Methane in Gulf 'astonishingly high'-US scientist

As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.

Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler, just back from a 10-day research expedition near the BP Plc (BP.L) oil spill in the gulf, says methane gas levels in some areas are "astonishingly high."

Kessler's crew took measurements of both surface and deep water within a 5-mile (8 kilometer) radius of BP's broken wellhead.

"There is an incredible amount of methane in there," Kessler told reporters in a telephone briefing.

In some areas, the crew of 12 scientists found concentrations that were 100,000 times higher than normal.

"We saw them approach a million times above background concentrations" in some areas, Kessler said.

The scientists were looking for signs that the methane gas had depleted levels of oxygen dissolved in the water needed to sustain marine life.

"At some locations, we saw depletions of up to 30 percent of oxygen based on its natural concentration in the waters. At other places, we saw no depletion of oxygen in the waters. We need to determine why that is," he told the briefing.

Methane occurs naturally in sea water, but high concentrations can encourage the growth of microbes that gobble up oxygen needed by marine life.

Kessler said oxygen depletions have not reached a critical level yet, but the oil is still spilling into the Gulf, now at a rate of as much as 60,000 barrels a day, according to U.S. government estimates.

"What is it going to look like two months down the road, six months down the road, two years down the road?" he asked.

Methane, a natural gas, dissolves in seawater and some scientists think measuring methane could give a more accurate picture of the extent of the oil spill.

Kessler said his team has taken those measurements, and is hoping to have an estimate soon.

"Give us about a week and we should have some preliminary numbers on that," he said.

from Reuters

Dispersal of Oil Means Cleanup to Take Years, Official Says

Although the Coast Guard had trained for the possibility of cleaning up a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it had never anticipated that oil would spread across such a broad area and break up into hundreds of thousands of patches as the current spill has done, the commander heading the federal response to the spill said Monday.

“It’s the breadth and complexity of the disaggregation of the oil” that is now posing the greatest clean-up challenge, the commander, Adm. Thad W. Allen, said at a news conference at the White House.

He underscored the challenge by acknowledging, in response to a reporter’s question, that it would take years to mitigate the impact of the spill on the marshes, beaches and wildlife on the Gulf Coast. On Sunday, the admiral had said it could take well into autumn to deal with the slick that is spreading relentlessly across four states of the gulf.

“This is a long campaign, and we’re going to be dealing with this for the foreseeable future,” he said.

The assessment was among Admiral Allen’s gloomier reports on the spill that began 47 days ago. But he also reported some signs of progress.

The amount of oil being collected as a result of a containment cap placed on the ruptured well last week has increased, he said, and is now up to 11,000 barrels a day. Federal studies have put the amount of oil spewing out of the stricken well at an estimated 12,000 barrels to 25,000 barrels, but BP had to cut a riser pipe on the stricken well last week to accommodate the capping device, which administration officials have said could have increased the flow rate by as much as 20 percent.

more from the NY Times

Plumes of Oil Below Surface Raise New Concerns

The government and university researchers confirmed Tuesday that plumes of dispersed oil were spreading far below the ocean surface from the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, raising fresh concern about the potential impact of the spill on sea life.

The tests, the first detailed chemical analyses of water from the deep sea, show that some of the most toxic components of the oil are not necessarily rising to the surface where they can evaporate, as would be expected in a shallow oil leak. Instead, they are drifting through deep water in plumes or layers that stretch as far as 50 miles from the leaking well.

As a rule, the toxic compounds are present at exceedingly low concentrations, the tests found, as would be expected given that they are being diluted in an immense volume of seawater.

“It’s pretty clear that the oil that has been released is becoming more and more dilute,” Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in an interview. “That does not mean it’s unimportant — far from it. The total amount of oil out there is likely very large, and we have yet to understand the full impact of all that hydrocarbon on the gulf ecosystem.”

BP’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, continued to insist Wednesday morning on the “Today” show on NBC that no underwater oil plumes in “large concentrations” have been detected from the spill, saying that it “may be down to how you define what a plume is here.”

But scientists outside the government noted that the plumes appeared to be so large that organisms might be bathed in them for extended periods, possibly long enough to kill eggs or embryos. They said this possibility added greater urgency to the effort to figure out exactly how sea life was being affected, work that remains in its infancy six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded.

“I’m glad to see the levels are low,” said Carys L. Mitchelmore, an aquatic toxicologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the research. “But we’re talking about a huge Gulf of Mexico here. I want to see evidence that this is one of the main plumes and there’s not something way more concentrated somewhere else.”

more from the NY Times

Oil seeps deep into marshes

Five miles into the Louisiana marshes, a team of scientists from Tulane University motors along on a flat-bottomed aluminum jon boat.

Here, deep into the marshes and well past the oil-soaking booms where few independent scientists have ventured, the team has made a disheartening discovery: oil.

Dr. Michael Blum, a coastal marsh ecologist, said he had received reports from fishermen that oil had penetrated up to 17 miles into the marshes.

