Scientific Study: Most of BP Oil Spill Still Remains in Gulf of Mexico

Posted in BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Environment,Gulf Coast,World Maritime News on August 19, 2010

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA (UGA) – A group of scientists working from the University of Georgia has done a study that contradicts the recent National Incident Command (NIC) findings on the amount of oil still remaining from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil plume spewing from uncapped well head in the Gulf of Mexico.

The scientists believe that nearly 3/4ths of the oil is still there, while the NIC report states that there is only about 25% remaining. The UGA group attributes this difference to the way in which the data has been interpreted.

The following video, although not directly connected to the UGA study, is presented by a marine scientist who expresses his concerns for the underwater oil plume remaining in the Gulf.

WATCH VIDEO

The UGA scientists worked on the assumption that the total amount of oil that leaked from the well between the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, 2010 to the capping of the well on July 15 2010 was about 4.9 million barrels. There was also about 800,000 barrels captured directly from the wellhead leaving about 4.1 million barrels that actually entered the water. There was a consensus on this.

The scientists pointed out that the only oil that was actually removed was done at the surface through skimming and burning – about 392,000 barrels of oil (the estimated amount from the NIC report), or only about 10%. They assert that the remaining 90% of the oil that entered the Gulf of Mexico has not been recovered.

The NIC report states that the remaining oil that was released into the water, but not removed by skimming or burning, is currently in one of four states:

1. Dispersed as micro-droplets,
2. Dispersed as micro-droplets with dispersant coating,
3. Dissolved (some of which has evaporated) and
4. Residual.

The UGA scientists point out that this oil is not “gone”, but still there and makes up the remaining 90%. They point out that just because the oil is “dispersed” or “dissolved” doesn’t mean that it is “gone” and that the news media’s tendency to interpret it as “gone” is wrong.

The UGA scientists point out that dispersed and dissolved forms of oil can be highly toxic. Furthermore, sorting the oil into the four above states falls far short of assessing how much of it remains a potential threat to the system.

In an article in the Huffington Post the UGA scientists arrived at a different conclusion:

Using a range of reasonable evaporation and degradation estimates, the group calculated that 70-79 percent of oil spilled into the Gulf still remains. The group showed that it was impossible for all the dissolved oil to have evaporated because only oil at the surface of the ocean can evaporate into the atmosphere and large plumes of oil are trapped in deep water.

A full report of the UGA study is available in PDF format here.