http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-whoi-microbes-consumed-oil-gulf.html

This study reveals the powerful effect of microbes on oil spills; they represent a viable alternative to the dangerous widespread application of dispersants. DV

August 1st, 2011 in Space & Earth / Environment

More than a year after the largest oil spill in history, perhaps the dominant lingering question about the Deepwater Horizon spill is, “What happened to the oil?” Now, in the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers have come up with answers that represent both surprisingly good news and a head-scratching mystery.

In research scheduled to be published in the Aug. 2 online edition of Environmental Research Letters, the WHOI team studied samples from the surface oil slick and surrounding Gulf waters. They found that bacterial microbes inside the slick degraded the oil at a rate five times faster than microbes outside the slick—accounting in large part for the disappearance of the slick some three weeks after Deepwater Horizon’s Macondo well was shut off.

At the same time, the researchers observed no increase in the number of microbes inside the slick—something that would be expected as a byproduct of increased consumption, or respiration, of the oil. In this process, respiration combines food (oil in this case) and oxygen to create carbon dioxide and energy.

“What did they do with the energy they gained from this increased respiration?” asked WHOI chemist Benjamin Van Mooy, senior author of the study. “They didn’t use it to multiply. It’s a real mystery,” he said.

Van Mooy and his team were nearly equally taken aback by the ability of the microbes to chow down on the oil in the first place. Going into the study, he said, “We thought microbe respiration was going to be minimal.” This was because nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus—usually essential to enable microbes to grow and make new cells—were scarce in the water and oil in the slick. “We thought the microbes would not be able to respond,” Van Mooy said.

But the WHOI researchers found, to the contrary, that the bacteria not only responded, but did so at a very high rate. They discovered this by using a special sensor called an oxygen optode to track the changing oxygen levels in water samples taken from the slick. If the microbes were respiring slowly, then oxygen levels would decrease slowly; if they respired quickly, the oxygen would decrease quickly.

“We found that the answer was ‘quick,'” Van Mooy said. “By a lot.”

Bethanie Edwards, a biochemist in Van Mooy’s lab and lead author of the paper, said she too was “very surprised” by the amount of oil consumption by the microbes. “It’s not what we expected to see.” She added that she was also “a little afraid” that oil companies and others might use the results to try to convince the public that spills can do relatively little harm. “They could say, ‘Look, we can put oil into the environment and the microbes will eat it,'” she said.

Edwards, a graduate student in the joint MIT/WHOI program, pointed out that this is not completely the case, because oil is composed of a complex mixture molecules, some of which the microbes are unable to break down.

“Oil is still detrimental to the environment, ” she said, “because the molecules that are not accessible to microbes persist and could have toxic effects.” These are the kinds of molecules that can get into the food web of both offshore and shoreline environments, Edwards and Van Mooy said. In addition, Edwards added, the oil that is consumed by microbes “is being converted to carbon dioxide that still gets into the atmosphere.”

Follow-up studies already “are in place,” Van Mooy says, to address the “mysterious” finding that the oil-gorging microbes do not appear to manufacture new cells. If the microbes were eating the oil at such a high rate, what did they do with the energy? Van Mooy, Edwards, and their colleagues hypothesize that they may convert the energy to some other molecule, like sugars or fats. They plan to use “state-of-the-art methods” under development in their laboratory to look for bacterial fat molecules, a focus of Van Mooy’s previous work. The results, he says, “could show where the energy went.”

Van Mooy said he isn’t sure exactly what fraction of the oil loss in the spill is due to microbial consumption; other processes, including evaporation, dilution, and dispersion, might have contributed to the loss of the oil slick. But the five-fold increase in the microbe respiration rate suggests it contributed significantly to the oil breakdown. “Extrapolating our observations to the entire area of the oil slick supports the assertion microbes had the potential to degrade a large fraction of the oil as it arrived at the surface from the well,” the researchers say in their paper.

