May 15, 2010

Hello all from the Sector Mobile Incident Command,
I am hoping to clarify some concerns related to the Deepwater Horizon well leak incident and how it may impact our beloved Florida Keys.  For those of you who know me understand that my day job is coral reef habitat mapping, monitoring, etc. and that I spend a fair amount of time in the Keys.
My current concern is as the Florida Scientific Support Coordinator for oil spill response and am working in Sector Mobile on these issues.  I am going to stick to the facts based on the current information:

1.       I have placed an image on http://www.truediveteam.org/news.html showing the Loop Current location with the southern extent of the oil derived from MODIS satellite imagery (5/13/10).  The distance is 45 miles.  This had been corroborated by the 0600 NOAA report that states a distance of 40 miles.  This does not specifically address tar balls or sub-surface oil.  However, the level of sub-surface oil is thought to be low as the initial product is ‘sweet Louisiana crude’.

2.       Oil that MAY find its way down the Loop Current (surface) is expected to take a ABOUT a week to reach the Keys.

3.       The oil that MAY reach the Keys will be heavily weathered and expected to be dime to quarter sized tar balls.  I have placed a picture of charred tar balls found two days ago on the east end of Perdido Key, Florida on http://www.truediveteam.org/news.html.  There were a total of 3.

4.       Tar balls have minimum impact on coral reefs.  Physical contact should be minimized as they tend to stay on the surface.  Acute toxic impacts should be minimal because the volatiles/toxins should have been expended off early on.  There is an ongoing debate on long-term effects that are worthy of discussion when we find out the dose and exposure of the oil that reaches the Keys.
I hope that this helps those with questions and I hope that this is not misinterpreted as me saying ‘don’t worry’.  I simply wanted to present facts as they are and let folks draw their own conclusions. As you all know this is a very dynamic incident, and will remain that way until the well head is capped. This is not a oil spill similar to the Exxon Valdez … as it stands now.
Cheers,
Dave
PS-I placed the images on the TRUE Dive Team website in the interest of time.

David Palandro, PhD
Research Scientist
Florida Scientific Support Coordinator for Oil Spill Response
Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
100 8th Ave SE
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
(727) 896-8626
(727) 492-8849 mobile
(727) 893-1679 fax

http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20100514/ARTICLES/100519536/1292?p=1&tc=pg

by JIM ASH, Gannett

Published: Friday, May 14, 2010 at 12:43 p.m.

Substitute “Ixtoc 1” for “Deepwater Horizon” and “PEMEX” for “BP,” and the world’s largest peacetime oil spill sounds eerily similar to the 2,500 square miles of oil now threatening Florida’s shores.

Ixtoc I was an exploratory rig leased by the Mexican national oil company from a firm tied to a then-sitting Texas governor. After it blew out on June 3, 1979, it took nine months to drill a relief well to cap it. By then, 140 million gallons of crude were sloshing around the Bay of Campeche and beyond.

The spill eventually coated 200 miles of Texas beaches.

“We had a good idea of the prevailing winds and we predicted that it would hit us in two months,” said Wes Tunnell, associate director of Texas A&M University’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi. “Sure enough, it showed up 60 days later, almost to the day.”

Tunnell, a marine biologist who was earning his doctorate at the time, was a scientific coordinator for the Ixtoc event.

Deepwater Horizon may stir a collective memory of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, but there’s no comparison, Tunnell said. The Exxon Valdez was a tanker and had a finite amount of cargo, eventually releasing 10.8 million gallons.

No one can predict how much oil Deepwater Horizon will spew before BP is able to shut it down. Company officials say a relief well could be completed in two months.

The good news is that the Gulf of Mexico has more natural protections than the frigid Alaskan waters, Tunnell said.

The sun and warm water will help evaporate and break up the spill, he said.

A long history of naturally occurring oil seeps in the western Gulf of Mexico will act like a giant vaccine, promoting the growth of marine organisms that break down the oil, Tunnell said.

