BP Abandons Arctic Drilling Interests in Greenland

With a rubber stamp of disapproval in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil company is reportedly having difficulty convincing other countries to partake in an offshore handshake. The Guardian learned that BP has relented on its interest in procuring an exploration license in Greenland. A company spokesman told the paper that it removed itself from bid-round contention, and further sources note that the decision stemmed from a mutual agreement between BP and Greenland over the inappropriateness of the oil company's participation. In the oil world, this is code for 'we're breaking up', 'you're out of the club' or other relevant adult adages. (Can BP ever rebuild its reputation?) The setback, which follows the announcement this week of a major find in the region by British rival Cairn Energy, is the first sign that the Gulf of Mexico disaster may have permanently damaged BP's ability to operate — not just in US waters, but in other environmentally-sensitive parts of the world. Source: Times Mobile

Gulf Waste Heads to Landfills, Problems Ahead

AP / Reuters - Times Mobile

(NEW ORLEANS) -- The cleanup of history's worst peacetime oil spill is generating thousands of tons of oil-soaked debris that is ending up in local landfills, some of which were already dealing with environmental concerns. The soft, absorbent boom that has played the biggest role in containing the spill alone would measure more than twice the length of California's coastline, or about 2,000 miles. More than 50,000 tons of boom and oily debris have made their way to landfills or incinerators, federal officials told The Associated Press, representing about 7% of the daily volume going to nine area landfills. (See pictures of BP oil spill victims.) A month after the oil stopped flowing into the Gulf, the emphasis has shifted toward cleanup and disposal of oily trash at government-approved landfills in coastal states. Environmental Protection Agency officials say the sites meet federal regulations, are equipped to handle the influx of waste and are being monitored closely, although three sites have state environmental issues. State records show two are under investigation and one was cited in May for polluting nearby waters. (See pictures of protests against BP.) Some residents and experts question the wisdom of adding crude-covered refuse to dumps, since it could take years for potential problems to surface. They worry about the impact on groundwater if contaminants leach past liners enclosing the decaying garbage. "Common sense would tell you you probably shouldn't keep dumping there if there are already problems," said Eric Schaeffer, a former head of the EPA's enforcement office who now heads a Washington-based legal advocacy group. "EPA needs to be able to say why despite the violations and discharges these are safe." Weathered oil is less toxic than fresh oil, the EPA says, but can still contain some levels of benzene and other risky chemicals. Both BP and the EPA are sampling the waste each week at the landfills, and the EPA and U.S. Coast Guard officials alike say so far it has not turned out to be hazardous. In some landfills, the spill waste is being mixed directly with regular household and industrial trash, which can contain chemicals, plastics and food. It is too soon to tell if the potential hazards from the oily waste would be greater than any risks posed by what's already in the landfills, experts say. That will depend on the volume of the Gulf trash, the mass of industrial chemicals already there and how all those agents interact over time, said Conrad Volz, who directs the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. In the meantime, the alternative to using already troubled landfills is placing oily waste in other dumps without environmental issues -- where oily waste's potential impacts could be tracked separately, experts say. "The oily waste may not be the most toxic thing in those landfills," said Kurt Pennell, an environmental engineer at Tufts University who sits on a National Research Council committee studying groundwater problems near landfills and Superfund sites. "But obviously if ... the landfill isn't well controlled, that is problematic." EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus, who oversees the agency's waste management plans, said the landfills can handle the oily waste properly. "The landfills ... have the system in place, the kind of liner, the kind of monitoring systems to manage this so that there are not environmental impacts," Stanislaus said in an interview. "If there are any issues of concern, we will revisit." The Gulf trash's trip to the landfill begins in oiled marshes and beaches where tar balls washed up regularly. Recently, near the mouth of the Mississippi, workers standing in small boats collected 16,000 feet of oily absorbent boom in one day alone from waters surrounding one oil-covered marsh. The boom is wrung out and dried before being shipped to landfills or incinerators. Concerns about pollution prompted Harrison County, Miss., supervisors to decide against accepting more oily waste in their coastal county, which is recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Waste is being trucked to the Chastang Landfill 25 miles north of Mobile, Ala., where state officials are investigating high levels of mercury and barium found in the dump's groundwater monitoring wells. Nearby residents said they were worried that more chemicals were coming to the facility. "We already got enough problems here, and now they're going to bring us the oil and everything that comes out of those Gulf beaches?" said Lawrence Andry, 70. The landfill's owner, Waste Management, believes the water contamination is the result of naturally occurring metals in the soil, not the dump, and is performing tests, said spokesman Ken Haldin. Gulf waste also is taken to the county-run Magnolia Landfill about 60 miles south in Summerdale, Ala., which is being investigated for groundwater tainted with arsenic, acetone and other pollutants. State officials fined the dump $30,000 last month for failing to properly monitor methane flares used to burn off gas from the heap. Ed Fox, who manages the facility, said people should not worry because the well water used to monitor pollution is tested twice a year. The Colonial Landfill in Sorrento, La., which is receiving Gulf waste, was cited in May for exceeding its permitted spills into a stream feeding the Lake Pontchartrain basin 11 times last year. State officials said the dump fixed the problem last month, but got another state citation for failing to show inspectors log books and install proper barriers around its monitoring wells -- problems the operator says were addressed. Louisiana environmental authorities said Friday they are still in violation. When informed that three landfills had issues, Stanislaus said EPA officials had visited the facilities and knew of the deficiencies, but that didn't disqualify them from accepting spill waste. "We take these issues very seriously," he said. "If we find any major violations at any landfill that would impact the health of communities, and the state doesn't step in and act swiftly ... the on-scene coordinator and EPA will step in and stop any waste shipment." BP's three waste hauling contractors say they're following strict procedures to ensure safe disposal, as do operators of the receiving dumps. Houston-based Waste Management Inc. has a contract to dispose of waste from Mississippi, Alabama and part of the Florida Panhandle. The rest of Florida is handled by Phoenix-based trash hauler Republic Services Inc., and Heritage Environmental Services has the BP contract for Louisiana. Burke reported from Fresno, Calif.