“This is the first published study to put numbers on the role of microbes in the degradation of the oil slick,” said Van Mooy. “Our study shows that the dynamic microbial community of the Gulf of Mexico supported remarkable rates of oil respiration, despite a dearth of dissolved nutrients,” the researchers said.

Edwards added that the results suggest “that microbes had the metabolic potential to break down a large portion of hydrocarbons and keep up with the flow rate from the wellhead.”
Provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-08/01/content_13019025.htm

China Daily

Deadline for oil leak clean up
Updated: 2011-08-01 07:05
By Wang Qian (China Daily)

A man moves a stack of dead scallops on July 26 in Laoting county, Hebei province. The province’s fisheries have suffered as a result of the oil leaks in Bohai Bay. [Photo/ China Daily]

BEIJING – Oil leaks continue at two platforms operated by ConocoPhillips in Bohai Bay, more than two weeks after authorities ordered them to shut down, China’s ocean watchdog said on Friday.

The State Oceanic Administration has ordered the company to stop the leaks, contain the oil spills, clean up polluted areas and conduct a thorough investigation to eliminate the possibility of further oil spills before Aug 31.

Several oil belts were detected by the administration on July 27 in a 4.6-square-kilometer area to the east of the Penglai 19-3 oilfield, and the administration’s surveillance has determined that Platform C is still leaking about 2.52 liters of oil a day and that there are more oil slicks near Platform B.

ConocoPhillips reportedly admitted that “small and intermittent spills” are still being detected at Platform B and said it will make efforts to clean up the spills before the deadline, Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.

The administration also ordered ConocoPhillips to provide a report by an independent evaluation authority once the leaks have been stopped and the spills contained.

Pollutants from the oil spill have been found on beaches in North China’s Hebei province, and fisheries there are complaining that the disaster has caused the death of a large number of scallops.

“According to our statistics, about 70 percent of the scallops have died due to the oil leak, with economic losses reaching at least 200 million yuan ($30 million),” Yang Jizhen, chairman of the Laoting Fisheries Association, told China Daily.

About 30 boxes of dead scallops have been collected and stored as evidence since July 17, Yang said.

Around 160 households in Laoting county in the province rely on fisheries and related work for their livelihoods and they are planning to file a lawsuit against ConocoPhillips, the operator of the Penglai oilfield and its partner, China National Offshore Oil Corp, he added.

Qi Yuxiang, deputy director of the Laoting aquatic product bureau said they are checking every household to calculate the losses, but he is more worried about the potential long-term effects on exports. Aquatic products in Laoting are exported to Japan and the Republic of Korea.

According to statistics released by the administration on July 12, 4,240 sq km of coastal waters have been contaminated by the leak.

The administration ordered Houston-based ConocoPhillips to shut down production at the two platforms on July 13 because of the company’s inability to contain the oil leaks at platforms B and C.

The company has estimated that about 1,500 to 2,000 barrels of oil and oil-based drilling fluids have been released into the sea.

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http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-07/29/content_13014733.htm

China Daily

Sun, July 31, 2011

Oil still leaking at 2 platforms on NE China sea
Updated: 2011-07-29 20:09
(Xinhua)

QINGDAO – Oil continues to leak at ConocoPhillips’s two platforms in northeast Bohai Bay more than two weeks after Chinese authorities ordered a shutdown of their output, said China’s oceanic watchdog on Friday.

Remote satellite sensing and a survey made by a patrol boat of the sea area on Wednesday and Thursday, both conducted by the China State Oceanic Administration (SOA), identified several oil belts in an area of 4.6 square kilometers to the east of the Penglai 19-3 oilfield, though ConocoPhilips’s oil-cleaning efforts continue.

The surveillance has determined that the oilfield’s platform C is leaking at a speed of about 2.52 liters per day and found oil belts near platform B despite the company’s cleaning efforts, said Lin Fangzhong, an official with SOA North China Sea Branch, on Friday.