“Studies have shown that the natural seeps are equivalent to the release of about two supertankers a year,” he said. “What that does is establish a huge population of bio-organisms.”

The Texas response strategy for Ixtoc was to use barrier islands as a first line of defense, and booms and skimmers for the bays and estuaries behind them, Tunnell said. Estuaries are critical, he said, because that’s where 90 percent of all marine species in the Gulf of Mexico spend a portion of their lives.

“It’s a lot easier to clean it up off the sand,” Tunnell said.

Tunnell claims the cleanup was a success, although tourism on South Padre Island was wiped out for months. Residents and businesses sued, claiming $300 million in damages.

Six to seven years after the spill, researchers had trouble finding evidence of it, Tunnell said. Practically no telltale signs exist two decades later although island residents say submerged tar mats the consistency of asphalt are occasionally exposed in heavy storms.

Quenton Dokken, executive director of the Texas-based Gulf of Mexico Foundation, is careful not to minimize the potential devastation from the Deepwater Horizon spill. But he urged Floridians not to lose perspective. Natural seeps have been occurring for thousands of years in the gulf and the body of water survives.

“This is going to have impact, there is no question about it,” he said. “But in the grand scheme of things, both geographically and across time, this is a relatively small spill,” he said.

The Gulf of Mexico Foundation is supported by some of the world’s largest oil companies. Dokken describes the foundation as a vehicle for giving environmental scientists a seat at the table to push for safer offshore drilling.

Much of the blame for Ixtoc, Dokken said, belonged to platform operators who didn’t shut down after they lost the circulation of vital drilling muds that cool and lubricate the drill.

Still, Dokken acknowledged that the industry needs to come up with better technology for automatic shutoff valves.

“You have to stop this stuff before it gets to the beach,” he said.

Paul Johnson, policy director for the Florida-based environmental group Reef Relief, isn’t as optimistic.

Johnson was a senior adviser to former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez when the Exxon Valdez ran aground, and he was part of a team that Martinez sent to inspect the damage.

Johnson remembers conditions so primitive immediately after the spill that local fishing captains were felling giant trees to serve as temporary booms.

If the Deepwater Horizon spill hits Florida shores, gets swept by the loop current across the already stressed corals in the Florida Keys, or into the estuaries around the Ten Thousand Islands in southwest Florida, the disaster will be long remembered, Johnson said.

“Our way of life on the coast will change,” Johnson said. “It will be one of those events by which most people mark their lives, like major hurricanes.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/12/gulf-oil-spill-could-reac_n_574078.html

by Mark Stevenson  May 12, 2010

MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials fear the Gulf oil spill could reach their coasts if the leak is not stopped by August, when seasonal currents start to reverse and flow south. They also worry about the impact of the upcoming hurricane season.

So far prevailing currents have carried at least 4 million gallons of spilled oil from a damaged BP well toward the north and east, away from Mexico and toward U.S. shores.

But those currents start to shift by August, and by October the prevailing currents have reversed toward Mexico.

Carlos Morales, the head of exploration and production for the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos oil company, said Wednesday that if efforts to quickly block the leak with new valves or other devices fail, it could take four to five more months to drill another well that would relieve the pressure fueling the leak.

“That is the range we are talking about, from a week or two to four to five months,” Morales said at a news conference.

He added that Mexico has sent several thousand meters (yards) of containment booms to the United States to help fight the spill. He said Mexico has about 120 official vessels in the Gulf that could participate in containment efforts if needed.

Environment Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada also told local media that officials are concerned the hurricane season – which begins in the Atlantic on June 1 – could potentially stir up or spread the oil slick farther.

Mexico’s government is particularly worried about the potential impact on coastal lagoons along Mexico’s northern Gulf coast.