His team hoped to travel that full distance and would have but for an engine failure on the second jon boat with more scientists. (Jon boats are usually used for shallow water fishing, not searching for oil).

It was only after towing the second boat back to the dock that the team was able to make its way past the barrier islands into the marshlands.

Blum noted that oil in the Gulf is not unusual. “Oil leaks naturally in the Gulf every year. Tens of thousands of gallons and the marshes can handle that.”

And studies done at Nicholls State University reveal the marshes can survive small oil spills.

“I want to give people hope that the marshes can recover,” said Dr. Kerry St. Pé, a professor who has conducted those studies.

But both St. Pé and Blum noted this situation is different. “We’re talking about millions of gallons of oil,” Blum said.

more from MSNBC

Despite Denial from BP, Evidence Grows of Undersea Oil Plumes

Three groups of researchers are now reporting evidence of large plumes of oil far below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. This growing proof that an unknown quantity of oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon rig is now accumulating in deeper waters of the gulf comes after BP chief executive Tony Hayward said his company found “no evidence” of such plumes. Hayward also maintained that oil is lighter than water and thus will float to the top of the gulf. But research teams from the University of Georgia, the University of South Florida, and Louisiana State University have all reported finding evidence of massive plumes of dispersed oil droplets beneath the surface of the gulf. The plumes have been found stretching west or southwest of the gushing oil well, as well as northeast of the well, toward Mobile Bay. Some of the evidence comes from water samples, while other indications of oil comes in the form of readings from instruments showing extremely high levels of so-called colored dissolved organic matter, which likely indicates oil. Earlier tests in Norway showed that some oil gushing from deep wells — the Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling a mile beneath the surface of the gulf — has a tendency to remain deeper in the water column.

from Yale 360

Warm Ocean Temperatures At Start of 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season

This color-coded satellite image shows high sea surface temperatures — above 28 degrees Celsius (82 Fahrenheit) — are prevalent across the equatorial and tropical Atlantic Ocean as the 2010 hurricane season gets underway. Such warm temperatures, recorded by Japan’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite, are a major reason why the U.S. government has forecast an “active to extremely active” Atlantic hurricane season this year. Hurricanes tend to form when sea surface temperatures rise above 28 Celsius, as indicated by the yellow and orange colors on the map. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week projected a 70 percent probability this year for 14 to 23 named tropical storms, 8 to 14 hurricanes, and 3 to 7 major hurricanes. This year’s high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic were recorded amid growing indications that global ocean temperatures are rising as the world warms. NOAA reported that last summer’s mean ocean surface temperatures were 62.5 degrees F, the warmest since records began being kept in 1880 and 1 degree F above the 20th century average. A study released last month reported that “significant warming” had occurred in the upper layer of the world’s oceans since 1993.

From Yale 360

Under Pressure to Block Oil, A Rush To Dubious Projects

Oil continues to gush from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, with the U.S. Geological Survey estimating that as many as 28 million gallons of oil have been released into the Gulf, compared to 11 million gallons from the Exxon Valdez spill. BP may not be able to stop the flow until August when the drilling of a relief well is completed. Oil is already hitting the beaches and wetlands of Louisiana and is rapidly approaching Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle. The environmental and economic impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cannot be overstated: This may become one of the greatest ecological catastrophes in history.

Given the enormity of this environmental disaster, it is understandable that there is tremendous political and societal pressure to stop the flow and clean up the mess. However, in their rush to react to growing public pressure and do something, federal and state officials are waiving scientific review of emergency measures and embracing dubious solutions. Nowhere is this more evident than in the proposal to begin building a long sand berm to prevent oil from reaching wetlands and beaches in Louisiana. The White House has announced that this project is now moving forward, despite serious concerns among coastal scientists, including myself, that it will not be effective in keeping oil from the coast, could do more environmental harm than good, and would be extremely expensive.

Under pressure from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other state and local officials, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued an emergency permit on May 27 authorizing the state of Louisiana to construct 45 miles of artificial berm — 300 feet wide at its base and rising six feet out of the gulf — in an attempt to protect delta wetlands and barrier islands from the encroaching oil. The state had initially requested permission to build close to 128 miles of barrier, and the Corps of Engineers permit indicates the additional sections may be allowed as the permitted sections are evaluated. Jindal’s argument for building the sand berm, just off existing barrier islands, is simple: It’s better to clean oil off of man-made sand berms than in Louisiana’s wetlands, which teem with fish and wildlife.

While mitigating the environmental damage of this spill is critical, it must be done in a way that wisely utilizes the resources at hand, effectively deals with the problem (e.g., keeping oil out of wetlands), and doesn’t do more harm than good. But the emergency projects currently being proposed by various entities and permitted by the Corps of Engineers — including a plan to build a seawall in front of Dauphin Island, Alabama — have not had sufficient review and design to guarantee that any of the above goals will be met. Indeed, since the Louisiana berm will not be continuous, there is a strong likelihood that oil will flow in through the gaps, then possibly become trapped in wetlands.

more from Yale 360