Deep Water Dead Zone Predicted in the Gulf - Discovery News

http://news.discovery.com/earth/oil-spill-dead-zone.html

Deep Water Dead Zone Predicted in the Gulf

August 23, 2010 11:20:00 AM

The oil gusher on the Gulf seabed may be stopped, but much of the spilled oil still lurks in a plume of oil and dissolved methane gas 3,200-4,300 feet below the surface.

New research predicts that this plume will likely create a low-oxygen "dead zone" inhospitable to life in these deep waters, as microbes consume the oil and gas entrained in the plume.

The cold temperatures in the plume will slow the growth of the microbes compared to microbes acting at the surface. Because of this slower growth, the team predicts that it will be sometime in the fall before the oxygen levels hit their minimum.

But weak currents at that depth mean that the low oxygen levels may persist for a long time, with little mixing to bring in oxygenated waters: the team estimates it will be a couple of years before the oxygen levels return to normal.

The findings, now in press at the journal Geophysical Research Letters, predict that the zone will be similar in size to the well-known seasonal dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River caused by nutrient runoff upriver, though the new zone will remain within about 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the spill site.

"The area of the seasonal dead zone on the shelf is much larger, but it's much thinner," said study author Robert Hallberg of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ. "This one is a smaller area, but it's thick. It's still a small area compared to the Gulf of Mexico."

Many researchers have been speculating that the deepwater plume would create a dead zone as microbes ate the undersea oil and gas, consuming oxygen in the process. The new work combines the best estimates for how much oil was released with detailed models of ocean currents and information about typical microbial oil degradation rates to show that the conditions in the Gulf should, indeed, produce one.

Unlike the seasonal dead zone, which occurs in shallow waters, the oil-caused zone will be deep enough that fisheries shouldn't be affected. "I'm not expecting that this is going to have really dire consequences for people," Hallberg said. "There may be consequences for deep ecosystems."

"It's almost a separate ocean down there," agreed Monty Graham of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, who observed oxygen depletion in shallower waters following the spill. "That doesn't mean it's not important for diversity. We don't know the impact on the deep-diving marine mammals that might be going down searching for food."

While this study predicts oxygen depletion near the spill site, plume measurements made in June and published in Science last week showed very little oxygen consumption by microbial oil degradation.

"On the face of it, it might appear to be in contradiction to what we are saying," Hallberg said. "but if you take into account the temperature, the oxygen depletion should be peaking in the fall. Those observations from June may have been taken too soon and too close to the source so that the oxygen drawdown may not have been realized yet."

