See inset view below.
On April 29, the MODIS image on the Terra satellite captured a wide-view natural-color image of the oil slick (outlined in white) just off the Louisiana coast. The oil slick appears as dull gray interlocking comma shapes, one opaque and the other nearly transparent. Sunglint — the mirror-like reflection of the sun off the water — enhances the oil slick’s visibility. The northwestern tip of the oil slick almost touches the Mississippi Delta. Credit: NASA/Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center MODIS Direct Broadcast system.
NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites are helping the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) keep tabs on the extent of the recent Gulf oil spill with satellite images from time to time. NOAA is the lead agency on oil spills and uses airplane fly-overs to assess oil spill extent.
A semisubmersible drilling platform called the Deepwater Horizon located about 50 miles southeast of the Mississippi Delta experienced a fire and explosion at approximately 11 p.m. CDT on April 20. Subsequently, oil began spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico and efforts to contain the spill continue today. NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellite imagery has captured the spill in between cloudy days.
NOAA used data from the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument from the Terra satellite on April 26, 27 and 29 to capture the extent of the oil spill, which measured 600-square-miles. The MODIS instrument flies aboard both the Terra and Aqua satellites.
This satellite image from NASA’s Terra satellite on April 27 at 12:05 CDT shows the outline and extent of the oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. The red dot represents the platform. The coasts of Mississippi and Alabama appear at the top of the image. Credit: NOAA/NASA
› Larger image In the satellite image from April 27 at 12:05 p.m. CDT the MODIS image showed that the oil slick was continuing to emanate from the spill location. Individual slicks lay just north of 29 degrees and zero minutes north, where they have been noted in the days before. Oil had spread further east and the edge of the slick passed 87 degrees and 30 minutes west compared to the MODIS image taken on April 26. The April 26 satellite image came from NASA’s Aqua satellite.
On April 29, the MODIS image on the Terra satellite captured a natural-color image of the oil slick just off the Louisiana coast. The oil slick appeared as dull gray interlocking comma shapes, one opaque and the other nearly transparent. The northwestern tip of the oil slick almost touches the Mississippi Delta.
Deepwater Horizon had more than120 crew aboard and contained an estimated to 17,000 barrels of oil (700,000 gallons) of number two fuel oil or marine diesel fuel.
Today, April 30, NOAA declared the Deepwater Horizon incident “a Spill of National Significance (SONS).” A SONS is defined as, “a spill that, due to its severity, size, location, actual or potential impact on the public health and welfare or the environment, or the necessary response effort, is so complex that it requires extraordinary coordination of federal, state, local, and responsible party resources to contain and clean up the discharge” and allows greater federal involvement. NOAA’s estimated release rate of oil spilling into the Gulf is estimated at 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) per day based on surface observations and reports of a newly discovered leak in the damaged piping on the sea floor.
NOAA reported on April 29 that dispersants are still being aggressively applied to the oil spill and over 100,000 gallons have been applied. NOAA’s test burn late yesterday was successful and approximately 100 barrels of oil were burned in about 45 minutes. NOAA is flying planes over the area and using NASA satellite imagery from the Terra and Aqua satellites to monitor the spill.
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To all those that make claims (concerns) of the timing of this event– remember it is exactly this kind of speculation that got us into the CO2 and global warming mess. There is no proof, there is no evidence, its been 40 years since a major event on a US platform. There are many ways this tragedy could have unfolded some we know some we don’t. Lets wait for some evidence before we speculate -or heaven help us- some one models this event.
Valdez spilled 11 million gallons–which seems to be the total spilled
to date in this latest
Gulf tragedy–
the oil is still there in the Alaska beaches 3 inches below the surface–
20 years latter–
something the Gulf can look forward to
for at least the next twenty years
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/24
Of course more spills are likely over the next 20 years
and already many oil producing structures in the Gulf are currently
leaking smaller(unreported and minimized and discounted) amounts
of oil.
Alberta oilsands and Obama cartoon
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/2975596.bin
Mike Odin says:
May 1, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Valdez spilled 11 million gallons–which seems to be the total spilled
to date in this latest
Gulf tragedy–
the oil is still there in the Alaska beaches 3 inches below the surface–
20 years latter–
something the Gulf can look forward to
for at least the next twenty years
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/24
Of course more spills are likely over the next 20 years
and already many oil producing structures in the Gulf are currently
leaking smaller(unreported and minimized and discounted) amounts
of oil.
