New Oil Slick In Gulf Waters Linked To BP Well 98
An anonymous reader writes "A new oil sheen appeared in the Gulf of Mexico last week, and now scientists have confirmed that the oil bubbling up to the surface matches the type released by BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well last summer. Ed Overton, a chemist at Louisiana State University, examined samples of the oil and said, 'After examining the data, I think it's a dead ringer for the MC252 oil, as good a match as I've seen. My guess is that it is probably coming from the broken riser pipe or sunken platform.'"
Junk Shot! (Score:1)
Our grandchildren will still be be dealing with their sadly deformed children, long after the BP Deepwater Horizon and TEPCO Fukushima disasters get "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" stamped on them in the corporate-pwn3d, crony-stooge media.
Of course, if this is pointed out? The messenger will be compared to those who insist the world is flat, and that Apollo never landed on the moon.
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Nah. The messenger will be used as an example of the issue that modern society has frozen evolution in time so that the species has stopped advancing.
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How bad is it? (Score:1)
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Cleanup is a farce anyway. The only thing you can do is stop or prevent leaks.
The rest is up to the microbiology.
Cleanup is mostly a farce, but bacteria can be fed (Score:2)
Last summer I thought the Navy should get some giant air pumps and oxygenate the water, to help the bacteria with their cleanup operation. The Navy has "portable" nuclear power plants [sendtheenterprise.org], which is why I thought they'd be good for the task.
But I'm not a celebrity with a skimmer to sell, so they didn't ask me. Oh well.
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"oxygenate the water"
What you need to add depends heavily on which bacteria are the main ones acting on it, and what the limiting nutrient is.
Terry Hazen has a good overview here. [youtube.com]
Kinda long though. Nearly an hour.
bubblers help 'churn' the water too (Score:2)
There's are a lot of nutrients in the gulf, especially from the farm runoff (would be interesting to experiment with "bubblers" in the dead zone, but that's another topic). I've loaded your video (thanks!), but haven't watched it all yet.
Several of the pages I read last summer said the oxygen deprivation was serious... From my original piece, To Save the Gulf, Send the Enterprise [teslabox.com]:
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Could well be that oxygen is the limiting factor. It may be that stormy weather that leads to more churning of the surface would help a good bit with surface oil slicks or oil near the surface, too.
For small areas with lots of contamination, the bubblers would work, but the Gulf's a pretty big place. ;)
The thing that's really struck me about Hazen's video (and similar comments from Ron Atlas and others on This Week in Microbiology) is how rarely you have to engineer in a new capability in the organisms. Alm
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Gulf researcher Samantha Joye's paper has some quotes about oxygen: http://gulfblog.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Joye-et-al-NGeo-2011.pdf [uga.edu]
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If it's not too bad, then the microbiology will take care of it.
That's right. Humans abdicate responsibility and leave it to some of the most primitive organisms on the planet. I think we should scoop the stuff up and put it in every swimming pool in the Hamptons.
Back to reality. Something expected. Remember, the remains of the rig are still down there and it's entirely possible that something broke.
Or, drifting off again, it might mean that the entire subfloor of the Gulf of Mexico is about to explode due to the oil eating bacteria secreting methane [wordpress.com] in secret chamb
Re:How bad is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right. Humans abdicate responsibility and leave it to some of the most primitive organisms on the planet.
Primitive? I guess that depends on your point of view. You see, a human generation is about every 20 years or so. A dog, every 6 months or so. Bacteria reproduce anywhere between every 20 minutes and every 2 hours. So how many generations of bacteria have there been since 2001? Well it's still the same human generation, but it's been close to 260,000 generations of bacteria. Evolution isn't all about growing a third arm or changing the color of your fur. Just looking at the biochemistry that a simple bacterium is capable of will show you that they are far, far more "advanced" than we are, even if they don't vote or sit around watching sit coms.
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You know, you just might be correct. After all, bacteria have started to colonize the solar system [slashdot.org], something humans have yet to do.
I, for one, welcome our colonic overlords....
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Evolution isn't all about growing a third arm or changing the color of your fur.
Sure, but that's the fun part.
