BP CEO disputes claims of underwater oil plumes

[CountAllVotes]

Source: Associated Press

VENICE, La. (AP) -- BP PLC CEO Tony Hayward on Sunday disputed claims by scientists that large undersea plumes have been set adrift by the Gulf oil spill and said the cleanup fight has narrowed to surface slicks rolling into Louisiana's coastal marshes.

During a tour of a company staging area for cleanup workers, Hayward said BP's sampling showed "no evidence" that oil was suspended in large masses beneath the surface. He didn't elaborate on how the testing was done.

"The oil is on the surface," Hayward said. "Oil has a specific gravity that's about half that of water. It wants to get to the surface because of the difference in specific gravity."

Scientists from several universities have reported plumes of what appears to be oil suspended in clouds stretching for miles and reaching hundreds of feet beneath the Gulf's surface.

Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/BP-CEO-disputes-claims-of-apf-2373704255.html?x=0&.v=3

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No comment. Picture says a thousand words!!

[TeaBagsAreForCups]

1. Someone, please....

... just handcuff and leg-iron this arrogant prick and then chopper him to a decommissioned oil platform leaving him there for eternity with but a fishing pole and a case of spf30.

[DeSwiss]

7. +1000

[complain jane]

13. That's a bit inappropriate.

Why provide the guy with the spf30.

[TeaBagsAreForCups]

16. Kudos, you win...

... the prize!

(I intentionally put that in there to see how long it took for someone to rightfully challenge me on the gesture of providing this scum any protection. He should, indeed, burn.)

[DRoseDARs]

2. I wondered about that too. So either I'm smarter than scientists, or Hayward needs to stfu.

Seriously, can someone with a better grasp of the science explain the plumes? Oil floats on top of water, yet these plumes exist. How?

[Towlie]

3. This NYT article discusses that question:

Apparently it's somewhat of a mystery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/science/earth/29plume.html?src=mv

This is just the conclusion. Please read the whole thing.

Slowly, as the Walton Smith and other boats worked the gulf this past week, the weird physics of a deep-water well blowout came into better focus. The idea that oil rises quickly to the surface of an ocean may be one of the casualties of this disaster.

“Nothing really makes sense out here,” Dr. Joye said as her ship plowed through orange slicks of oil. “I don’t know that you can necessarily trust your intuition.”

[Ruby the Liberal]

5. Corexit - The 700k gallons of unknown (proprietary) chemicals BP has pumped into the gulf

so that the oil "sinks".

It breaks crude down to globs and much of it sinks rather than floats.

BP uses this toxin to minimize the visual surface residue (for the cameras).

Our EPA said it is too toxic and that they need to stop.

BP told the FDA, "fuck you" and the EPA apologized for disrupting their operations and told them to keep on keeping on.

Where in holy hell OSHA is on this is the $64,000 question as they seemingly fell off the planet.

[scentopine]

6. If you look at some of the video of the leaks - you will see

the injection of dispersant occurs at the leak source (i.e. at a depth of 5000 ft).

Water is composed of positive and negative charged regions. The opposite charged regions bind water molecules together. Oil molecules are bound by a different mechanism. They do not have similarly charged regions (i.e. water will not be attracted to it) and this prevents oil and water from "mixing" (this also provides a hint of why oil is so difficult to clean from certain plastics, both oil and some plastics are comprised of organic compounds bound by similar chains).

The dispersant effect is similar to what you see with a drop of dish detergent in the middle of olive oil floating in dish water. The dispersant breaks the oil into small droplets by forming a special structure that surrounds the oil. The size of the droplet is key. What is being suspected is the dispersant is changing the specific gravity of the oil droplets as a function of the size/mass of the oil droplets. The oil is no longer at its natural specific gravity of slightly less than one (i.e. it won't float up to the surface). The oil droplets are aggregating below the surface creating a relatively static column of oil below the surface. The hypothesis is that over time the currents should disperse the oil droplets randomly over large regions resulting in less damage than as a surface slick of pure oil (where it could be boomed and removed or burned). This is unproven. Obviously if a collection of particles of the same specific gravity is released in the same area and exposed to the same forces, all the particles will move in the same way. This explanation is still under investigation but some consensus exists.

A bunch of complex factors (temp, pressure, chemical composition of the dispersant) go into determining the exact composition and specific gravity of the captured oil droplets, I won't pretend to know the details of the chemistry involved. It is my understanding from reviewing various material that the larger the drop, the more likely it is to float up to the surface. I would appreciate any clarification or correction on this.

Below link is one of the better discussions. Here you will also see some discussion on the relationship between lipids and cell biology and why these dispersants may pose a serious health risk to animal life.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/50649

Also see this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_thermometer

Keep in mind that water at that depth is about 3C and the water is composed of many different minerals. The oil is a mix of sand and other debris under high pressure. All of this determines specific gravity of the the captured oil droplets.

[Kali]

17. think of Italian salad dressing

emulsion

[time_has_come]

4. uh...we've seen the video by Cousteau (sp?) and heard about oil coming into beaches underwater...

...is this a "our scientists have found no evidence that C02 causes global warming" moment?

This moron doesn't understand the world is listening now. They're not funneling dollars to the Heritage Foundation to misinform the disinterested masses here, people are paying attention and the truth is obvious.

[2Design]

8. so it begins - backing off responsibility

[ironrooster]

9. This is truly surreal - the fucking plumes have been witnessed and filmed

This craven and depraved fucker is completely incapable of telling the truth, or at least admitting something like "..we don't know" -
Lying sack-of-shit Hayward is a pathological liar - or he has gone insane(take your pick).
Somebody needs to make some shirts up with his face with LIAR printed on his forehead.

[droidamus2]

10. Convenient

Isn't he basically telling us to 'ignore the man behind the curtain' or in this case 'ignore the oil under the water that you can't see'. Very convenient considering that you can't get the dramatic pictures you get from the surface oil reaching shore. So far, at least according to some scientists and investigators, BP has underestimated the volume of oil coming from the deep sea well, stated they had ways to solve the problem that didn't, tried to blame a subsidiary and now claiming that undersea oil plumes can't possibly exist because 'oil floats'. Exactly why are we listening to these people?

[eagertolearn]

11. Yeah I saw some jerk on CNN last night who said that there is a lot of natural

oil in the ocean and that this wasn't as bad as everyone is saying!:shrug: :eyes: :eyes: :eyes:

[defendandprotect]

12. Lying is what the oil industry does best . . .!!

[jwirr]

14. The games people play. This is how they lie to us. A scientist makes

a claim and immediately the company denies it. The problem is that they know we cannot verify it for ourselves and that leaves us with a doubt. Which is exactly what they want us to feel. As long as we have doubts we will not act. The scientists have no reason to lie so I for one will listen to them.

[tomm2thumbs]

15. the oil is just magically vanishing - like it never even happened

ain't Right Winger science amazin' ?

[kirby]

18. What he fails to mention...

He says:
"Oil has a specific gravity that's about half that of water. It wants to get to the surface because of the difference in specific gravity."

What he fails to answer is what is the specific gravity of oil that has bonded with the dispersant?

I mean, hasn't the dispersant made the oil heavier and it is sinking to the bottom. So common sense says 'partially' treated oil will have a specific gravity in between that will cause it to float with neutral buoyancy.