Your analogy to Valdez is way off the mark. Lets start again with the analogy warning from the National Academies:
“The reader is therefore strongly cautioned against inferring impacts from the mass loading rates. For instance, one might be tempted to calculate the “Exxon Valdez-equivalence” by comparing the quantity of petroleum released from a specific source to that released during the Exxon Valdez spill and then concluding that the impact of the petroleum release will be a corresponding multiple of the Exxon Valdez impact. This is a flawed analysis. Ecotoxicological responses are driven by the dose of petroleum hydrocarbons available to an organism, not the amount of petroleum released into the environment. Because of the complex environmental processes acting on the released petroleum, dose is rarely directly proportional to the amount released. In addition, one must consider the type of petroleum released and the susceptibility of the target organisms.”
Valdez was very near shore, heavy crude and catastrophic release. It meant that the oil hit the beach with very little weathering and spreading. The area where it hit was a cool water ecosystem and without the a base of seep biota that is found in the Gulf. The Valdez cleanup made some tragic mistakes in the zeal to cleanup – sterilizing much of the substrate with with steam and surfactants. The Gulf spill is 100 mi off shore a lighter crude, more spreading meaning lower concentration. It has the opportunity to skim and a lot of the oil is emulsified in deep water. The more toxic BTEX fraction will evaporate before it hits land and much of the oil will be removed from the water column by wind blown sand and plankton. The Gulf marshes have evolved in the face of natural oil seeps. The Ixtoc well Blow out recovered in months and the 8 million gallons released by Katrina couldn’t be found after the storm.
If I took you by boat into 3 different Alaskan harbors you would not be able to tell me which one was hit by the oil (Yes there is some oil under the rocks but it certainly isn’t causing any problems to the bird or fisheries)
National Academy report Oil in the Sea 2003 gives the impression that full recovery from a spill like this is 6 months to 3 years. Actually once the bacteria get going on the oil it will cause a boom phase for a few years in everything from invertebrates to birds. However this is not the type of information that brings in academic grants or sells newspapers. The perfect academic disaster is one that lasts an entire academic career– oil spill as annuity. My favorite was a Prof in Buzzard Bay? that claimed the marsh had not returned to normal because one species of crab made an unusual burrow shape compared to a non-impacted marsh
Keep in mind that the natural oil seeps coming from the Gulf are 25 to 30% of all the oil entering marine waters in the US- say 25million gal/year
Also understand if we don’t drill we then use super tankers and this risk is far greater than the platforms. Plus the drilling only moves a few miles into Mexican waters or off Cuba.
German Uboat torpedoes spilled 180 million gallons of oil of the New Jersey coast in 1942. As a kid we dealt with tar balls from time to time leaking out of the sunken ship but there was no environmental disaster.
During the 2008 election cycle, BP-linked donors gave $71,051 to Barack Obama’s senate campaign, more than they gave to any other senator that cycle.
BO+BP=Destruction of our environment!
rbateman says:
May 1, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Disputin says:
May 1, 2010 at 12:04 am
They can get a mechanical advantage vise down there the same way they got the BOP and everything else down there.
All the failsafes have failed.
Got a better idea than waiting 2 months for the relief drill to arrive and seal it off?
Now why didn’t I think of that! Just lower the jaws down on drill pipe, the same way the BOP got there. The rig has… plenty… of… er, the rig is currently a tangled mass of scorched steel on the seabed, probably about a mile from the well. The sea surface where it was is occupied by a blazing mass of gas and oil. After you, Sir.
Media seem to agree on a figure for the leakage of 200,000 gal/day
which is 8333 gal/hour,
which is 139 gal/min
which is 2.3 gal per second.
That’s about the rate of a man baling out his boat with a garden bucket. Less daunting a problem when seen in that perspective.
Excelsior says:
May 2, 2010 at 8:17 am
Media seem to agree on a figure for the leakage of 200,000 gal/day
Again the leakage rate is a meaningless figure outside the context of:
-crude type
-distance from shore
-distance below the surface
-weathering
-weather
-biota involved
-etc etc etc
This has been a truly informative blogpost for me, but I would like to offer a different perspective. I’m a native New Orleanian who, like most people in south Louisiana, likes to hunt and fish. If you’re not from here, you cannot comprehend the threat that this oil leak presents to our everyday way of life. In Louisiana, the average family still catches their own seafood or gets it from a family friend who does. A vast majority of the local population either owns their own fishing camp or visits regularly at a friend’s. These camps represent relatively huge investments of time, labor and money. Many people spend every weekend relaxing and/or working at their camps. It’s a labor of love that pays off in seafood and ducks. Oil in the marsh will ruin the fruits of our labor.
