Natural Petroleum Seeps Release Equivalent Of Up To 80 Exxon Valdez Oil Spills

[bik0]

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2009) — Twenty years ago, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez was exiting Alaska's Prince William Sound when it struck a reef in the middle of the night. What happened next is considered one of the nation's worst environmental disasters: 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the pristine Alaskan waters, eventually covering 11,000 square miles of ocean.

Now, imagine 8 to 80 times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident.
According to new research by scientists from UC Santa Barbara and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), that's how much oil has made its way into sediments offshore from petroleum seeps near Coal Oil Point in the Santa Barbara Channel. Their research, reported in an article being published in the May 15 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, documents how the oil is released by the seeps, carried to the surface along a meandering plume, and then deposited on the ocean floor in sediments that stretch for miles northwest of Coal Oil Point.
In addition, the research reveals that the oil is so degraded by the time it gets buried in the sea bed that it's a mere shell of the petroleum that initially bubbles up from the seeps. "These were spectacular findings," said Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at WHOI and one of the co-authors of the new paper.
Other co-authors include UCSB's David Valentine, associate professor of earth science; and Libe Washburn, professor of geography; and Emily Peacock and Robert K. Nelson, both of WHOI.
The lead author is Christopher Farwell, who at the time of the research was an undergraduate studying chemistry at UCSB. Inspired by this project, Farwell has changed his career path and is now a graduate student at UCSB studying marine science and earth science.
In an earlier paper published in 2008, Valentine and Reddy documented how microbes devour many of the compounds in the oil emanating from the seeps. The new study examines the final step in the life cycle of the oil.

"One of the natural questions is: What happens to all of this oil?" Valentine said. "So much oil seeps up and floats on the sea surface. It's something we've long wondered. We know some of it will come ashore as tar balls, but it doesn't stick around. And then there are the massive slicks. You can see them, sometimes extending 20 miles from the seeps. But what is really the ultimate fate?"
Based on their previous research, Valentine and Reddy surmised that the oil was sinking "because this oil is heavy to begin with," Valentine said. "It's a good bet that it ends up in the sediments because it's not ending up on land. It's not dissolving in ocean water, so it's almost certain that it is ending up in the sediments.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130944.htm

[Speck Tater]

1. NO! Not FACTS! We don't need no stinking FACTS. Not when we've got a good snit going. nt

[bik0]

3. The earth itself is the biggest polluter and destroyer of the environment.

Oil seeps, volcanoes, forest and brush fires, wind storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods etc.

[G_j]

4. Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.

-"I have flown twice over Mt St. Helens out on our west coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about." -- Ronald Reagan, 1980. (Actually, Mount St. Helens, at its peak activity, emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day, compared with 81,000 tons per day by cars.)

-"Facts are stupid things." -- Ronald Reagan, 1988, a misquote of John Adams, "Facts are stubborn things."


- Ronald Reagan

[bik0]

7. Worldwide, sulfur dioxide emissions from volcanoes add up to about 15 million tons a year

compared to the 200 million tons produced by power plants and other human activities.

Volcanic gases bubble out of magma as it rises to the surface, and the amount and type of emissions depend on the chemical makeup of the molten rock. In addition to sulfur dioxide, volcanoes also release smaller amounts of other noxious gases, including hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen chloride.

They also release carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that's primarily blamed for global warming. Mount St. Helens produces between 500 and 1,000 tons a day of carbon dioxide, Gerlach estimates.

Worldwide, people and their activities pump 26 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere, he said. The total from volcanoes is about 200 million tons a year — or less than 1 percent of the man-made emissions.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6635776/

[Speck Tater]

8. 300 milloin years ago Mother Nature killed the oceans.

It was in that anaerobic water that dying plankton and algae fell to the bottom of the sea and created a deep blanket of biomass that eventually became crude oil. If the ocean hadn't died, we wouldn't have any oil. Ironic, ain't it.

[BeFree]

2. How much oil?

And, how much time are we looking at for the amounts?

Remember that the Pacific is far larger than the GOM. And deeper.

It's kinda of a wonder that with WHOI publishing this they can't get hired by BP.
I mean, shoot, it almost makes BP look good.

[G_j]

5. interesting article

not sure if oil volcanoes are normal though.

[tabasco]

6. Leave the oil companies alone!!

Nature is much, much worse!!

YOU BETCHA!

[Karmadillo]

9. The universe is throwing rocks at the earth and we obsess over a bunch of stupid oil.

nt

[backscatter712]

10. Confirms my own opinion - the Gulf gusher is a major catastrophe, but not armageddon.

Eventually, those microbes will consume the oil and the dispersants, and eventually, the Gulf will recover.

In the short term, it's an ecological bloodbath, and a major environmental and economic catastrophe that BP damned well should be held accountable for.

But the people who are claiming that the spill will destroy all life on earth are off the deep end.

[jwirr]

11. And catsup is a vegetable.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Up to 80 Valdezes over what period of time?

[JBoy]

13. Good question. The abstract of the article says 20-25 tons per day

are seeping offshore of Goleta CA.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es802586g

A barrel of crude oil weighs 139kg.

Therefore, 25 tons per day would be 25*2000/2.2 kg/day = 22,680kg = 22680/139 barrels/day = 163 barrels per day.

The Valdez spill was about 250,000 barrels, so 80 Valdez's would be 20 million barrels.

At the rate of seepage off Goleta, 80 Valdez's would take 20,000,000/163 days = 122,700 days. Or 336 years.


How they arrived at 80 Valdez's as the volume, or chose 336 years as the period, I have no fucking clue.

[TheMadMonk]

15. Because the info presented in the OP is a very good example of lying with facts.

Report the worldwide figures and then immediately focus on one single instance. Make it seem like any given part of the ocean is capable of dealing with 20 Exon Valdez size spills indefinitely.

Indeed, the truth is the ocean is quite capable of dealing with an enormous amount of abuse and polution (natural and man made) but only when the the polution is relatively evenly distributed both geographically and in time. Piled up in one spot and time, nothing can cope.

[texastoast]

14. "but it doesn't stick around"

I guess that's kind of a subjective statement. I mean what the fuck, I'M certainly not getting dirty.







http://www2.pictures.gi.zimbio.com/Oil+Slick+Reaches+Queensland+Beaches+YVrC94OAU06l.jpg