Gulf Gusher Update: Oil Does NOT Vanish
Posted: November 6, 2010 Filed under: Gulf Oil Spill, New Orleans | Tags: Gulf Of Mexico, Oil still coming ashore, seafood and wildlife response to oil spill 43 Comments
They may have killed the well, but don’t believe any one when they say that the worst is over. The problem is that you’re probably not hearing anything or seeing anything about the aftermath because there seems to be no media around the Gulf Coast other than the locals. Here’s the latest one that I was tweeted today that sent me off to a blogging state of mind. This is from Project Gulf Impact and you really need to watch their video.
This is of special interest to me because I swear the last batch of shrimp I got at the ghetto Winn Dixie had something greasy in the intestine. It was so bad, I threw them away. When I rubbed the black gunk between my fingers, it smeared and stayed there. It took quite a bit of Dawn to get it to go away. It also tasted gritty and greasy.
Despite repeated statements from the EPA and NOAA assuring residents that thorough Gulf of Mexico seafood testing has revealed levels safe for human consumption, public skepticism has continued to deter many locals from their usual seafood medley. Independent scientists have expressed concern over the published methods and protocols used by federal agencies to open sensitive fishing grounds & determine seafood safety. Invertebrates, such as shrimp, crab, & oysters, are of particular concern due to their feeding habits, relatively stationary lifestyle, and inability to process highly toxic compounds found in crude oil called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH). Unfortunately, their concerns have proven valid.
One local activist, “Mac” Mackenzie of NOLA Emergency Response, decided that it was time to take matters into her own hands. After an incessant 7-week investigation, Mac was able to obtain crucial information from our government regarding the specifics of Gulf shrimp testing. Particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, it is common for shrimp to be prepared and even served whole, with the shell and digestive tract intact. When Mac learned that the Gulf shrimp testing performed to date had not included an analysis of whole shrimp with intact shells or digestive tract, she decided to mobilize. She obtained two pounds of locally caught shrimp from Venice, a small town located in the heart of Southern Louisiana. The samples were promptly transported on ice to a laboratory in Mobile Alabama, where Chemist Dr. Robert Namen tested the digestive tracts of the shrimp for components of crude oil. What they found was an alarming 193 parts per million of “Oil & Grease.”
This story came on top of another one this week concerning dead and dying Coral close to the killer wellhead. This is from The Times Picayune.
Image courtesy of Lophelia II 2010 Expedition, NOAA-OER/BOEMRE A single colony of coral with dying and dead sections on left, apparently living tissue at right, and bare skeleton with sickly looking brittle star on the base.
A brown substance is killing coral organisms in colonies located 4,600 feet deep about seven miles southwest of the failed BP Macondo oil well, according to scientists who returned Thursday from a three-week cruise studying coral reefs in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
The finding is the first case in which researchers have found evidence that living organisms in the deepwater area near the well site might have been killed by oil from the spill.
Penn State University biology professor Charles Fisher, chief scientist aboard the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown said soft coral in a 15-meter to 40-meter area was covered by what appeared to be a brown substance.
“Ninety percent of 40 large corals were heavily affected and showed dead and dying parts and discoloration,” according to a news release reporting the findings by Fisher and other scientists issued jointly by NOAA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Managment, Regulation and Enforcement, which co-sponsored the research. “Another site 400 meters away had a colony of stony coral similarly affected and partially covered with a similar brown substance.”
“While this mission was not designed to be focused on oil spill research, the timing and location provided an opportunity to observe any impacts to our research areas,” Fisher said in the news release. Fisher was unavailable for further comment on Thursday night.
The release said the scientists “observed dead and dying corals with sloughing tissue and discoloration.”
That’s just some of the continued impact on the ecosystem down here. The town of Gulf Shores, Alabama reports they are still owed $2 million in lost revenues. A city meeting also discussed outstanding claims by businesses and individuals. This, despite the uptick in local advertising I’ve seen on ad ‘stories’ of how BP has made me whole again run by BP here on our local TV stations. The ad revenues for this things must be unbelievably large.
