With BP’s leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico finally capped, the focus shifts to the surface clean-up and the question on everyone’s lips is: Where is all the oil?
For three long months a massive slick threatened the shorelines of Louisiana and other southern US Gulf Coast states as BP tried everything from top hats to junk shots and giant domes to stanch the oil.
A cap stopped the flow on July 15 and now, thanks to frantic efforts to skim and burn the crude on the surface, the real difficulty is finding the oil rather than cleaning it up. Dozens of reconnaissance planes fly constant sorties from Florida to Texas noting any oil sightings, while flat-bottomed boats trawl the marshes for lumps of tar too large to biodegrade.
“What we have is an aggregation of hundreds of thousands of patches of oil and the challenge is to find out where they are at right now because they are widely dispersed,” US spill response chief Thad Allen said.
Pressed further on the patches, Allen relented.
“Maybe patches is a misnomer on my part. What we’re seeing are mats, patties, small concentrations, very hard to detect, but they’re out there,” he said. “What we’re trying to figure out is where is all the oil at and what can we do about it.”
The figures speak for themselves. Before the cap went on, some 25,000 barrels of oil a day were being skimmed from the thickest part of the slick near the well site. By the time Tropical Storm Bonnie arrived last week, the take was down to a pitiful 56 barrels, begging the question of what to do with the fleet of 800 skimmers, many of them run by disgruntled fishermen.
Allen said he was already looking at trying to redeploy the so-called vessels of opportunity in surveillance and testing programs and was meeting local leaders tomorrow to discuss options.
As to where all the oil that hasn’t been skimmed or burned off has gone, opinions vary: Some experts say it has been broken down naturally by the elements and by microbes in the ocean, while others fear it could be lingering undetected in underwater plumes.
Only weeks ago, the slick was an unstoppable force that couldn’t be prevented from swamping shorelines and slowly choking helpless pelicans; now the oil is an elusive enemy, one that has to be tracked down.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest “Nearshore Surface Oil Forecast” from indicated only seven sizeable patches of surface oil, all light sheen.
An overflight on Sunday identified one thicker patch of emulsified crude. A flotilla of skimmers was immediately dispatched and made short work of mopping it up.
Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft, a government on-scene coordinator, is stationing vessels at the many inlets that run into Louisiana’s precious marshes to ward off the arrival of any toxic sludge, what he calls his “fire department.”
“In the event we do see any oil approaching ... we’re right there waiting for it, ready to attack it and get it before it really gets into those marshlands,” he said.
Approximately 1,027km of Gulf Coast is officially listed as “oiled,” 579km in Louisiana, 174km in Mississippi, 112km in Alabama and 155km in Florida.
The beaches should be relatively painless to mop up, but cleaning up the maze of marshes will be a logistical nightmare.
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