The density of oil pollutants per liter of sea water sampled in the area reached a maximum of 118 micrograms, far exceeding the limit of 50 micrograms per liter set for the country’s the second-class sea water quality, which is applicable to aquiculture areas and direct sea water contact for the human body, he said.

Before the oil leak, the sea water quality in the area had reached the country’s level one standard.

The oilfield is jointly operated by ConocoPhillips China (COPC), a subsidiary of US energy giant ConocoPhillips, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the country’s largest offshore oil producer.

The SOA North China Sea branch has ordered COPC to contain the oil spills, clean up polluted areas and conduct a thorough investigation to eliminate further risks of spills and leaks before August 31.

COPC first reported the two oil spills to authorities in early and mid-June, when an area of 840 square kilometers was polluted.

Pollutants from the oil spill have been found spreading to beaches in northern Hebei Province and northeastern Liaoning Province, which have been blamed for losses in local tourism revenue and aquatic farming industry.

Another oil spill incident reported on July 12 occurred at the Suizhong 36-1 oilfield’s central platform, which is also operated by CNOOC. It marked the third spill in two months in Bohai Bay.

________________________________

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-07/26/content_12987632.htm

China Daily
Oil spill suspected in massive death of shells
Updated: 2011-07-26 17:09
(Xinhua)

LAOTING, Hebei – Chinese fishermen in northern Hebei province believe oil particles from a huge spill off the east coast caused a massive death of scallop that they cultivated this season.

More than 160 groups of scallop-raising fishermen have reported to the agricultural bureau in Laoting county that more than half of the scallop cultivated in a shore area of 23 hectares died after greasy oil particles were found along a 25-km beach.

Fishermen said the contamination came from oil spills at the Penglai 19-3 oil field jointly operated by the Houston-based ConocoPhillips’ China subsidiary and its Chinese partner China National Offshore Oil Corp(CNOOC).

China’s oceanic authorities ordered the field to halt production on July 13, and revealed the spills had occurred as early as the first half of June.

The State Oceanic Administration concluded this week that oil particles from the spills in Bohai Bay have been found spreading to beaches in Jingtang Port of Hebei and Dongdaihe Bathing Beach in the county of Suizhong in northeastern Liaoning province.
The beach in Laoting is only five sea miles away from Jingtang Port.

“Some fishermen plan to hire lawyers to sue CNOOC and ConocoPhillips for the contamination-triggered aquatic losses,” said Yang Jizhen, head of the Loating Aquaculture Association, adding the losses from scallop death are estimated at 350 million yuan ($54 million).

But he admitted that it was difficult for the fishermen to obtain validate documents showing the oil spill from the Penglai 19-3 field was the direct cause of the death.

“The quality of scallop is mainly determined by the quality of the sea water, and half of young shells I bred this year died and the rest aren’t good,” said Li Jiafeng, one of the fishermen.

He said there were no red tides or abnormal occurrences other than the oil spill that could be attributed to the massive death of the aquatics.

“Only after we found the oil particles on the beach did we think that the oil contamination may be the killer,” he said.

Yang said local fishermen suffered similar losses from an under-sea oil pipeline breach in 2006, and that it prevented the resumption of normal production of local aquatic farming for over two years.

He said fishermen had expected revenue of 340 million yuan from the scallop-farming investment of 170 million yuan this year. However, the ocean contamination could vanish their hopes.

Several government departments in Laoting, including the marine affairs bureau and the environment protection bureau are investigating the oil contamination situation.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

(07/28/2011)

Gabriel Nelson, E&E reporter
A package of air quality standards proposed today by U.S. EPA would require the oil and gas industry to cut its emissions to protect people from smog, cancer-causing chemicals and climate change — and would also save drillers millions of dollars per year, the agency said.

The four rules, which would need to be finalized by the end of February 2012 under a settlement with environmentalists, include new limits on both volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and toxic emissions. EPA says the standards would cut smog-forming VOCs across the industry by 25 percent and toxics by about 30 percent, and as a side benefit, would cut methane — a potent greenhouse gas — by about 26 percent.