A BP spokesman did not respond to inquiries about the lost revenue claims.
Also at Monday’s meeting, Dyken reported that officials were still trying to work out problems with the lack of claims paid by Ken Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility to individuals and businesses.
Officials in south Baldwin County were expected to meet with Feinberg this week, Dyken said.
Baldwin County had received about $219 million, Dyken said.
“Some people still haven’t been paid on claims that are legitimate,” he said. “They have distributed a large amount of money. It’s just whether that money has gone to the appropriate parties in the appropriate places. There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to some payments being made and others not. There’s also not the degree of transparency we would like in the process.”
In order to ensure that the oil spill’s lingering affects do not carry into next year, Doughty suggested expanding the tourist season.
“We need rebranding of the Gulf so that people understand the Gulf is safe, whether it’s Gulf seafood, Gulf beach, air whatever,” she said. “With tourism being our No. 1 economic engine here, anything we can do to help tourism would be great.”
This is particularly weird given the report by a Pensacola/Mobile TV station that a tourist was slimed with aging Oil last week. You can see the pictures and the news report here at the Channel 5 website.
Jonathan Jones’ palm still has an oil mark. He says he emerged from the water after a brief swim in Gulf Shores with trace amounts of crude.
“We looked at it and kind of smeared it a bit and figured out it was oil,” says Jones. He says he had to bathe with dish soap to get it off. At first he was worried about dispersants but then he quickly calmed down.
“There are hundreds of people on this beach and no one else had this happen,” says Jones. It’s probably important to put what happened to Jonathan in perspective. This appears to be an isolated incident and the beaches are most certainly still open
Meanwhile, future troubles lurk too. MoJo has identified the BP Atlantis–something BostonBoomer has written about–as another ‘Ticking Time Bomb in the Gulf’.
Located 124 miles off the Louisiana coast, the Atlantis platform produces 200,000 barrels of oil daily, more than triple the amount of oil that spilled from the Horizon site each day. But long before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, a whistleblowing former BP contractor tipped off regulators that the Atlantis may be violating the law, and environmental groups and members of Congress have been publicly questioning the platform’s safety ever since.
According to Kenneth Abbott, a former BP contractor who worked on the platform from 2008 through early 2009, more than 7,000 documents necessary to operate the platform safely are missing or incomplete. Abbott says the vast majority of the project’s subsea piping and instrument diagrams were not approved by engineers, and the safety systems are out of date. In practice, the lack of documentation on this platform would make it extremely difficult to respond in the event of an accident like the Deepwater Horizon blowout, critics say, because no one really has an accurate picture of the Atlantis’ design.
This seems to be the forgotten disaster and environmental disasters do not just disappear. Down here, the big election
Tony Bologna apologizes endlessly in the new series of BP spoofs on South Park at Comedy Central.
story was between Vitter and Melancon and both were fighting over who could be the most welcoming to the drillers and spillers. The MSM appeared more fixated on political personalities than issues. The only program still properly fixated on the BP Gusher is South Park that has a completely hilarious bit where Tony continually apologizes and then keeps on with making worse decisions. You can click on the picture to watch the episodes at Comedy Central or just the apology ad campaign send up.
If you live down here were there are daily reports of “massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in the Gulf of Mexico”. This report on a sighting is dated from October 23, 2010. That means it’s post well plugging. Again, this is from the Times Picayune here in New Orleans.
Just three days after the U.S. Coast Guard admiral in charge of the BP oil spill cleanup declared little recoverable surface oil remained in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana fishers Friday found miles-long strings of weathered oil floating toward fragile marshes on the Mississippi River delta.
The discovery, which comes as millions of birds begin moving toward the region in the fall migration, gave ammunition to groups that have insisted the government has overstated clean-up progress, and could force reclosure of key fishing areas only recently reopened.