A conservative estimate is that 70% of all camps were completely destroyed by Katrina. Since then, a considerable portion of the population has been steadily rebuilding our camps -that is, after we finished rebuilding our homes. Life in the city after Katrina has been like living in an indescribable alternate universe. It was very much like a frontier life in the 21st century, but that’s another story for another day. Suffice it to say that the one thing that kept us in tolerably good spirits was the easy availability of good food.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the city was rebuilt by the local population, with a boost from immigrant laborers and volunteer workers. The government was virtually useless at every level, outside contractors ripped people off, the insurance companies screwed everybody at every turn, the media was bloated with misinformation and every so called savior turned out to be a snake oil salesman. Still, we persevered because we cling to this crazy notion that Louisiana is the best place to live in the whole world. Why? Because we have the best food in the world.
Let me back up and say that most people here don’t have problems with oil companies and their drilling rigs because we have first hand knowledge about their relatively innocuous presence in the marsh and offshore. (Of course, their canal digging earlier in the 20th century was a huge cause of coastal erosion, but they can’t do that anymore.) But I will say that the level of skepticism in the general population here, toward the media, big corporations and the government, is probably unmatched in the civilized world.
Since reading this blog, I have developed a slight hope about the dispersion rates of the oil, along with its ability to be consumed by microorganisms and by the environment in general. Burdened with only a slight understanding of the technical aspects of the drilling and capping procedures, I have a few questions for those who are defending BP’s operations with the ‘industry standards’ argument.
Are these the same standards that were rewritten by the Bush (big oil) administration? Weren’t the existing standards relaxed in order to lower costs and encourage domestic drilling? Doesn’t BP have a history of poor quality control? Safety meetings really don’t count for much. How do they test their materials before installation and verify their installation procedures?
Louisianaians are in general, a pretty unruly group. We never did quite accept American rule and that makes us the ones who rebelled against the rebellers. We just hunkered down and created our own little culture that doesn’t quite match anything found anywhere else in the world. There are as many strong, wild characters here, per capita, as anywhere in the world. We don’t have an independent streak, we take our independence for granted and pretty much ignore the rest of the world (of course, that’s not necessarily a completely good thing). However, there’s a very distinct object lesson about what happens when you get us working together on the same page.
In the Battle of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson was able to unite the entire population against the British invaders- well trained invaders who had a huge numbers advantage. He assembled pirates, slaves, freed men of color, aristocrats, even women and children, to fight against one thing: an invader who threatens the New Orleans way of life. Take note of the result of that battle, BP.
Katrina knocked our houses down and the federal levees flooded our city. We heard incessant blather from politicians, big corporations and the media about all the help we were going to get. It really didn’t happen. The levees have been rebuilt better than before, but it’s kind of after the fact. As for our homes and our fishing camps, we had to rebuild them ourselves. It was all a huge pain in the ass, but still we maintained a fairly cheerful attitude through all of it, because we still have spectacular fishing and hunting resources, and as a result, everyone here still eats like a king.
Now, a multinational corporation comes to town and potentially ruins our food supply for a few years (maybe decades) because of slipshod safety practices? BP would be better off taking bones from dogs than taking shrimp and oysters from Cajuns and Creoles. They should be very afraid because I know my neighbors. You want to talk about ecoterrorism? Watch for terrorism against BP facilities. ( And I’m certainly not condoning it.)
These guys can sneak up on a deer. They’ll shoot holes in tank batteries every chance they get. BP won’t have a safe pipeline anywhere. (You have to remember that the locals are the ones who know how to operate them. The BP workforce is already significantly infiltrated with them.) They will definitely have to leave Louisiana, if they can stay in business. I truly believe that almost every household here will have a viable lawsuit against them. Remember, we couldn’t sue the government for flooding our houses, and we couldn’t sue our insurance companies who just held our money until we were forced to accept their lowball offers. An awful lot of people are ready to get something back in exchange for all their troubles caused by outsiders. If our fisheries are severely damaged for any length of time, I see this as the end of BP Oil-either by an onslaught of lawsuits or by an army of shrimp deprived Cajuns, coupled with the crazies from the other Gulf states. They better hope they can clean this mess up before it does too much damage.
Why does it take 8 to 10 days to build a dome.
The SS Robert E. Peary was a Liberty ship which was built in the shortest time. Named after an American arctic explorer, she was launched just 4 days and 15 hours and 29 minutes after the keel was laid at a time when most ships of this type took around two months.
