By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/college/usf-scientists-find-oil-spill-damage-to-critical-marine-life/1115706
OR
http://tinyurl.com/264bdhh

Far from being gone, the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster appears to still be causing ecological damage in the Gulf of Mexico, according to new findings from University of South Florida scientists.

And scientists from the University of Georgia said the amount of oil that remains in the water could be 70-79% of the more than 4 million barrels of oil that escaped into the gulf.

Both reports again raise questions about the Obama administration’s claim, made two weeks ago, that most of the oil spewed from BP’s well is either gone or widely dispersed.

USF marine scientists conducting experiments in an area where they previously found clouds of oil have now discovered what appears to be oil in the sediment of a vital underwater canyon and evidence that the oil has become toxic to critical marine organisms, the college reported Tuesday.

In preliminary results, the scientists aboard the Weatherbird II discovered that oil droplets are scattered on sediment in the DeSoto Canyon, a critical spawning ground for commercially important fish species about 40 miles southeast of Panama City.

The oil isn’t spread across the sandy bottom like a blanket, explained David Hollander. Instead, when the scientists shined ultraviolet light on the sediment samples, it picked up lots of dots from tiny oil droplets.

“They sparkled … like a constellation of stars,” Hollander said.

USF’s scientists also found that the oil droplets were toxic to some phytoplankton, microscopic plants that form the base of the gulf’s food chain, as well as some bacteria. The oil doesn’t accumulate within the plankton, but rather kills it.

If the droplets wipe out enough phytoplankton, it could alter the food supply for larger creatures such as fish and crabs in the same way a cattle pasture that loses all its grass alters the food supply for steak fans.

The discovery of oil droplets in DeSoto Canyon spells potential bad news for the areas of Florida’s Gulf Coast that escaped the tar balls and liquid oil that tainted the Panhandle, said USF oceanographer Robert Weisberg. That’s because right now cold water from the deeper part of the gulf is “upwelling” across the continental shelf and headed for coastal areas, Weisberg said.

“As water … makes its way across the shelf, those waters will eventually be at the beach along Florida’s west coast, here and at points farther south, along with whatever is in the water,” he explained.

BP vice president Ray Dempsey said the latest USF findings “are preliminary conclusions that require some further review. But we want the answers just as much as anyone else. Our aim is to restore the environment to the way it was.”

The findings come two weeks after President Barack Obama’s top energy adviser, Carol Browner, touted a new government report that she said showed that “more than three-quarters of the oil is gone. The vast majority of the oil is gone.”

The team from Georgia analyzed the federal report in its research.

“The idea that 75% of the oil is gone and of no concern for the environment is just absolutely incorrect,” said Charles Hopkinson, a director of Georgia Sea Grant and marine science professor at the University of Georgia, who co-wrote the report.

Two calculations explain the bulk of the difference. The Georgia report tossed out 800,000-plus barrels BP managed to pipe directly from the well after it had fitted a sealing cap on the gusher — 17% of the well’s estimated flow — arguing that oil had never actually “spilled” into the gulf.

More significantly, the report also dramatically reduced the amount of oil estimated to have evaporated, to 7-12% from the federal study’s 25%.

The federal government’s evaporation estimate was based on a standard accepted by industry experts and researchers for light sweet crude in the warm gulf. But Hopkinson argued that the percentage is invalid because much of the oil remains deep beneath the surface, trapped under dense temperature and salinity layers that would dramatically limit evaporation.

One of the institutions that first found those underwater plumes of oil was USF. The area in DeSoto Canyon that the Weatherbird II explored on a 10-day cruise this month was also one of the places where USF found plumes and conclusively linked them with Deepwater Horizon.

However, Hollander and his colleague John Paul, in speaking with reporters Tuesday, stopped short of pointing a finger at Deepwater Horizon as the source of the oil they had found in the canyon. Tests are still being run, they said.

Still, they said, the findings underline the persistent concerns that spraying chemical dispersants deep beneath the water’s surface may have created a greater peril for the gulf and its marine life.

Rather than rising to the top of the gulf, where the water is warm and deterioration and evaporation are rapid, the oil spread through colder waters where it has persisted.

At this point, no one knows how long it will take for the oil to deteriorate so it’s no longer toxic. However, Hollander said, recent studies have found indications that the rate is “orders of magnitude slower” in the colder, deeper parts of the gulf.

In hindsight, Hollander said, “there’s risks that were taken that could have been avoided” by not spraying the dispersants directly at the gushing wellhead.

