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BP spill left 'bathtub ring' of oil across more than 1,200 square miles of Gulf seafloor, new study says
By Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on October 27, 2014 at 8:06 PM, updated October 27, 2014 at 8:54 PM
Scientists have found evidence of a "bathtub ring" of oil particles from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill covering more than 1,200 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico's seafloor, according to a study published online Monday (Oct. 27) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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A team of scientists with the University of California-Santa Barbara, University of California-Irvine, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute tested more than 3,000 samples of sediment taken from 534 locations in the Gulf for the chemical hepane, a constituent of crude oil that was found in the oil released from BP's Macondo well.
The oil was deposited in two ways, according to the paper: " a 'bathtub ring' formed from an oil-rich layer of water" that lay along the Gulf's continental slope at a depth of a half-mile to 4/5ths of a mile; and a "'fallout plume' where suspended oil particles sank to underlying sediment" that was as much as a mile deep."We also suggest that a significant quantity of oil was deposited on the ocean floor outside this area but so far has evaded detection because of its heterogeneous spatial distribution," the paper concluded. The greatest amounts of oil were seen near the Macondo well and in areas just west of the well, according to maps of the contamination, and overlap with several deepwater coral reefs that other researchers have concluded were damaged by oil from the BP well.
Lead author David Valentine, a professor of microbial geochemistry at UCSB, said in an exchange of emails from Barcelona, Spain, that the paper helps explain what happened to a significant share of the oil that left the well. In federal court proceedings, the Justice Department has estimated that 4.2 million barrels of oil were released during the spill, compared to an estimate of 2.45 million barrels by BP.
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Full text:
http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2014/10/bp_spill_left_bathtub_ring_of.html#incart_river
By Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on October 27, 2014 at 8:06 PM, updated October 27, 2014 at 8:54 PM
Scientists have found evidence of a "bathtub ring" of oil particles from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill covering more than 1,200 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico's seafloor, according to a study published online Monday (Oct. 27) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
...
A team of scientists with the University of California-Santa Barbara, University of California-Irvine, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute tested more than 3,000 samples of sediment taken from 534 locations in the Gulf for the chemical hepane, a constituent of crude oil that was found in the oil released from BP's Macondo well.
The oil was deposited in two ways, according to the paper: " a 'bathtub ring' formed from an oil-rich layer of water" that lay along the Gulf's continental slope at a depth of a half-mile to 4/5ths of a mile; and a "'fallout plume' where suspended oil particles sank to underlying sediment" that was as much as a mile deep."We also suggest that a significant quantity of oil was deposited on the ocean floor outside this area but so far has evaded detection because of its heterogeneous spatial distribution," the paper concluded. The greatest amounts of oil were seen near the Macondo well and in areas just west of the well, according to maps of the contamination, and overlap with several deepwater coral reefs that other researchers have concluded were damaged by oil from the BP well.
Lead author David Valentine, a professor of microbial geochemistry at UCSB, said in an exchange of emails from Barcelona, Spain, that the paper helps explain what happened to a significant share of the oil that left the well. In federal court proceedings, the Justice Department has estimated that 4.2 million barrels of oil were released during the spill, compared to an estimate of 2.45 million barrels by BP.
...
Full text:
http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2014/10/bp_spill_left_bathtub_ring_of.html#incart_river