At least two species of sea turtles could be severely affected, including the endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, said the head of Mexico’s governmental biodiversity council, Jose Sarukhan.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/14/last-seven-hours-of-data-_n_576096.html

ERICA WERNER | 05/14/10 06:03 PM |

WASHINGTON — Declaring himself as angry as the rest of the nation, President Barack Obama assailed oil drillers and his own administration Friday as he ordered extra scrutiny of drilling permits to head off any repeat of the sickening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Engineers worked desperately to stop the leak that’s belching out at least 210,000 gallons of crude a day.

As Louisiana wildlife officials reported huge tar balls littering a beach, BP PLC technicians labored to accomplish an engineering feat a mile below the water surface. They were gingerly moving joysticks to guide deep-sea robots and thread a mile-long, 6-inch tube with a rubber stopper into the 21-inch pipe gushing oil from the ocean floor – a task one expert compared to stuffing a cork with a straw through it into a gushing soda bottle.

It’s the latest scheme to stop the flow after all others have failed, more than three weeks since the oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers and set off the disastrous leak.

Obama, whose comments until now have been measured, heatedly condemned a “ridiculous spectacle” of oil executives shifting blame in congressional hearings and denounced a “cozy relationship” between their companies and the federal government.

“I will not tolerate more finger-pointing or irresponsibility,” Obama said in the White House Rose Garden, flanked by members of his Cabinet.

“The system failed, and it failed badly. And for that, there is enough responsibility to go around. And all parties should be willing to accept it,” the president said.

Obama’s tone was a marked departure from the deliberate approach and mild chiding that had characterized his response since the huge rig went up in flames April 20 and later sank 5,000 feet to the ocean floor. Then came the leaking crude, the endangered wildlife, the livelihoods of fishermen at risk.

The magnitude of the disaster has grown clearer by the day and with it the apparent need for a presidential response to choke off any comparison to the Bush administration’s bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama had been growing increasingly frustrated with the situation, and the congressional hearings hardened that sentiment and prompted the president’s more forceful tone Friday.

Next week administration officials face their own Capitol Hill grillings for the first time since the accident, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appearing before a Senate committee Monday and Salazar testifying on Tuesday.

The Obama administration insists its response has been aggressive since Day One, and Obama sought Friday to leave no doubts. He said he shared the anger and frustration of those affected and would not rest or be satisfied “until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people of the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods.”

Obama announced that the Interior Department would review whether the Minerals Management Service is following all environmental laws before issuing permits for offshore oil and gas development. BP’s drilling operation at Deepwater Horizon received a “categorical exclusion,” which allows for expedited oil and gas drilling without the detailed environmental review that normally is required.

“It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies,” Obama said.

Echoing President Ronald Reagan’s comment on nuclear arms agreements with Moscow, he said, “To borrow an old phrase, we will trust but we will verify.”

Obama already had announced a 30-day review of safety procedures on oil rigs and at wells before any additional oil leases could be granted. And earlier in the week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced plans to split the much-criticized Minerals Management Service into two agencies, one that would be charged with inspecting oil rigs, investigating oil companies and enforcing safety regulations, while the other would oversee leases for drilling and collection of billions of dollars in royalties. Salazar has said the plan will ensure there is no conflict, “real or perceived,” regarding the agency’s functions.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced Friday it is opening an investigation into potential oversight lapses at the Minerals Management Service.

Obama decried what he called “a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill.” But the president, who’s announced a limited expansion of offshore drilling that’s now on hold, didn’t back down from his support for domestic oil drilling, saying it “continues to be one part of an overall energy strategy.”

“But it’s absolutely essential that, going forward, we put in place every necessary safeguard and protection,” he said.

This week executives from three oil companies – BP PLC, which was drilling the well, Transocean, which owned the rig, and Halliburton, which was doing cement work to cap the well – testified on Capitol Hill, each trying to blame the other for what may have caused the disaster. Obama decried that scene.

“I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter. You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else,” the president said.

“The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn’t.”