Another possibility, Graham said, is that the oil degradation rate estimates that the team used in their simulations may not match those of the actual microbial community in the plume. "It could be a time lag difference that the community of microbes hasn't established itself and therefore it's not operating at its maximum efficiency."

The study also provided information about the spill's toxicity by estimating the concentrations of various oil components in the deepwater plume over time.

"We weren't finding widespread concentrations of the oil that would be acutely toxic at the level that kills organisms over a couple of days," Hallberg said.

"I am less worried about the hypoxia than I am about the potential chronic effects of these hydrocarbons on the organisms and larvae," said Nancy Kinner , head of the Center for Spills in Environment at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

"What we really don't know is if you have a low dose -- a low concentration in the water for a long exposure -- what's the chronic impact going to be?"

Hallberg agreed. "We know that compounds like toluene and benzene are regulated as known human carcinogens. You could imagine that there could be something similar for marine organisms, or something that affects development, or something that doesn't actually kill them. That's something where I think there's going to be a lot of research in the coming year."

Microbes Munching Gulf Oil - Discovery News

http://news.discovery.com/earth/oil-microbes-bacteria-plume.html

Microbes Munching Gulf Oil

August 24, 2010 1:01:00 PM

Oil-degrading microbes in the deep ocean have been munching away on the Gulf of Mexico oil plume at rates faster than expected for the cold temperatures found almost 4,000 feet below the water's surface, according to research published today.

"This paper is great news," said Nancy Kinner, director of the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. "I think this paper is another piece in the puzzle showing us that degradation was occurring and was occurring fairly rapidly, even at the cold temperatures."

The results, published today in the journal Science, came from measurements taken between May 25 and June 2. The team has also made follow-up observations since the leak was stopped on July 15. The recent figures indicate that the bacteria -- plus dilution into clean water -- have made quick work of the oil plume.

"Within two weeks we saw the plume entirely disappear," study lead author Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., told Discovery News. "We have not been able to detect this plume at all for the last three weeks. They haven't been able to detect oil at the surface. What we do find is that the bacteria are still there."

"Slowly the bacteria will go back to natural levels, assuming that there's no more carbon input," Hazen said.

The team used a long list of methods to compare water inside and out of the plume. They measured levels of oil-related compounds, identified what microbes were present at what quantities, and surveyed which genes were active in the microbes' metabolisms.

Compared to water outside the plume, the oil-laden waters were enriched in microbes known to consume oil at cold temperatures, according to the team's analysis. The researchers also found that many genes responsible for oil degradation were active in these organisms.

The degradation rates estimated by the team were higher than other measurements for the deepwater temperature of 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), but they are not unprecedented, Hazen said.

"This is what we expected because the Gulf of Mexico receives the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year in seeps of oil," he said. Since the waters continuously receive oil from natural seeps on the sea floor, the Gulf's deep marine microbes have evolved to eat oil.

"This is the only carbon source that they have, so naturally they've become adapted to using this well," Hazen said. The results suggest that these organisms were at the ready when the plume formed.

While the team measured relatively fast degradation rates, they found fairly low overall oil concentrations and little resulting depletion of the oxygen dissolved in the water.

While the study is good news in the context of a disaster, the findings do not mean that everything is back to normal in these waters, Kinner emphasized.

"The book is still open on whether there are impacts on organisms that may have been exposed, or to larvae that may have been exposed," she said. "This shows the power of biodegradation as a mechanism for the weathering of the oil. This does not mean that there are not some organisms that were impacted."

Executive Order for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes

The President has issued an Executive Order (EO) that establishes the nation's first comprehensive national policy for the stewardship of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes. The EO adopts the final recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, and directs federal agencies to take steps to implement them. It also creates an interagency National Ocean Council to strengthen ocean governance, and provide sustained, high-level focus on the national priority objectives for action to advance the national policy.

"Protecting our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes is critical to the health of our communities, vibrancy of our economy and overall security of our nation," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "The new national policy provides a clear road map for all federal agencies to work together, with local partners, to protect our vital waters for future generations. EPA is proud to have played a role in the development of this plan and the continued protection of our treasured natural resources."

The EO, final recommendations, other key documents, and the full press release can found at the National Ocean Council website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/oceans.

Source: EPA Waterheadlines