What you may not know about the use of dispersant subsea in the Gulf of Mexico

[Kip Humphrey]

Subsea use of toxic dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico = hide the oil + long-term catastrophe

What you may not know about the use of dispersant subsea in the Gulf of Mexico:

1. Applying dispersant into the high pressure oil column subsea tends to atomizes the oil and encapsulates it in dispersant that is toxic to oil eating bacteria.
   
   
2. The dispersant causes the oil droplets to become neutrally buoyant.
   
   
3. The Gulf of Mexico water column is unusual in that it is stratified into water layers stacked one atop another such that:
   
   
   • these water layers exist at distinct depths and have distinct boundaries
     
   • these water layers seldom intermix
     
   • different layers hold horizontal currents that flow in various directions
     
   • depending on location, there can be as many as 6 distinct horizontal water layers in the water column
   
   
4. As the toxic dispersant-encapsulated neutrally-buoyant oil droplets are propelled from the well, they can be captured by cross currents and carried horizontally away from the well site to be lost in the layers of the Gulf so that only a diminished percentage of oil reaches the surface.
   
   
5. These suspended toxic dispersant-encapsulated oil droplets remain un-degraded by bacteria or sunlight and are destined to come to shore over a period of many years, killing marine life all the while.

If you examine pictures of oil coming to shore, you will notice that the surface goo floating on the surface appears as brownish flattened mats - it has been degraded by sunlight. You may also see suspended in the water beneath the surface, globules of black oil being driven to shore. These black globs are un-degraded oil originating from the subsurface water column layers which are forced upward toward the surface by the ascending sea floor.


In my opinion, BP has done this NOT to help clean up or protect anything other than their image and bank account; they have done this to hide the oil and reduce their liability as counted in barrels of oil released. Besides, there is no way to clean up the oil that remains subsea other than to wait out the years as it slowly washes ashore.


BTW, hurricanes may help bring some of this subsea oil to the surface because strong hurricanes tend to cause subsurface turbulence which disrupts the subsurface water column layers and can bring some of the suspended oil that is trapped in those stratified water layers to the surface. Once the oil reaches the surface the dispersant can evaporate, the oil can degrade, and surface remediations can be applied. Imperfect as such surface remediations are, they are a better alternative to the long-term devastating consequences to marine life and to the wetlands that the suspended subsurface oil will cause over years.


Credentials: For 9 years, Senior Project Controls Engineer for Deepwater Subsea Projects, Gulf of Mexico

[Child_Of_Isis]

1. I'm wondering also about those large underwater plumes

that Rachel went on about for a week or more. Those things are huge. If a hurricane comes and dumps one of those inland.... it's going to be bad.

I also heard they had a pipe down by the flow that is pumping dispersent on the oil as it comes out. I don't know if that is true or not, but it seems like something BP would do to further hide the oil.

[Kip Humphrey]

3. it is unfortunately too true (injection of dispersant subsea at the leak)

[Catherina]

2. Terrible. Terrible. Thanks. Rec'd n/t

[Angry Dragon]

4. Will this oil also coat the sea floor??

Causing a wide area of the sea floor to be dead??

[Kip Humphrey]

7. Some oil will coat the nearby sea floor due to the violence and turbulence at the wellhead. But,

because the oil is shooting upward at velocity,
because of the horizontal layering of the water column,
because of the neutral buoyancy the dispersant imparts to the oil,

a greater percentage of the oil will be trapped in the horizontal water layers and remain suspended, slowly washing to shore over years. That said, the greatest percentage of suspended oil will likely precipitate out to the sea floor, carried there by adhering to dead phytoplankton and other aquatic remains that drop to the sea floor through (and due to) the oil suspension. Keep in mind, the coat of dispersant will prevent that subsea oil from degrading and will extend its harmful effect to the deepwater ecosystem for a long time.

[hedgehog]

5. I've thought the dispersant use had more to do with PR

than anything else. Too bad no one told BP that lots of people have access to diving equipment and underwater video cameras!

[HughMoran]

6. This is a tough subject to research

I've literally spent hours trying to find unbiased scientific information concerning the drawbacks of using dispersant. I've heard it claimed that keeping it underwater saves turtles, pelicans and other shoreline animals at the cost of losing certain fish stocks & other seafloor life. The long-term effect of these submerged hybrid oil/dispersant compounds is not discussed anywhere that I can find, other than noting that it is highly toxic in the first 96 hours.

I will state that barrels released is now quite high and that emanates from the well, so how they collect/disperse the oil will have no effect at all on any per barrel fines they might have to pay. I personally think the fines will be waived or reduced so long as BP keeps repaying people and businesses for lost wages (quid-pro-quo as it were).

[Kip Humphrey]

8. Sunlight will break down dispersants after 96 hours exposure...

Unfortunately, subsea use of dispersant eliminates this remediation for the dispersant-encapsulated oil suspended within the water layers in the Gulf.

[HughMoran]

10. Yes, though I just realized that there is no life where there is no sunshine.

So it will be toxic for some time whenever/wherever it emerges from the depths. Like a time release pill - except it's poison. :scared:


Edit: well, there is also thermal/sulfur based life, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.

[Kip Humphrey]

11. I used to think so too...Turns out there is a surprisingly rich variety of life in the deepwater GOM

We're dodging what the MMS euphemistically calls "archaeological sites" (actually, colonies of tube worms) all the time.

[HughMoran]

13. Ah, I found a good source of information on these tube worms

Interesting source indeed - http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/regulate/environ/chemo/chemo.html

[csziggy]

20. Heck they've even found things that live on the frozen methane

http://articles.sfgate.com/1997-07-30/news/17753534_1_worms-food-web-planets

ice worms
A dense colony of one-to-two inch-long polychaete worms living on and in the surface of the methane hydrate.