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Michael Bay [xkcd.com], is that you?
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That's right. Humans abdicate responsibility and leave it to some of the most primitive organisms on the planet. I think we should scoop the stuff up and put it in every swimming pool in the Hamptons.
You know what else? Its high time we stopped relying on plants to recycle CO2 back into O2. We need to get some kind of catalytic converters in place, large scale, everywhere, to handle this vital task.
Sometimes the simplest solution really, actually, is the best solution.
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Youre reading vast statements into my post that were never made.
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Perhaps you would be interested in meeting an acquaintance of mine who is prepared to do just that. Her name's Irene.
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If it's not too bad, then the microbiology will take care of it.
You've got to stop listening to the oil companies. They claimed the same BS about the Valdez accident and here it is 20 years later and all you have to do to find oil is dig down a foot. Bacterial action is very slow when it comes to large quantities of oil. They were claiming days after they sealed the well that virtually all the oil was gone. It would have taken a mass of bacteria the size or Rhode Island to eat that much oil that fast. They also need other nutrients which is one of the factors that slows
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Actually, if the oil was 1-2mm thick then it wouldn't be a sheen--- it would be opaque, or at best translucent.
A "sheen" occurs when the thickness approximates the wavelengths of visible light. The sheen effect, with all its multiple colors, is the diffraction of light into its component wavelengths as the light passes through.
So a sheen is ridiculously thin---which means it takes almost no oil to create a large sheen. A single drop, for example, could probably produce a square meter of sheen (guessing, b
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That depends on your definition of "not too bad". The blowout has likely already killed more organisms than all nuclear power accidents combined, and I bet the press will still give it lukewarm coverage, if any at all.
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Actually, the blowout probably didn't kill nearly as many organisms as all the chemicals we poured into the water to try to mitigate the presence of the oil.
Oil and nature can coexist at the microorganism level, within some limits, but the detergents used to break up that oil are highly, highly toxic to microorganisms. That's why, for example, you use soaps and detergents to keep your hands clean.
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You a BP apologist, or did you just skim TFS in hopes of FP?
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He says it's a dead ringer. Then goes on to GUESS a PROBABLE source. The alternative to his guess is that there's a leak from the plugged well. You a BP apologist, or did you just skim TFS in hopes of FP?
Perhaps he didn't want to discredit himself by stating something as fact that he wasn't certain about?
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it's a dead ringer for the MC252 oil, as good a match as I've seen
No but that's slightly more assured then the two words you picked out of context.
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The definition of a "dead ringer" is something that looks a lot like something else, but isn't.
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Fucking apologist. You can sit there and do your best to make it sound like its a fucking wild guess, when the scientist sounds like hes pretty damn sure.
This doesnt sound at all like a wild guess if you read the article.
The guys who did the testing this time, wetre the ones who fingerprinted the oil the first time.
The pair did much of the chemical work used by federal officials to fingerprint the BP oil, known as MC252.
Or that the coast guard said this:
He said knowing that the oil matches with the BP well was useful, as it ruled out the possibility of other sources, such as the pipelines that crisscross the Gulf floor.
Oh wait yet another scientist wades in with his opinion:
Robert Bea, a prominent University of California petroleum engineer studying the BP spill, was not surprised that oil was seen away from the well head. Bea said he believed there was a high probability that the oil originated from the BP well.
High Probability huh? Doesnt sound like a wild guess to me.
So you paint the entire thing as something o
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Fucking apologist. There is nothing else to say.
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The definition of a "dead ringer" is something that looks a lot like something else, but isn't.
A deceased Avon lady.
At least so far everyone is getting the name right (Score:1)
Cue a thousand American "news" outlets incorrectly referring to BP as "British Petroleum" and implying that it is somehow linked to the unAmerican-ness of the company that allowed such a terrible thing to happen.
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Big Polluter
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I'm curious, what does 'BP' stand for?
Beyond Petroleum [bp.com], what else could it mean?
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If they are so beyond it, why are they leaking it into the ocean? Or was that their plan for disposal?
