GeorgiaSeaGrant_OilSpillReport8-16[1]GeorgiaSeaGrant_OilChart[1]
By Chuck Hopkinson, Director, Georgia Sea Grant
August 17, 2010
On August 2, 2010, the National Incident Command (NIC) released a report on the status of oil from the BP oil spill. The findings of the report are being widely reported in the news media as suggesting that 75% of the oil is “gone” and only 25% remains. However, many independent scientists are interpreting the findings differently, with some suggesting that less than 10% is “gone” and up to 90% remains a threat to the ecosystem. Considering the vulnerability of the southeast Atlantic coast to oil being carried our way by the Gulf Stream, it is critical that we determine which of these interpretations of the report is more accurate.
To address this issue, Georgia Sea Grant organized an ad hoc group of university-based
oceanographic experts from within the state to independently evaluate and interpret the
conclusions of the NIC report. This group determined that the media interpretation of the report’s findings has been largely inaccurate and misleading. Oil that the NIC report categorizes as Evaporated or Dissolved, Naturally Dispersed and Chemically Dispersed has been widely interpreted by the media to mean “gone” and no longer a threat to the ecosystem. However, this group believes that most of the dissolved and dispersed forms of oil are still present and not necessarily harmless.
In order to better illustrate to the media, the public, community leaders and political decisionmakers the current status of oil in the ecosystem, this group focused exclusively on oil that actually entered Gulf of Mexico waters, omitting from its consideration oil that was directly captured from the wellhead. Our analysis classified oil into categories relevant to discussions of recovery and environmental impact: Burned, Skimmed, Evaporated, Degraded and Remaining.
Thus, starting with the NIC’s figure for how much oil entered the water, we estimated how much oil could have conceivably degraded and evaporated as of the date of the NOAA science report. The balance remains in the Gulf in varying forms and toxicity.
The group also considered how the vulnerability of our Atlantic coast waters has changed since BP capped the well. A listing of participating experts can be found below.
HOW MUCH OIL WAS RELEASED INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO?
There was consensus within the group that, as stated in the NIC report, approximately 4.9 million barrels emerged from the wellhead between the rig explosion on April 20, 2010 and the final capping of the well on July 15 2010.
In accounting for total oil output from the well, the NIC report includes oil piped directly from the wellhead to surface ships and prevented from ever entering the Gulf of Mexico,
approximately .8 million barrels (17%) of the total oil output. While we commend BP for
capturing this oil at great depth under difficult conditions, our analysis focused exclusively on oil that actually entered the water and from which the Gulf must now recover.
Therefore, we omitted from our discussion and our charts the .8 million barrels captured directly from the wellhead and examined the status of the 4.1 million barrels that actually entered the water. Because of this difference, percentages do not track directly from our charts to those of the NIC, but they are easily reconciled. For example, the 392,000 barrels that the NIC reports as skimmed or burned at the surface constitutes 8% of the 4.9 million barrels accounted for by the NIC, but that same volume is 10% of the 4.1 barrels that actually entered the water.
HOW MUCH OIL CAN BE COUNTED CONFIDENTLY AS RECOVERED FROM GULF
WATERS?
The NIC report estimates that 392,000 barrels of oil have been either burned or skimmed from surface waters, which seemed to our group to be a reasonable approximation. However, to the best of our knowledge, these estimates are based on data that are not available to the general public or the scientific community and, therefore, are not independently verifiable. However, using this figure from the federal report, we calculated that 10% of the oil that actually spilled into Gulf of Mexico waters was removed at the surface through skimming and burning. Thus, 90% of the oil that entered the Gulf of Mexico has not been recovered.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE UNRECOVERED 90%?
click on full report for more info…..
Special thanks to Richard Charter