The amazing thing, he said, is that the disaster has been going on since April “and we’re now addressing these first-order questions.”

Information from McClatchy Newspapers was used in this report.

Special thanks to Ashley Hotz and Richard Charter

August 18, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/08/18/18greenwire-murky-relationships-mark-scientific-efforts-to-31002.html

By LAURA PETERSEN of Greenwire

Lawmakers have criticized BP PLC for attempting to “muzzle” scientists researching the Gulf of Mexico oil spill with confidentiality agreements and blocking the “open exchange of scientific data and analysis.” But the government is employing similar tactics itself.

The government is hiring expert witnesses under confidentiality agreements as it builds a legal case documenting the oil spill’s environmental impact and determining how much BP and its partners should pay to restore the Gulf to pre-spill conditions, officials said.

And, while federal and state agencies are publicly sharing oil exposure data collected by BP-government scientist teams, they reserve the right to withhold information from studies the government and BP have not agreed on, said Tom Brosnan, an environmental scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“This is not standard scientific investigation,” Brosnan said. “This is a very pointed investigation into what has been injured, what has been lost and what is required to compensate the public.”

The Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Program is the public’s legal process for quantifying ecological harm caused by oil spills and develop a restoration plan that must be paid for by the responsible parties. The assessment is conducted by federal and state agencies with oversight of natural resources, including theInterior and Commerce departments — collectively referred to as “trustees.”

BP was blasted for retaining scientific expert witnesses for the NRDA process who are prohibited from releasing research findings for three years or until after a restoration plan had been approved. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) last month sent a letter to BP America asking the company to explain itself and provide copies of all scientist and third-party contracts (E&E Daily, July 30).

“The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is not a private matter,” the congressmen wrote on behalf of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “Mitigating the long term impact of the oil spill will require an open exchange of scientific data and analysis. Any effort to muzzle scientists or shield their findings under doctrines of legal privileges could seriously impede the recovery.”

But scientists are also being hired by the government as expert witnesses, which typically includes a confidentiality clause, Brosnan confirmed. The terms of the contract were not disclosed.

“It’s par for the course,” said Stan Senner, the director of conservation science at the Ocean Conservancy. “Anytime you have an event like this, everyone goes out and recruits experts.”

Senner helped manage environmental restoration for seven years after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. At the time, there was no formal process to assess ecological damage and implement restoration.

“The people recruited by industry for Exxon Valdez, their mission was not to find out what the harm was from the spill; their mission was to cast doubt on any conclusions drawn about harm from the spill,” Senner said.

The NRDA process was developed based on lessons learned from that disaster and implemented by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. To try to minimize disagreements about data, the government and the responsible parties are encouraged to work together to collect data.

In the wake of the BP oil spill that began when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, teams of federal, state and BP scientists began the “pre-assessment” process of documenting how much habitat had been polluted and how many fish, birds and other animals the oil had touched or killed.

While there may be disagreements later over how that data is interpreted, at least both sides can agree the numbers are accurate if they are both there when the counts are done, Brosnan said. NOAA is also posting the information gathered on its website so the public can stay informed.

However, findings from any studies the government and BP have not agreed to do together may not be released publicly until after the assessment is complete, Brosnan said. Much like a detective collecting evidence for a criminal case, the government does not want to reveal any smoking guns before the ideal moment in the courtroom.

The result of all this legal maneuvering is a broad clamping down of information until the case is resolved.

“In the end, the public is one of the losers — they simply won’t be well informed about what’s going on,” Senner said. “We want to push [the government] for maximum transparency, consistent with protecting public interest to get an appropriate claim.”

Scientists are also concerned the government is not collecting enough robust data needed for the NRDA.

“This is a huge environment; this makes Prince William Sound look like a duck pond in comparison,” Senner said. “It’s going to need more than the trustee agencies can do in the NRDA process, and that is going to require coordination.”

Many university and research institutions have launched independent studies of the Gulf oil spill. For example, the National Aquarium is teaming up with Johns Hopkins University and Mote Marine Laboratory to study Sarasota Bay, Fla., before it is potentially polluted. They deployed semipermeable membrane devices in June that will track any long-term accumulation of oil in the bay.

Proving oil caused harm is difficult, and it is essential to have baseline data to compare pre-spill to post-spill conditions, said Erik Rifkin, interim director of the National Aquarium. Rifkin suggested other researchers use similar methods to reduce uncertainty in conclusions about the oil spill’s effects.

“We need to make sure experiment design is consistent and coordinated and gets us the information we really need to assess the damage,” Rifkin said.