It stands for "Something with the initials BP that the marketing assholes came up with", and nothing else.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bp#Company_name [wikipedia.org]
Re:At least so far everyone is getting the name ri (Score:4, Funny)
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Nice! Others heard ...
British Pollution
Big Problem
Bogus Petroleum
Bad Politics
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It stands for British Petroleum.
It used to (and is obviously where the initials came from in the first place), but it officially doesn't any more. There was some marketing drivel about "Beyond Petroleum", but basically it's meaningless.
However, if one wants to use the former name to note its origins, then it should be pointed out that the current "BP" was actually formed from the merger between BP and Amoco in the late 1990s and was originally known as "BP Amoco" before the name was shortened. So perhaps those insisting on the "British
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You're right, it was originally the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
"[T]he British Petroleum brand was originally created by a German firm as a way of marketing its products in Britain. During the war, the British government seized the company’s assets, and the Public Trustee sold them to Anglo-Persian in 1917."
-- http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9014441&contentId=7027521 [bp.com]
Foolish news outlets, mislabling Anglo-Persian Oil as the obviously German "British Petroleum"
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and implying that it is somehow linked to the unAmerican-ness of the company that allowed such a terrible thing to happen.
I've never seen anyone imply that. Ever. Ya paranoid limey bugger...
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and implying that it is somehow linked to the unAmerican-ness of the company that allowed such a terrible thing to happen.
I've never seen anyone imply that. Ever. Ya paranoid limey bugger...
Actually, the president did some of that last year.
It was quite clear (between the lines) that if BP intended to continue to exists, it would be wise to replace the CEO with an American, which they did.
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Don't forget that they'll also forget about the other partner companies in the well, who are jointly and severally liable along with BP. But since that's likely to result in bankruptcies and lost jobs in the US South as the companies fold, it'll probably not be noticed.
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This would never have happened if we elected Ron Paul.
That's correct. Because time would have frozen solid in surprise if that did mange to occur.
Last sentence of TFA (Score:3)
When we get some information more solid than "we saw an oil sheen last week", we can start worrying.
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What about Charlie Sheens?
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...and it could be from a natural seep (Score:1)
All Natural (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All Natural (Score:5, Funny)
We're concerned because this, as you rightly note, first-grade organic product is being heavily contaminated by dihydrogen monoxide in the process. Such a waste, and think of the environment!
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Okay, you're being sarcastic, but it's all true. Also true is the fact that natural [wikipedia.org] petroleum [sciencedaily.com] seeps [wikipedia.org] have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico for almost as long as there has been a Gulf of Mexico, and bacteria specialized for metabolizing petroleum are ubiquitous there, and sometimes flourish at the sites where the petroleum is released, making a kind of underwater oasis [wikipedia.org] in the deep sea.
If it's flowing out at spectacular rates comparable to the previous blowout, then it's a problem. If it's leaking out at some
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If it's visible as a slick on the surface, it's probably flowing out much faster than the natural rate. There's a hell of a big range between "natural seepage" and "as fast as one of the biggest well blowouts in history."
Article already out-of-date (Score:5, Informative)
About 15 minutes ago NPR reported that robots were sent down there and they found no leaking. The next best guess is that the oil is coming from the shipwreck of the drilling rig, which is one of the theories mentioned in the article.
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You're saying the article is out of date because NPR reported something contained in that very article a day after it was published? PLEASE MOD INSIGHTFUL
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I guess it depends on how you read the article. I read it to imply that the oil came directly from the well itself, as though the well was leaking. The NPR report sounded like it was trying to assure people that there is no need to panic, the well is still closed. Perhaps I saw this article with that same slant.
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From TFA: "Late Thursday night, BP officials sent word that an ROV survey of the well found no leaks." That might have been added in the update that postdates the publish date.
For all they know, there is something faulty that regularly spurts ten barrels every time they're not looking. The article mentions several explanations. The kernel of the story is that it is the same oil from BP's well, and not some other source.
Sorry for being snarky. I admit that was rude.
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You should tell the folks at the top of the comment tree who are super sure that anyone doubting the writer's guesses are shills and apologists.