At a time when the Obama administration is taking fire from business groups that claim its environmental rules are too costly, the new standards were touted as saving money for the oil industry by forcing companies to do more to keep natural gas from escaping into the air.

The rules would cost businesses an estimated $754 million in 2015, but the natural gas and condensate that would be captured by new pollution controls could be sold for $783 million, the agency’s analysis shows.

Money spent on upgrades would be recovered within at most a year, EPA says, and because methane is more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet, the new equipment would also provide climate change benefits worth an estimated $1.6 billion per year.

“This administration has been clear that natural gas is a key component of our clean energy future, and the steps announced today will help ensure responsible production of this domestic energy source,” EPA air chief Gina McCarthy said in a statement today. “Reducing these emissions will help cut toxic pollution that can increase cancer risks and smog that can cause asthma attacks and premature death — all while giving these operators additional product to bring to market.”

The rules would apply to about 1.1 million wells that are already producing oil and gas, as well as 500,000 existing gas wells and the 11,400 new gas wells being drilled each year. They also apply to 600 natural gas processing plants, 3,000 compressor stations and 1.5 million miles of pipelines.

A representative of the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group for the oil and gas industry, said today that EPA should extend the comment period on the rules by at least six months to give companies time to digest them.

“API will review these proposed rules to ensure that they don’t inadvertently create unsafe operating conditions, are cost effective and truly provide additional public health benefits, and don’t stifle the development of our abundant natural resources,” Howard Feldman, the group’s director of scientific and regulatory policy, said in a statement.

Today’s proposal would include the first air quality rules for natural gas wells that use hydraulic fracturing, a practice that has recently unlocked vast reserves of gas in underground shale formations but has become highly controversial based on fears it could be causing water contamination. In places where shale gas wells are popping up by the thousands, neighbors have also raised concerns that they are being exposed to toxic emissions such as benzene.

And in some remote parts of the country, such as northeastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming, locals blame the boom in gas development for spikes in levels of ground-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog, that rival big cities in the summertime.

EPA has already set emissions standards for large gasoline- and diesel-powered engines that are used by oil and gas companies. But some of the smaller engines that are used to drill wells and power other operations are not included in either set of rules.

Today’s rule won’t reach their emissions of nitrogen oxides, which react with VOCs to form ozone. “That’s where there’s been relatively little progress made at the national level for several decades now,” said Ramon Alvarez, a Texas-based scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund. But environmental and public health groups were largely pleased today, especially by the plan to cut down on methane.

They say the techniques that EPA is proposing are already being used in the field. States such as Wyoming and Colorado have set stricter air pollution rules for natural gas wells, and some companies, hoping to plug natural gas leaks and save money, have started using the new techniques under a voluntary EPA program called Natural Gas STAR.

Special thanks to Richard Charter, as always.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/07/battle_lines_on_offshore_reven.html

Times-Picayune

Published: Wednesday, July 27, 2011, 2:25 PM Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 2011, 2:26 PM
By Jonathan Tilove, The Times-Picayune

WASHINGTON — The battle lines over offshore revenue sharing with states sharpened Wednesday, with the Republican chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee announcing plans to craft legislation to expand it, and the top Democrats on the panel filing legislation to repeal what they called “oil-well welfare” for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

“This program amounts to an oil-funded entitlement program for only a few states, a kind of oil well welfare that drains our U.S. Treasury and chooses the interests of a few over those of all Americans,” said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Markey was joined by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., the ranking member of the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, in filing legislation to repeal the provision in the 2006 law that provided for revenue sharing from offshore drilling in federal waters with the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas – beginning in a big way in 2017.

That provision in the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act was one of the crowning legislative achievements of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La, who last week tried, so far to no avail, to get the Senate Energy Committee to agree to move up the date when the Gulf states would start to receive significant revenue sharing dollars from 2017 to 2015.