The oil was sighted in West Bay, which covers approximately 35 square miles of open water between Southwest Pass, the main shipping channel of the river, and Tiger Pass near Venice. Boat captains working the BP clean-up effort said they have been reporting large areas of surface oil off the delta for more than a week but have seen little response from BP or the Coast Guard, which is in charge of the clean-up. The captains said most of their sightings have occurred during stretches of calm weather, similar to what the area has experienced most of this week.
The Coast Guard is saying parts of it are just algae but frankly, I believe the captains of Louisiana’s Cajun/Creole fishing fleet. Again, this thing and its impact are not over by a long shot. It’s absolutely necessary to continue to hold our elected officials and BP accountable for all the damage done and still happening to the ecosystem, wildlife, and people of the Gulf.
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Okay, I have to say this. When I was down on Treasure Island during that 2 week of Oct, we saw lots of dead coral (that looked like the photo in the link above) washing up on the beach. I even saved some of it because I thought that was odd.
I don’t think we’re hearing the full story on things at all. That dispersant and the oil it sank are still there at the bottom of the Gulf regardless of what the EPA and others say.
We may begin to ask questions, but by that time Obama will be out of office and Tony Hayward will be vacationing in his villa.
I realize that LUMCON (Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium) is not an advocacy group. However, their research will stand in a court of law in a case against BP and their criminal acts. It is too late for the coral, the marine life, and the birds, but attention must be paid………
Sorry here is the link I was talking about: http://www.science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2010-news/Fisher11-2010
thx for that!!!
I knew that Tony Hayward former BP Chairman, was practically skipping when he left the White House for their ‘The Little People’ press conference. 😦
This was the only situation in the last two years when only the ‘jobs’ seemed to matter.
Here’s to all those BP folks and politicians that enable them!
0M& this is amazing!!!
Did you notice the back up singers have a star trek, a tj hooker and one other shatner role costumes on?
The one thing I love about Shatner is that he loves a send up of himself.
This is fantastic! Shatner has just gotten better and better as he’s aged. I loved his appearances on British TV where after a certain hour, most anything goes…
Excellent round up DK!!! posting this one around now!
Coming from you and knowing your activism on the issue that means lots!!! Please just add everything you possibly can because I’m tired of this being swept under the ocean floor.
Thank you from me and my friends as well, Dak. We all appreciate the pre-and-post-media coverage you have been/are giving this issue — you were writing about it before anyone else in the media took it seriously, and you continue to keep the topic alive when no one else in the media is interested.
Your point about the continuing effects of the spill is well taken. One of the topics of discusion among my friends is how can it be that this spill decimated an ecosystem that was millions of years in the making, but now — scant weeks after the spill was contained — everything is suddenly alright again?
It’s like thinking you can lose that 50 pounds you gained over ten years in a week — American optimism seems to have turned into American gullibility at some point when I wasn’t looking.
Again, thanks for helping to keep this issue alive.
If you lived down here you would see how alive this issue is because so many people either depend on the bounty of the Gulf or their families still work the waters. It reminds me of watching all the family farms disappear during the 1980s when I watched friend’s parents lose their ranches and farms. It’s a huge and alive issue down here. Thankfully, most of the Gulf States of major marine biology institutes and here in Louisiana, we have lots of Gulf Restoration Institutes and charities. I only wish more people around the country were following the stories that we hear every day.
Thanks DK. I enjoy visiting your website. It’s good to come here and get all those economy posts. I’m thinking of all those 99ers who will lose their unemployment soon. I don’t believe the GOP will do nothing to give them something to get by. It will be disastrous if the Republicans sit on their hands.
Recall on how Obama threw this on BP in he beginning. The result was BP was in control of the information, especially how much oil was escaping. This was grossly underestimgated prohibting a adequate response.
I wonder if this was a lack of knowledge (poor staff work) or just lazyness. So – what is Billy the parish president saying about this? Landrieu and Vitter seem to be ok with it.
Dak – think of the oil in the shrimp as cooking oil. I ask restaurents if their shrimp are gulf or Carolina shrimp. Because of my complete lack of faith in the government, I do not eat Louisiana aquatic products.