Re:Slashdot post tech news anymore? (Score:4, Funny)
Strange trend in recent postings, is this still news for nerds?
I'm sure somebody in the Gulf of Mexico is running Linux.
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Mostly, but it's also "stuff that matters". I'd have to argue that an oil leak in the Gulf, however thin, falls under that category.
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not really, how much of that shit is on the ocean floor, what if a part of it gets stirred up. no freakin mystery scooby doo.
Am shock totally shock! (Score:2)
Thousands of oil seeps, millions of barrels/year (Score:2)
There are literally thousands of oil seeps across the bottom of the Gulf. Those seeps release (as a conservative estimate) "Two Exxon-Valdez of oil every year [nasa.gov]". That would be as much as 1.5 million barrels, then.
Using a technique they developed in the early 1990s to help explore for oil in the deep ocean, Earth Satellite Corporation scientists found that there are over 600 different areas where oil oozes from rocks underlying the Gulf of Mexico. The oil bubbles up from a cracks in ocean bottom sediments and spreads out with the wind to an to an area covering about 4 square miles. "On water, oil has this wonderful property of spreading out really thin," said Mitchell. "A gallon of oil can spread over a square mile very quickly." ...
It's quote possible that there is an oil seep within a small distance of the BP well, that happens to be seeping the same oil. Not saying there is, but it hasn't been ruled out.
Plausible other sources (Score:4, Interesting)
I can think of at least one plausible (and very unwelcome) scenario that could have Macondo reservoir oil coming up to the surface, but not from the original well. Actually, now I can think of three ways.
There could be a leak from one of the two relief wells. Which would be unwelcome in the extreme, but at least they're known quantities, and re-entering a well in good condition for an "intervention" is a pretty routine operation. That's the nice option that has Macondo oil coming to surface but not from the MC252 well.
Alternatively, with all the high-pressure operations happening on the MC252 well and on the relief wells, then it's possible to have fractured the cap rock over the HPHT (high pressure high temperature) reservoir, allowing oil and gas to start to migrate up to the surface, in exactly the same way that natural oil seeps occur all over the Gulf (and other oil provinces). That could be the start of a long-drawn out process of draining the reservoir to surface. Which shouldn't take more than a few centuries.
Actually, there is a third plausible option : searching for naturally occurring oil seeps is a well-established technique for exploration. I've had several satellite imagery companies trying to convince me of the value of their imagery and analysis tools for finding precisely this sort of oil seep, as a guide to where to put your seismic boats, then your seabed samplers, then your drilling rigs, then your production platforms. I don't know if BP/Andarko used seep-tracking in their prospecting in this area, but it's certainly possible. In which case, this may just be a "normal" seep that is being noticed because of the intense scrutiny of the area.
Anyway, with those several possibilities, the chemist is being correctly cautious about attributing the origin of the oil. He can be confident that the oil has the same characteristics as the ones that he's measured from the main flow, and that suggests but does not prove the point of origin, or the reason for the oil coming to the surface.
Oil from the rig?
It's not impossible that there was enough crude in storage on the Deepwater Horizon for it to have started seeping now. But it's fairly unlikely. By the stage they'd got to in the well, they should have finished testing the well, and the testing equipment spread would have been being stripped down for return to shore (and taken OFF RENTAL, as the encouragement to get it done NOW). You don't ship separators, chicksans, production chokes etc full of anything other than thin air, let alone full of flammables. So there is unlikely to have been more than a few gallons of Macondo crude onboard. Plenty of diesel, lube oils, gas bottles for the galley or the welder, certainly helicopter fuel ... but Macondo crude itself is unlikely to have been present in more than sample quantities. And all of those hydrocarbons have very different chemical signatures, so should be easily distinguished.
Cover up again.... (Score:2)
Obama, please read this message, the US economy is in dire need of major money...right?
If BP oil is found at the root of this spill/leak again, hit them harder this time, like say 100 billion dollars....and take it from them, dont tell them they need to pay it off, I know they have it in all the oil stocks and what not...so just take it, as you already took the oil in the middle east(had no problems doing it then).
Do not leave them a choice....so now you have 100 billion more, cool....
Then say they have to