Redefining "Life as We Know it"

David Pacchioli
Friday, May 4, 2001

In 1997, Charles Fisher, professor of biology at Penn State, discovered this remarkable creature living on mounds of methane ice under half a mile of ocean on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. The flat, pink worms, one or two inches in length, use their appendages like oars to move around the surface of the ice as they graze for the bacteria also living there.

The new worm species, Hesiocaeca methanicola, may have some influence on the formation of natural gas deposits on the sea floor and, if so, on how we go about mining gas as a source of energy. It has already helped redefine "life as we know it." The bacteria the ice worms eat, and the methane both species grow on, could provide clues about early life on this and other planets.


Fisher came upon the worms by accident while collecting tubeworms near hydrocarbon seeps at the sea floor. Before the discovery, methane ice had been of most interest to geologists and energy companies, not biologists. The area where the ice worms live is under extremely high pressure and, at 7°C, very low temperatures. Adds Fisher, "The ice worm community is in itself a new ecosystem. We found an animal living in an environment that we never thought of as a habitat for animals." The ice was formed when methane gas rose up from deposits deep beneath the sea floor. Ancient bacteria that may have lived beneath the Earth's crust, feeding on this gas, migrated with it, eventually settling on the ice.

The ice worms, which are not ancient animals but are related to the common red mud worms we see after a rain, would have come along later. But the mere fact that they can survive such a harsh environment shows the long-term adaptive capabilities some animal species possess. Says Fisher, "The animals we study live in some very extreme, very strange environ-ments and they adapt to it using special physiology, special anatomy, and special behavior."

More: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=339<.div>

[PufPuf23]

16. Thanks for your pragmatism

Scientifically, the dispersant is immediate eyewash that accerbates the ecological damage, makes mechanical clean up more difficult, and will extend the time of what will be an ecologic recovery in generations or not possible until a major human population crash or change in lifestyle.

[flyarm]

9. Thank You Kip for posting ..truth...and this important Info!! eom

[Maru Kitteh]

12. Kicked and Rec'd with a very heavy heart.

[xchrom]

14. Recommend

[Empathic_1]

15. Thank you. Please, spread this info far and wide. We are headed for a cataclysmic

end if we don't remove the abusers.

[PufPuf23]

17. Thank you k&r

[autorank]

18. k*r I knew your were smart but

damn, excellent Kip!!!

[Kip Humphrey]

19. while working in the belly of the beast

I've learned a thing or twenty-five!
:hi: autorank!

[leveymg]

21. Kip, COREXIT is also extremely toxic to fish eggs - will kill off generations of marine life

The dispersants being used literally dissolve cell membranes in living creatures, including blood cells. COREXIT is four times as toxic as crude oil. Very small concentrations, parts per million, were tested on numerous species of fish and bottom life and shown to be fatal. Here's the test results conducted by Exxon Biological Services for the COREXIT 9500 series compounds: http://www.iosc.org/papers/00020.pdf

Please also see, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6/15/884/26549

The use of dispersants has turned this event into a mass species wipeout for many types of marine life.

[Kip Humphrey]

22. Not that the oil isn't bad enough, the use of dispersant subsea

has turned this nightmare well catastrophe into a nightmare catastrophe of unimaginable proportions from which there will be no awakening for a very long time. I can only hope that deepwater GoM marine life, through millions of years of exposure to sea bottom oil & gas seepage, have evolved the capacity to survive this.

[Karenina]

31. Riddle me this. How is it that no one seems to be albe to

STOP THEM?

[cwydro]

23. K and R

It's obvious they're trying to hide evidence.

They won't be able to....this will get worse.

[Laelth]

24. I fully agree. The use of dispersants is a crime all by itself.

The fact that the government is continuing to allow dispersants to be used shows that the government also wants to cover up the crime rather than dealing with it appropriately (skimming and capture on the surface).

:dem:

-Laelth

[BelgianMadCow]

25. Thank you. Thank You. THANK YOU

have been going crazy about this issue. Few people understand what a dispersant is, and you made the effects pretty clear. Well done! I'm in an office with bio-engineers, water chemists and environmental engineers and none of them really made much of it :crazy:

It's arguably the biggest crime of them all and it's continued & allowed. And you effing bet it's about liability. Subsurface plumes unbelievably still denied in the thursday hearing, and their origin questioned...enough said.

The ONLY thing they have been able to do right is what 2 of the feeds almost always show: "DISPERSANT OPS"

For those that haven't found a good link for the feed wall: http://bp.isevil.org

[TBF]

26. Recommended. n/t

[OwnedByFerrets]

27. Been knowing about it since they started using it....

they dont give a rats ass about our gulf. Never have, never will.

[scarletwoman]

28. K&R for the tragic truth...

Thank you very much for posting this. Other than that, I'm kinda speechless. Why is it that "our" government isn't going to stop this?

[defendandprotect]

29. And, meanwhile, they might have been able to use a COAGULANT ...!!

Thom Hartmann reported on the availability of a COAGULANT almost immediately --

It is readily available -- and is NOT TOXIC --

It would clump the oil together making it easier to pick up --

and after the oil is picked up, the COAGULANT is recoverable and REUSABLE!!

[defendandprotect]

30. Thank you -- Can't really say I understand all of it right now . . .

but certainly the way any part of this catastropic oil spill may compound into

into something even more deadly might be expected --

and we haven't had a clue how to respond up front -- !