosphere in the GOM? How bad will the impact be on the seafood industry? What are the true health effects of the dispersant on local populations of sea life and humans? Is the purpose genuinely to disperse the oil for beneficial reasons, or just to keep it off the surface where it could be more closely observed and more accurately estimated? Does the dispersant ultimately do more harm than good?

The far less debatable reality that’s now outlined in stark contrast by this latest alarm bell in the GOM is the very serious national security concern presented by our continued dependence on this fossil energy: On Christmas of 2002 – when the preparatory planning and pre-positioning of guns and boots for the invasion of Iraq had already begun – the sixteen nations possessing over 80% of the world’s oil had about 972 billion barrels between them. Of this total, 69.98% was inside the chaotic Middle East, only 12.64% was in South America and North America put together, and just a trifling 2.33% was here inside our borders.

Canada's 180 billion barrels aren’t in those figures, because 96% is locked up in tar sands and, in terms of energy/environment tradeoffs, getting it is likely to be prohibitively costly – you could do it, but does it make sense?

With about four and a half percent Earth’s population, our daily oil consumption here in the US is about 20 million barrels. Aside from various lubricants and fuels for cars and trucks, industry, and for some home heating and electricity generation, we also suck it in for agriculture in the form of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. It’s also the raw material for all our plastic imports and manufacturing, and for our solvents and many of our medicines.

At that gluttonous rate of gorging, if we’re ever deprived of all foreign sources of oil, our own 2.33% would last us less than three years before we’ve used up all US reserves. That potential reality is not unimaginable. The two most populated nations on the globe, India and China, have more than a billion people each. Both are in hot pursuit of our energy intensive way of life and gaining on us at a breathtaking rate, and oil simply cannot be drawn from the ground quickly enough to meet that demand.

If you'd like a little more data, have a look here: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/04/peak-oil-whats...

I've spent a lot of time looking at the options in front of us, and I haven’t found a more scalable, cheaper, safer way out for the US (and for just about any country anywhere) than solar thermal plants that use molten salt as a medium for heat-exchange and energy storage, combined with long distance HVDC transmission. Our country has about 3.5 million square miles of land. With just 3/10ths of 1% of that land in a line of plants across the Sunbelt – a total of one hundred of these solar thermal plants just ten and a half miles on a side – we can satisfy all the demand for electricity in the whole country 24/7/365 regardless of the weather.

I've been carefully studying infrastructure alternatives, too, and I’ve concluded that all-electric vehicles – in personal transportation, public transit and commercial shipping – will be the solution we turn to in combination with solar thermal. With the majority of these electric vehicles charging up in non-peak hours, growing the number of solar thermal plants to meet that additional demand will be very do-able.

Sound impossible? Have a look here:

http://2greenenergy.com/solar-thermal-leader/2534/
http://2greenenergy.com/utility-scale/2499/
http://2greenenergy.com/electric-vehicle-adoption/2890/
http://2greenenergy.com/epa/3003/
http://2greenenergy.com/paradigm-shift/2668/

Of course, there are many things standing in the way – spineless and pocketed politicians in both parties, entrenched greed feeding off the present infrastructure, insufficient media coverage - but none of these obstacles have anything to do with the science, nor are they based on any scarcity of the necessary materials.

We just can't keep on this path, burning ancient sunlight in the form of poisonous fossil fuels from deep beneath the earth’s surface. We either kick the habit and learn to tap into that magnificently efficient fission reactor 93 million miles distant that we'll all be revolving around for the next five billion years, or we'll stay hooked, and we’ll devastate our beautiful planet in a mortal spiral of wasteful squandering and brutal conflict.

Obama is a clever man, perhaps even a superior man in many ways, but he needs a much more rigid backbone. He needs to come clean, and make good on yet another of his abandoned campaign promises - stop the bribery.

There are 535 congresspersons in WDC, surrounded by 11,000 lobbyists - this is equal to the military division now tasked with security in 24,000 square miles of Iraq. These corporate shills shelled out $3.47 billion, just in the 12 months of 2009 - that's $6.5 million per congressperson. What government can remain true to any principles in the face of that green flood?

That was only a taste of what's to come. Those massive graft figures predate the declaration by the five SCOTUS judges that corporate paper tigers ("fictitious persons" in law) possess the Human Right of Free Speech. These same "justices" have already asserted that money is equal to Free Speech, and they have now unleashed corporate treasuries upon our election processes without limit or even the requirement of a vote by shareholders (the legal 'owners' of any publicly traded firm). Some PR company near the capitol in Maryland even made an announcement that it would run for public office... Will we one day vote against a presidential candidate with the initials BP?

With the closely aligned transportation interests not far behind, the contribution of energy and natural resources companies alone to the “financial well-being” of our congresspersons was only a little less than the lobby money for healthcare interests and Wall Street interests. Lobbying on behalf of labor, which can say it defends the interests of workaday folks, was 12th in line in buying influence - with a full amount coming to a tepid 8% of the "healthcare" lobby.

2009 was a record-breaker in American lobbying, and 2010 is already on a path to top it.

Here's a link to the 2009 data from opensecrets.org:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/02/federal-lobbying-soars-in-2009.html

Obama needs to keep calling all this by its true name, bribery, and needs to call the American people to demand immediate action by Congress against all these corrupting practices that have long and justly been reviled. As long as we let dollars determine our leadership instead of achievements and ideas, we'll continue to be ruled by the most callous sorts of greed and cowardice conceivable.

To find a little more info on the perils of bought leaders, check this out:

http://2greenenergy.com/say-adios-to-campaign-finance-reform/2426/

The most potent danger to our democratic republic is not the blood-spattered tactics of radicalized foreigners, however dangerous they truly are, and however many more of them our own futile Middle East strategy is now helping to recruit than we can ever kill. The nastiest menace facing our nation lies within: the unbridled supremacy of 11,000 lobbyists perverting our leadership and preventing crucial progress on issue after issue.

Obama won’t get anywhere without tackling this reality. If he does tackle it, he'll have a popular movement behind him that’s sufficient to break the hold that oil capital now has on the country’s capitol. He has the wits to develop and communicate the vision, and he must now to show the required nerve.

Can we, or should we, wait for one man to lead us? Or, shall we try every single day to be the change we want to see in the world? That’s another debate that has some merit.

I'm much obliged to The Oil Drum for giving us this place to talk among ourselves and exchange information. Places like this are the hope of the future.

Craig Shields, Editor, 2GreenEnergy.com