The National Science Foundation has handed out close to $7 million in rapid grants for researchers studying the oil spill so far. However, there is no widespread coordination throughout the research community to ensure resources are being used efficiently, methods are consistent or no gaps exist in research coverage.

“Our primary goal is to make sure opportunity to learn from disaster is not lost,” said NSF spokesman Josh Chamot.

The government will be open to using appropriate, high-quality information gleaned from independent studies, Brosnan said.

While research funded by NSF is accepted as independent, some are skeptical of the $500 million research fund that BP established. Many are skeptical of any research funded by BP — which ultimately includes the NRDA process, paid for by the responsible party.

Reps. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) sent a letter last month urging BP to turn over management of the fund to the National Academy of Sciences to ensure the research is impartial and rigorously reviewed. BP had not responded to the congresswomen by press time.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.truth-out.org/regulatory-agencies-attempts-sweep-oil-under-rug-raise-questions62436
Photo: Cody Simms / Flickr)

Wednesday 18 August 2010

by: Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch

(Washington, DC – A recent report by the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center (a collaboration between the federal government and BP) claiming that only 25 percent of spilled oil remains in the Gulf has been refuted by researchers with the Georgia Sea Grant and University of Georgia, who released a report yesterday concluding that in fact nearly 80 percent of the oil remains in the Gulf. The report confirms the fact that the federal government should have taken a more cautious and responsible approach to testing marine life before opening the Gulf for fishing.

The report affirms what many have thought: that the oil could not have realistically vanished like ‘sugar dissolves into water’ — a ludicrous statement the federal officials used to describe what happened to the millions of gallons spilled into the Gulf.

This independent analysis of the regulators’ claims raises some important questions about the Joint Information Center’s report. Is BP’s influence at play in presenting the findings in a more positive light? Was the report an attempt at crisis communications that simply backfired?

The FDA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are the two regulatory agencies charged with protecting consumer health after the spill. NOAA is one of the many federal agencies involved in BP’s Joint Information Center. Unfortunately, these agencies have been anything but forthcoming and transparent in notifying consumers and the Gulf fishing communities about safety concerns resulting from the spill.

Every day that the Gulf is closed to fishermen is a day BP must pay out additional claims to them. Is this why regulators opened the Gulf for commercial fishing, despite warnings from fishermen and documented cases of oil in marine life? Unfortunately, this hasty decision is currently jeopardizing not only consumers but the future reputation of the Gulf fishing industry.

Prematurely opening the Gulf is not the only incidence of poor decision making. Rather than employ careful microbiological testing of seafood, the federal agencies continue to predominantly use sniff tests to determine the presence of oil. And instead of immediately testing seafood for contamination by Corexit, the controversial dispersant banned in Europe but used widely in the Gulf by BP, they feed the media a vague date for future testing.

At this point, it appears that FDA and NOAA oversight is as lacking as the Minerals Management Service’s ’oversight’ that led to the initial Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

Ultimately, it is this regulatory negligence that would be responsible for any widespread consumer illness resulting from the unprecedented effects of oil and dispersant on the Gulf and its marine life – effects that would go undetected due to poor testing regimes.

In order to restore the public’s trust, NOAA and the FDA must perform more comprehensive and timely tests and present us with reliable and unbiased findings rather than continue in their attempt to sweep millions of barrels of oil and controversial dispersants under the proverbial rug. The Gulf should not have been opened for fishing until this occurred.

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

August 18, 2010

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100818-711960.html

By Siobhan Hughes
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)–An oceanographer will tell Congress on Thursday that the Obama administration was “misleading” when it claimed that about three-quarters of the oil that gushed from a broken BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) well in the Gulf of Mexico had been broken down or cleaned up.

Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University, will tell a U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that only 10% of oil discharged into the ocean was “actually removed from the ocean.” In a report released earlier this month and touted by the White House, the government emphasized different numbers, saying that 17% of the oil released by the well had been collected without ever reaching the ocean and about half had dissolved or been dispersed.

The government’s report “gives the impression that the clean-up efforts were more effective than they actually were,” MacDonald will tell the subcommittee on energy and environment. He will say that the report “mixes very different categories together,” such as oil that can harm the environment in the future and oil that “posed no such threat” once it was pumped into tankers. The prepared testimony was reviewed by Dow Jones Newswires.

On Wednesday, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco defended the government’s estimates, saying that “we stand by the calculations that we released recently.” She said that the government was “going forward” with “additional monitoring” and would change its estimates if “new information should come to the fore.”