BP hadn’t publicly discussed the latest maneuver to stop the leak until the past few days, and went ahead with it only after X-raying the well pipe to make sure it would hold up with the stopper inside, spokesman David Nicholas said. Technicians also had to check for any debris inside that may have been keeping the oil at bay – dislodging it threatened to amplify the geyser.

Philip Johnson, the petroleum engineering professor at the University of Alabama who made the soda bottle-and-cork comparison, said the idea was that a cork stopper by itself would probably be blown off, but a straw would lower the pressure on the cork, allowing the soda (or oil) to pass into another container – in this case a tanker at the surface.

BP has refused to estimate how much of the leak could be siphoned off through the skinny pipe, though Johnson said it could be a significant amount.

If it works, it would mark the first time since the rig exploded that BP has controlled any part of the rogue well. How much oil is actually leaking has become a matter of debate, and Obama said Friday that it was uncertain but that the federal government’s response was always geared toward a catastrophic event.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Frederic J. Frommer in Washington and Jeffrey Collins in Robert, La., contributed to this report.

What scientists know about how oil spills affect the environment is drawn from a range of past events, no two of which have been alike. Because the blowout occurred 5,000 feet below below the water surface, the Gulf oil spill is unchartered territory.

In trying to assess the potential effect of oil on the Gulf Coast wetlands, a 1969 spill in Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay might offer close – if still imperfect – parallels, say Dr. McDowell and Woods Hole colleague Christopher Reddy.

It opens a window on the biological processes that over time help ease the effects of the spill. But it also highlights the long-term effects that can remain after much of the surface evidence has vanished.

The spill involved the barge Florida, which ran aground, dumping 175,000 gallons of diesel fuel. The first organisms to recolonize the area were “opportunistic species” such as carbon-loving worms and microbes, McDowell says. As they ate up their carbon-rich food source – in effect cleansing the harbor of much of the hydrocarbons – they died off, making way for species that normally inhabited the harbor and its marshland to return.

Still, she says, it took about a decade before researchers began to see the kinds of organisms in the harbor one would have seen prior to the spill, such as fiddler crabs. Dr. Reddy has continued to take samples from the marsh, and some 40 years later, oil remains trapped in the sediment three to eight inches below the surface. And it has changed little chemically since its arrival.

“If you stick a shovel into the ground and lift it, you will smell diesel fuel,” he says. “And when you analyze it, it doesn’t look like it’s been significantly changed chemically. And the fiddler crabs, mussels, and marsh grasses are not as healthy” as they are at pristine sites.

Yet above ground, he adds, the marsh looks to have recovered to the point where it could grace a tourist’s postcard.

Another nearby site affected by a spill in 1974 and still under study has not fared as well. In many places, the marsh grass still hasn’t returned. And when a research team looked at aerial photos of the site taken before the spill, the researchers found evidence of post-spill erosion in areas that received the most oil. The oil worked its way into the soil, killing off marsh grasses that would have stemmed the erosion.

Reddy cautions that the impact of oil spills depends a great deal on location and dose. Differences in air and ocean temperatures can play a significant role in the pace at which biological processes can begin to blunt the effects of oil.

Research efforts such as this represent a cautionary tale of another sort, according to Joanna Burger, a Rutgers University ecologist. Beware of the small numbers, as in: Only 20 percent of the wetlands have been affected.

“The problem is it’s always the 20 percent of the marsh that’s on the edge, in the intertidal zone,” she says. “That’s the most productive zone in terms of invertebrates and small fishes. And it’s where the herons and egrets feed. You might have destroyed only 20 percent of the marsh, but you might have destroyed 90 percent of the animal production.”

The point is not lost on Louisiana’s Fischer: “As we lose the coastal edge, we are losing the productivity of the area. Throughout history we have had various types of small tragedies such as freezes and pollutants, but we’ve never experienced a large case of oil intrusion into the estuarine areas. What would happen? I don’t have the answer.”