The oil spill from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well is just about all cleaned up, right? Maybe not. As reported in today’s Washington Post, academic researchers are challenging recent Administration and media reports suggesting that most of the oil is gone.
Academic scientists are challenging the Obama administration’s assertion that most of BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico is either gone or rapidly disappearing — with one group Thursday announcing the discovery of a 22-mile “plume” of oil that shows little sign of vanishing.
That plume was measured in late June and was described Thursday by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. The biggest news was not the plume itself: For weeks, government and university scientists have said that oil from BP’s damaged well is still underwater.
The news was what is happening — or not happening — to it.
The scientists said that when they studied it, they saw little evidence that the oil was being rapidly consumed by the gulf’s petroleum-eating microbes. The plume was in a deep, cold region where microbes tend to work slowly.
“Our data would predict that the plume would still be there now,” said Benjamin Van Mooy, a Woods Hole researcher.
Their research came after a week in which other scientists had taken issue with the government’s portrait of where all the oil went. On Thursday afternoon, Jane Lubchenco, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s administrator, defended the government’s work, saying it was done by the “best scientific minds” and reviewed by outsiders.
“We remain confident in our assessment,” she said. . . .
Testifying before a House subcommittee Thursday, Florida State University professor Ian R. MacDonald called the administration’s account “misleading.” He said that the government’s assumptions about how much oil is breaking down underwater were too optimistic and that its report didn’t mention the natural gas that gushed out of BP’s Macondo well along with the oil.
“This oil is going to be in the environment for a long time. I think that the imprint of the BP release, the discharge, will be detectable in the Gulf of Mexico for the rest of my life,” said MacDonald, who is 58.
I had a brief post on earlier, optimistic assessments of the spill’s environmental effects here. As I said then, it’s still much too soon to know the magnitude and nature of the spill’s environmental and other effects. We’re in uncharted waters here.