In the end you have to vote with your feet
The monetary interests of big business are paramount these days. I figure it’s buyer beware on nearly everything these days. I’m just said that the Dubya dismantling of safety agencies hasn’t happened. I get information from PEER all the time that says nothing much has changed.
Buyer beware in farming and food too. I hope to bring that out in a few posts soon.
thanks Dak, I’m amazed at how the whole tragedy has fallen out of the public eye in the mainstream media… keep up the good reporting… cheers
No “seems to be” about it, IMO. Nobody I know talks about it, nobody I read writes about it except you. I’d expect that during the Bush years but with a Democrat in the WH and 2 years of Dems controlling Congress, this is just another reason I think there’s no difference between the two parties in Obamanation. And another reason I have no patience for Democrats raging on about how evil Republicans are, which imples Democrats are superior and I’m no longer convinced they are.
Great post, Kat. Thanks for keeping us updated.
Some congressman needs to do a hearing on the EPA and why they continued to allow dispersant to be used when it was clearly dangerous and the intent was to sink the problem. That and there’s some other things too. A Federal Judge has just asked Haliburton to turn over its cementing evidence. Maybe it will work its way through the judiciary. I have very little hope though for justice from the current SCOTUS. The Bush’s appointees are mean and narrow minded little men. There’s justice and then there’s the Scalia Inquisition.
Hey this is OT…and just because I link it, just take it for what it is worth…
“WMR has also learned from White House sources that Obama is taking presciption anxiety medication.
Vice President Biden, under intense pressure from some Democratic Party officials and Cabinet members to invoke Article 25, Section 4 of the Constitution and have Obama temporarily or permanently removed as president because of his mental incapacity to fulfill his constitutional oath as president is reluctant to take such drastic action. “
Sorry, while I just step back a minute and “Say What?”
That’s a recopy from Wayne Madsen’s site. I’m not sure how reliable of a source he really is. Actually, let me rephrase that. He’s considered a way-out there conspiracy theorist. He’s a full blow birther, he thinks Israel controls CNN, and that the 2009 swine flu was something contrived by the WHO.
I’d take this with a HUGE shaker-full of grains of salt. He’s not some one I would trust at all. I consider it in the same category as Conspiracy land Manga.
Thanks for telling me that, I looked up the original post and saw some info about Masden at the bottom of the page…I did not know who this man was. I had a feeling he was, uh, a little “off.” Anyway, I just posted the link cause it was strange. That is why I put that little bit about “taking it for what it was worth.”
Yeah. I saw that you thought it fishy and you were right. Just google the man and you’ll see some of his weirder hypotheses.
Thanks for your coverage of this issue, Dak. I honestly wouldn’t have any idea of the scope and continuing consequences of this disaster if not for your reporting on it.
I think the answer is right there. They wanted to sink and cover up the problem. Out of sight, out of mind (or so they thought).
yup, and I think they’ve pushed the consequences off the front page because they want it to continue to be out of sight and out of mind …
Yes, this is all just awful and so infuriating!
I remember how totally bizarre it was reading one thing in the media and another, obviously much more trustworthy, on blogs. The reports in the (established) media seemed to be in total synch from the start right down to the indignant “Well it isn’t like he (Obama) can dive down and suck up the oil through a straw”, the lack of acknowledging the toxicity of the dispersant, the joy over the magical “Puff! All the oil is gone now!”, etc., etc., etc
And then, again in full synchronosity … silence!
Found you Dak. I read all your RD articles on my google reader. So? I rarely comment. But I find in your writings an island of sanity nonetheless.
Still trying to understand economics geez. Two years now. You have made me less economically illiterate . Now I read a lot of gloom and doom about QE2 lately. Definitely not a cruise ship
As for the Gulf oil? They just hid the mess. And called it a day. Criminal.
The Nigerians know this modus operandi all too well.
Hi Song!!! Good to see you again!!! Economics is not easy nor is it something that comes naturally. It really takes some training and patience. Most students hate it but it’s a necessary skill these days.
Hope you’ll come and comment more!