Earlier this month, a team led by the U.S. Interior Department and NOAA said that of 4.9 million barrels released by the well, just over one fourth was a “residual amount” that was either on or just below the surface as a light sheen and weathered tar balls or had washed ashore.

“We really cannot check whether this number should actually be 36% of 19%,” MacDonald will say. He will say that the report does not provide any citations or formulas that would allow “an independent reviewer to determine where these numbers actually come from.”

MacDonald will also challenge the government’s statement that the oil released into the ocean is biodegrading quickly.

“Science simply does not know how quickly or slowly oil will degrade either in surface waters of in the deep waters of the Gulf,” MacDonald will say. He will say that preliminary evidence suggests “a slow rate of degradation.” That contradicts the government’s statement earlier this month that “oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill is biodegrading quickly.”

MacDonald will also say that oil that has resisted dispersion and evaporation “will be very persistent” and “remain potentially harmful for decades.”

MacDonald will say that the gas released by the spill “should not be ignored.” He will say that fish exposed to concentrated methane “have exhibited mortality and neurological damage.”

He will also say that he is concerned about the ability of the Gulf of Mexico to withstand the shock of the oil spill.

“My greatest concern is that portions of the ecosystem may experience “tipping point” effects that overwhelm resiliency,” MacDonald will say. While “we can hope” that the spill’s distance from shore and its depth “will mitigate the impact,” scientists “have to watch with utmost scrutiny.”

MacDonald also will say that the Gulf of Mexico must be “first in line” for payments made by BP to compensate for damage from the spill. That could set off a conflict with residents of the Gulf region, who are also seeking compensation for the damage to their livelihoods.

“Much as I sympathize with the economic hardship caused by the BP discharge and desire that restitution be paid, a big part–the biggest part–of our response must put the Gulf herself first in line for repayment,” he will say.

-By Siobhan Hughes, Dow Jones Newswires; (202) 862-6654; siobhan.hughes@dowjones.com

Special thanks to Richard Charter

NOLA.Com
August 18, 2010

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/scientists_wary_of_us_report_t.html

Published: Tuesday, August 17, 2010, 9:15 PM
Updated: Tuesday, August 17, 2010, 9:25 PM
The Times-Picayune
By Aimee Miles, staff writer

Some scientists are voicing doubts about the accuracy of an Aug. 4 intergovernmental agency report
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/posted/2931/Oil_Budget_description_8_3_FINAL.844091.pdf
asserting that just 26 percent of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil released from BP’s ruptured wellhead
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/scientists_wary_of_us_report_t.html
remains to be dealt with onshore and at sea.
The highly publicized report,
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/local_officials_environmentali.html
trumpeted on the Aug. 4 front page of the New York Times and unveiled later that day by NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco in a White House ceremony attended by Deepwater Horizon incident commander Thad Allen and White House energy adviser Carol Browner, was hailed as a sign of remarkable progress in the Gulf, and led many to question the severity of the spill altogether.

But the report hasn’t marinated well during the past two weeks, attracting increasing criticism from scientists for its dubious conclusiveness and lack of substantiation.

Written by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/dwh.php?entry_id=809
in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey,
http://www.usgs.gov/
the five-page report includes a pie chart that describes the fate of the oil, broken into seven categories. According to the chart, roughly one-third of the oil that gushed from the wellhead is definitely gone: recovered directly or eliminated by burning, skimming, or chemical dispersion operations.

While that represents roughly 19 percent of the oil removed from the water by response teams, the report reads as if natural processes have eliminated more than twice that amount through evaporation, dissolution or natural dispersion.

Some scientists suspect the figure for oil remaining in the water is much higher than the report’s estimates, and complain that federal officials have refused to reveal the algorithms used to derive the calculations that relied on measurements and estimates provided by Gulf response teams in daily operational reports.

The dearth of supporting data has led to grumbling from environmental scientists, who say they’ll reserve judgment until they can verify the math.

Accusations of obfuscation

A congressional investigator, who asked not to be named, said his repeated requests to NOAA for specific formulas and calculations have gone unmet. The level of obfuscation surrounding the origins of the figures, he said, would never be accepted if the report were presented for publication in an academic journal.

Kerry St. Pe, director of the Barataria Terrebone National Estuary Program, has no confidence in the figures, despite their being reported “as gospel.” Federal scientists can’t determine exactly how much oil has even entered the Gulf, let alone calculate with accuracy what has happened to it since, St. Pe said.