Wait a minute boys and girls, you are all speculating ! When the truth come out there will be a lot of posters here wishing they where mature enough to THIMK !!!!
I am a petroleum geologist and have worked the oilpatch for more than 20 years, I can give you hundreds of hypothesis but I would bet the cause is the one that I forgot to mention, have a little respect for those 11 men that have families and friends that have lost a father, husband, brother, son.
Swamp Thing- My thoughts are with you and yours. As a person who lives to hunt and fish I understand your concerns. Fear and misinformation are actually the greatest threats. This oil will be broken down fast and will not do the damage as claimed. The great caution I have for LA sportsmen is to be on guard for well meaning but misguided onshore clean up activities. Study after study shows the real damage was caused by cleanup crews tramping the marshlands, using hot water and surfactant cleaning techniques. Your marshes have developed in a habitat influenced by natural oil seeps. They will heal themselves. The wrong type of clean up can double the time for recovery.
My concerns go out to the fishing guides, outfitters and tackle dealers who will bear the true burden if the press scares away clients needlessly. The commercial fishermen will have access to Fed emergency disaster aid and in true political fashion the sport fishing industry will not.
Keep in mind that the real long term threats to coastal resources are habitat loss and alteration, bycatch, the shell fish diseases of Dermo and MSX etc. Oil spills get the national attention, and its impacts are distorted to the public. Oil spill as doom is good for academics getting grants, clean up companies getting grants, lawyers suing, Bureaucrats getting bigger budgets, newspapers selling copy. Unfortunately the doom story is bad for the “little people” trying to attract clients to make a living off the Gulf’s resources.
Stay hopeful-its never as bad as they say- Best thing to do is take another cast.
Good luck to you all.
I’m afraid Swamp Thing is selling an image of the “typical” Louisiana resident. This is how myths begin.
Our economy and tax base is primarily the oil & gas industry.
We are peace loving folk who are not prone to engage in ecoterrorism as ST implies.
Many Cajuns with 5th grade (or less) education have invented/engineered valuable oilfield tools. Many of those same uneducated folk are now multi-millionaire owners of service companies as a result of their ingenuity.
In earlier comments I noted the WSJ timeline which implied response times.
Based on news releases and news coverage today, the response preparation began with notification of the initial event and Coast Guard response and planning was immediate.
“7 towable skimming systems were sent” but wave heights are over 6′ for the past few days.
Coastal and Offshore Multi-Purpose Oil Spill Recovery Vessels (OSRV)
http://www.slickbar.com/JBF/coastal_offshore_vessels/#7000
Recovery Rate Capacity: 172 m3/hr
Recovery Efficiency: up to 99%
Effective Oil Collection Speed: up to 3 knots
Length 57 feet (17.4 meters)
Displacement: 25m tons
Draft: 1.8 feet (0.5 meters)
Recoverd Oil Storage Capacity:
4000 USG/15M3
Its a significant engineering problem?
Oil booms appear to be designed to manage spills in calm conditions. The booms they are deploying allow oil to wash under and over the booms in rough seas.
Isn’t there a boom and skimmer designed for rough seas related to an oil field that’s frequently in the path of hurricanes?
Since oil floats, can’t the boyancy be used in conjunction with a bubble wrap style envelope suspended from floating bouys to maintain a deeper boom for rough conditions?
Sorry, s/b buoys in the last post.
So many obvious questions come to mind. For instance:
Supertankers, on average, can carry about 2 million barrels or 84 million gallons of crude oil. If 1 million gallons have been released so far, do the existing efforts require the skimmers to return to port to unload instead of unloading at sea to a tanker?
Can they unload at sea in rough conditions and if not why were only 7 skimmers sent to cover over a thousand miles of spill? Where are they going to unload the muck and how are they going to dispose of it?
I’m sure they have worked all this out, has anyone seen any press on it yet?
Anyone know whether the wind/wave dispersion impact is positive or negative?
That MODIS image gives the appearance that the slick is being contained somewhat by a loop current.
Gulf eddies:
http://ocean.tamu.edu/Quarterdeck/QD6.1/spin.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100106193318.htm
Perhaps skimmers could use this current to some advantage.
Beware of models.
As of last tThursday, REAR admiral Janet napolitano DHS didn’t know if the deprt of defense had equipment for cleanup. The next day the navy deployed a lot of equipment. The hiring of clueless people by Obama is paying off. Had he kept more technical people from Bush, we wouldn’t have the epidemic of cluelessness.