Landrieu has portrayed revenue sharing as a matter of simple justice for states that bear the brunt of the environmental damage and other costs of hosting the offshore industry. Now come leading members of her party in the House casting revenue sharing as an irresponsible giveaway.

“Oil fields off of our national coasts do not belong to any one governor or state legislature and should not be used to pad any favored state’s budget,” Holt said.

But in testimony before the committee Wednesday, Garret Graves, who heads Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said that revenue sharing was a matter of providing states with offshore reserves “equal treatment” with states with onshore resources, also on federal land, and that the money is needed, and would, under the state Constitution, have to be dedicated, to restore and protect the coast.

Rep. Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia, drove home the point, noting that, “the state of Louisiana, sometimes in our past colorful history, has been known to waste money,” but asking Graves to confirm that these revenue sharing dollars would be strictly directed to coastal restoration.

“Yes sir,” said Graves.

And, Landry pressed on, wouldn’t it therefore be fair to say that “anyone voting against revenue sharing would basically be voting against the environment?”

Graves again responded affirmatively.

It was a day of some rhetorical turnaround on the sharply divided committee, with Republicans stressing the need to have these dollars to protect the environment, and Democrats acting to try to keep Louisiana and the other Gulf states from having this coastal restoration money at their disposal.

Likewise, it was fiscally conservative Republicans arguing for sharing money with states that otherwise could be used to help reduce the federal deficit.

“If House Republicans are serious about cutting the deficit and making up the difference in their floundering proposals, they can start by ending this unfair practice,” said Markey, citing Interior Department figures that indicate that revenue sharing will cost the federal Treasury — and profit the four Gulf states — to the tune of an estimated $150 billion over the next 60 years.

Republicans disputed those figures, noting there is a $500 million annual cap on revenue sharing, but Democrats noted that the cap is lifted as of 2055, and that, in addition to trying to speed implementation of revenue sharing, Landrieu and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, were seeking to lift the cap through 2019.

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., also made the argument that, rather than costing the federal Treasury money, “a revenue sharing proposal would help spur energy development in the Atlantic and other offshore areas, generating new revenues for the federal government.”

“It’s interesting to note that the firmest opponents of offshore revenue sharing are the same people who fundamentally oppose offshore drilling,” said Hastings. “This is quite a contorted argument to make — that revenue sharing unfairly gives away federal revenues, when if they had their way, we wouldn’t be collecting revenue from offshore drilling in the first place.”

In another sense, though it is a very straightforward argument – those who don’t want expanded drilling off the coast of other states, don’t want a financial incentive that might entice more states to allow drilling.

______________

The Associated Press
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, is pushing to repeal legislation that allows Louisiana and other Gulf states to share federal offshore oil and gas royaltie

Special thanks to Richard Charter.

From: John Larmett [mailto:Larmett.John@epamail.epa.gov]
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 08:40 AM

Dear Stakeholder:

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will issue what are referred to as New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for the oil and gas sector. Under a court order, EPA will propose rules that include the first national air standards for more than 25,000 new and existing natural gas wells that are hydraulically fractured, or re-fractured, and completed each year. They also add or strengthen requirements for storage tanks and other types of equipment.

Natural gas is an extremely clean-burning fuel that plays an important role in our nation’s clean energy future, but natural gas production cannot occur at the expense of public health and the environment. These standards rely on existing, cost-effective methods that allow operators to capture and sell natural gas that currently escapes into the air. Leveraging this technology will save tens of millions of dollars while cutting emissions of benzene and other air toxics, methane – a potent greenhouse gas, as well as volatile organic compounds.

We would like to invite you to participate in a briefing where you will have the opportunity to ask questions of senior EPA officials about NSPS and its benefits.

Please reserve this time on your calendar to join us.

Date: Thursday, July 28th
Time: 12:30 PM EDT
Call-in Number: (877) 290-8017
Conference Code ID #: 86760044

Office of Public Engagement
Office of External Affairs & Environmental Education
Office of the Administrator

Special thanks to Richard Charter