A group of scientists under the Georgia Sea Grant program, part of a NOAA-sponsored university network of ocean and coastal researchers, released an alternative report
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/georgia_scientists_say_80_perc.html
on Tuesday that addresses what they see as faulty conclusions in the federal report.

Their report claims that most of the oil that leaked into the Gulf is still present. They concede that much of it is dissolved or in the form of dispersed micro-droplets, but caution that oil in that state isn’t harmless. According to the Georgia report, between 70 percent and 79 percent of the oil remains in the ecosystem.

Other scientists are also dubious of the specifics in the NOAA report.

“Some members of the scientific community are putting more credibility into what these figures mean than what was meant,” St. Pe said. “They’re just estimates … to give the public a general idea of the fate of the oil and not with any precision.”

‘A ballpark number’

Ed Overton, an LSU environmental scientist who specializes in the chemistry of oil spills, estimates the margin of error in the federal report could be as high as 30 percent. The amount of oil that remains, he said, could be anywhere between a quarter and one-half of the spill’s total volume — a volume that itself is not precisely defined.

Overton, one of 11 independent scientists that NOAA consulted for analysis, said he was contacted by the agency a couple of months ago to provide comments on “significant figures” in early versions of the report. Other scientists consulted included faculty from the University of Calgary and the University of California, San Diego, as well as the chairman of Exxon Mobil’s research and engineering department and BP’s consultant on dispersants and controlled burns, Alan Allen.

Overton said the seeming precision of the Aug. 4 report gave the illusion that federal scientists knew more than they do.

“Models will only give you a ballpark number,” he said. “If you say 24 (percent), you are implying it’s not 23 and it’s not 25.”

The problem, Overton said, is that scientists are using a finite number of variables to model an environmental system that is infinitely complex. That introduces a large margin of error.

Both Overton and St. Pe said the greatest potential for error is contained in the amount of oil said to have evaporated or dissolved. The federal report’s estimate was roughly 1.2 million barrels, or about 30 percent of the oil that entered the Gulf.

‘Your best guess’

Scientists agree that the oil in the Gulf is prone to rapid biodegradation. They believe that because the oil is buoyant, it’s likely to remain closer to the water’s surface, where it may evaporate, disperse or dissolve, or provide food for crude-eating microbes.

But the rates of those natural processes depend on water temperature, weather conditions, currents, and the depth and molecular content of the oil — all of which can be difficult to quantify. “When push coves to shove,” said Overton, “a lot of times you have to put parameters into the model, and sometimes those parameters are your best guess.”

Those best guesses draw upon existing scientific literature from previous spills and from laboratory simulations, which don’t necessarily match Gulf conditions, Overton said. He believes NOAA’s estimate for evaporative losses may actually be conservative, and that the actual amount may be as high as 50 percent.

“I know there’s questions about (the report’s) accuracy, but I think at this point in time it’s the most accurate compilation … that’s available,” said Jay Grimes, a marine microbiologist at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.

Grimes also believes the most inconclusive variable is the amount of oil that decomposed at sea.

Functional information

Bill Lehr, the lead scientist on the report, said changes in environmental conditions were taken into account. Although conditions at sea changed from day to day, Lehr said averaging the numbers would smooth out differences. He said NOAA’s figures were consistent with experiments performed in Canada and Norway.

“The unusual feature of this was the spill being a mile deep and therefore we would have some components that would normally evaporate dissolved in the water column,” Lehr said.

For that reason, the report groups evaporation and dissolution into a single category.

Lehr believes the budget’s greatest uncertainties are not in its evaporation and dissolution rates, as other scientists have claimed, but in the rates of dispersion.

Parts of the oil-gas mixture that exited the wellhead dispersed naturally, Lehr said, but the fluid dispersal rate is a calculated estimate, and not a measurement. Lehr said other sources have suggested that the dispersants may be more effective than what NOAA presumed, which could mean the report is also conservative in this aspect. But as oil emulsifies at the water’s surface, it becomes stickier, which also renders dispersants less effective, he acknowledged.

Other questions persist.

While the report said only 3 percent of the oil spilled was picked up by skimmers, that number is likely high, Lehr said, because skimmers’ measurements include both oil and water.

Lehr said the federal report, whose figures have been widely discussed by the media, was meant to provide functional information to the incident command, not to stand up to rigorous academic evaluation.

He expects a more detailed report on the oil budget will soon be released, one that contains data, assumptions, references, and comments from peer reviewers.

“It’ll be what people are used to seeing in terms of a scientific report,” Lehr promised.

Aimee Miles can be reached at amiles@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3318.

Special thanks to Richard Charter