The OSHA director comes from a teaching job and is published regarding teen transmission of std’s.
Obama must be watched. He claimed the death toll of the Grensburg tornado was 10,000 people when the actual number was 12.
So if I’m reading this correctly (and I’m hopefully missing important facts), plane loads of dispersants are being dropped on the Gulf oil spill to brake it down into droplets that currents can carry away. Do they understand the force of the currents in the Gulf Stream and the path to the North Atlantic current?
TECH USED TO CLEAN UP OIL SPILLS
http://news.discovery.com/tech/tech-used-clean-up-oil-spill.html
“Chemical dispersants are specifically formulated liquid solvent that’s generally sprayed onto ocean slicks from airplanes. The solvents mix with oil and break it down into fine droplets that then disperse with natural water currents.”
Anthony,
You pointed out in a recent blog post that “Stupid is as stupid does”.
Isn’t it a better solution to use the naturally occurring eddy in this area to contain the muck to an area until “help” arrives instead of breaking it down into fine droplets to disperse with “natural water currents” all over the Atlantic?
See: Dave Worley says:
May 2, 2010 at 7:08 pm
I hope I’ve got this picture all wrong and someone can say with some certainty that the buoyancy of the oil isn’t changed by the dispersants to the degree that makes the droplets transportable by currents like the Gulf Stream.
Atlantic currents:
http://www.cruiserlog.com/wiki/images/3/37/Atlantic_Ocean_Currents.jpg
Henry chance says:
May 3, 2010 at 7:51 am
“The hiring of clueless people by Obama is paying off. Had he kept more technical people from Bush, we wouldn’t have the epidemic of cluelessness.”
You mean the ones who handled Hurricane Katrina so professionally?
I had asked earlier about input on dispersants- I’ll add a little of what I know. First remember the oil is constantly undergoing weathering- the process by which it breaks down by physio-chemical, biological processes. Dispersants keep more of the oil in the water column rather than floating on the surface where wind can concentrate it push it to the relatively more oil sensitive shoreline. However not letting the oil float means we gets less evaporative loss of the more toxic BTEX fraction. (Its broken down in the air by photooxidation). Evaporation can be as much as 40% of the oil spilled so it is significant.
Preventing the oil from floating also means less surface skimming and burning (which in this weather would be tough). Keep the oil in sub- surface suspension and you have more oxygen and surface area for better decomposition rates however you subject the the organisms that live in this realm to more of the oils impact.
In fairness to those responding to this spill- the issues are complex and the answers not as clear cut as we would like.
This oil is coming from very deep water under a lot pressure and mixed with gas. It is probably forming some come complex emulsions -the remediation consequences of which I haven’t a clue.
I would not worry at all about this mid column oil once out in the open ocean especially far up the coast– too much dilution and too much weathering to be a significant issue. This oil is constantly being eaten and settling out by a number of mechanisms. Wind blown sands are also mixing with the oil and settling it out.
Keep in mind that with most spills the long term problem was often the clean up. The ocean and coast will feel the effect of this oil. But not nearly to the extent as some press reports will have you believe. The Gulf ecosystem has evolved with the reality of natural oil seeps. It will take some time for the bacteria and fungi to gear up but they are naturally present and will break it down. The wetlands also have a remarkable ability to heal themselves.
Remember the IXtoc blowout in 1979 was far larger (and the best spill comparison) and the ocean did not die. 170 million gallons of oil was spilled in 1942 along the mid Atlantic coast (NYC to Outer Banks) as the result of Uboat torpedos. 8 million gallons of oil was released by Katrina with little long term impact. This spill is not a good thing but it is not the apocalypse it is made out to be either.
@ur momisugly Excelsior says:
May 2, 2010 at 8:17 am
Media seem to agree on a figure for the leakage of 200,000 gal/day
which is 8333 gal/hour,
which is 139 gal/min
which is 2.3 gal per second.
That’s about the rate of a man baling out his boat with a garden bucket. Less daunting a problem when seen in that perspective.
Good comparison. Speaking of perspective; you also won’t hear much about the natural seepage in the Gulf. Which is (according to USGS and others) approx. 150,000 metric tons/annually. Or to put it in terms folks can relate to; approx. 19,000 bbls/day. All of which is handled quite nicely by the natural processes at work in the Gulf: Evaporation, emulsification, biodegradation, etc.
This is a far bigger political issue than it is a technical or environmental issue.