I wish I hadn’t started so late. The language learning curve is huge. Right now I have been following the arguments of deflation or hyperinflation.. Read up on Weimar and don’t see the parallels. Keynes wrote about the carthiginian peace inflicted upon Germany mostly by the French which led to hyperinflation.
I think our economy does not parallel Japan either because of our collective debt vs. Their collective savings. Because we are the world currency? Well that makes economic decisions more complex. Bailing out Wall Street helped our global interests but not our domestic needs.
A decision was made to keep the Empire afloat.
So as globalists our leaders make choices to destroy then rebuild foreign infrastructures while ours falls apart. Profits are made. Just not here. Anyway. Seems Eisenhower was right about the military industrial complex-corporate leviathan.
Yes, Eisenhower was, and did you know Lincoln was the first President to warn about that after the Civil war?
I think you’re right about Japan. Plus they have a much more export-driven economy and they work hard to develop countries that will be part of their supply chain and customer base. Thailand is an example.
We spend to much money on the war machine. It drains us of infrastructure money.
A side note regarding BP. I’m a scientist (I work on copepods, with the Mississippi delta being one of our primary field sites), funded by an NSF rapid response grant to do research relating to the Gulf spill. I’ve been completely stymied by BPs unwillingness to provide oil. Carrying out the research would require either Deep Horizon oil, or a close proxy (very similar in composition). Their ThunderHorse well is a nearby deepwater well, with oil composition apparently similar to Deep Horizon, and it’s available on the market (but essentially only to traders purchasing it in mass quantity via the existing infrastructure).
I’ve tried for months to get oil from BP, but they’re unwilling to provide it. First, BP is essentially hermetically sealed off from outside communication – they provide only a couple of public e-mail or phone access points, and I’ve never received a response from repeated queries via these routes (one of their phone bank personnel, when interviewed anonymously by a reporter, said that the whole point of her job was essentially to divert people – a cul-de-sac – so they wouldn’t reach anyone important at BP). When I finally did locate and reach non-publicly-listed phone numbers, I was eventually told (definitively) that provision of oil to scientists investigating the spill was under indefinite “legal review”. This was true even if you’re willing to pay for it, and even if you’re asking for oil from a proxy BP source (such as ThunderHorse) rather than Deep Horizon itself (note that if I was an oil speculator, I could readily purchase ThunderHorse oil on the open market – BP even has a brochure for oil from this well – but they won’t provide any to scientists researching the Gulf spill). There are two scientists that I know of that somehow managed to get a couple milliliters of crude oil out of BP, but that’s it. I’d need a few liters (and it can’t be the weathered stuff skimmed from the Gulf – needs to be oil directly collected from a well). From what I’m hearing, there are many scientists in the same position as myself – funded to work on the spill, but unable to carry out the work because of BPs unwillingness to allow access to the oil.
You know, I feel like we are living in the 1880’s again, or the 90’s, when the oligarchs ruled it all and all the rules were for them.
That’s just horrifying about not even being able to do normal, funded, research because of their obstinacy. Of course they are afraid of lawsuits so they are doing every underhanded thing they can to stop it. And it seems like all we can do is wail. Our government won’t help. Will the local Louisiana governments help?
From every thing I hear around here, they’re trying to not provide evidence for a law suit. You have to go to a Federal Judge to order them to do so.
Please see my reply above.
Wow! Thanks for that info, affinis! The government should have taken control of BP from day one. Instead Obama enabled them in keeping information from U.S. citizens.
that is outrageous! this should be headline material…
Dakinikat, What are you doing up so late? Thank you for these updates bigtime! We MUST keep this story alive. Think of the harm to public health in the long run our gov’t is ignoring. Scandal. I don’t want this to be some story 60 minutes does 20 years from now.
I’ve resorted to my jazz musician roots with no more slogging across Lake Pontchartrain for 8 am classes.
This makes my blood boil. I remember the press conference when they said 75% of the oil had disappeared. My husband and I both started laughing (not funny of course) and said almost at the same time, “it’s a miracle!”. It is an utter, utter disgrace. Keep putting this stuff out there and thanks for all the work on this you do.