By combining detailed chemical measurements in the deep ocean, in the oil slick, and in the air, NOAA scientists and academic colleagues have independently estimated how fast gases and oil were leaking during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The new chemistry-based spill rate estimate, an average of 11,130 tons of gas and oil compounds per day, is close to the official average leak rate estimate of about 11,350 tons of gas and oil per day (equal to about 59,200 barrels of liquid oil per day).
“This study uses the available chemical data to give a better understanding of what went where, and why,” said Thomas Ryerson, Ph.D., a NOAA research chemist and lead author of the study. “The surface and subsurface measurements and analysis provided by our university colleagues were key to this unprecedented approach to understanding an oil spill.”
The NOAA-led team did not rely on any of the data used in the original estimates, such as video flow analysis, pipe diameter and fluid flow calculations. “We analyzed a completely separate set of chemical measurements, which independently led us to a very similar leak estimate,” Ryerson said.
The new study, Chemical data quantify Deepwater Horizon hydrocarbon flow rate and environmental distribution, was published online today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The new analysis follows on another NOAA-led study published last year, in which Ryerson and colleagues estimated a lower limit to the Deepwater Horizon leak rate based on two days of airborne data collected during the spill and the chemical makeup of the reservoir gas and oil determined before the spill. The new analysis adds in many other sources of data, including subsurface and surface samples taken during six weeks of the spill and including a direct measure of the makeup of the gas and oil actually leaking into the Gulf.
Ryerson and his colleagues found that the leaking gas and oil quickly separated into three major pools: the underwater plume of droplets about 3,300-4,300 feet below the surface, the visible surface slick, and an airborne plume of evaporating chemicals. Each pool had a very different chemical composition.
The underwater plume was enhanced in gases known to dissolve readily in water, the team found. This included essentially all of the lightweight methane (natural gas) and benzene (a known carcinogen) present in the spilling reservoir fluid. The surfaceoil slick was dominated by the heaviest and stickiest components, which neither dissolved in seawater nor evaporated into the air. And the airborne plume of chemicals contained a wide mixture of intermediate-weight components of the spilled gas and oil.
The visible surface slick represented about 15 percent of the total leaked gas and oil; the airborne plume accounted for about another 7 percent. About 36 percent remained in a deep underwater plume, and 17 percent was recovered directly to the surface through a marine riser. The location of the balance, about 25 percent of the total, is not directly accounted for by the chemical data.
This information about the transport and fate of different components of the spilled gas and oil mixture could help resource managers and others trying to understand environmental exposure levels.
The chemical measurements made from mid-May through June showed that the composition of the atmospheric plume changed very little, suggesting little change in the makeup of the leaking gas and oil.
The team of researchers also used the detailed chemical measurements to calculate how much gas and oil, in total, was spilling from the breached reservoir deep underwater.
The new chemistry-based estimate of 11,130 tons per day has an estimated range of 8,900 to 13,300 tons per day. By comparison, the official estimated range was 10,000 to 12,700 tons per day.
More information: ”Chemical data quantify Deepwater Horizon hydrocarbon flow rate and environmental distribution,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (2012).
LAUREL, Mont. — Teams of federal and state workers fanned out Sunday along Montana’s famed Yellowstone River to gauge the environmental damage from a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline that spewed tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the waterway.
The break near Billings, in south-central Montana, fouled the riverbank and forced municipalities and irrigation districts to close intakes.
( Matthew Brown / Associated Press ) – A contractor for ExxonMobil tends to an oil containment boom along the Yellowstone River near Laurel, Mont., after a pipeline that runs under the river ruptured Saturday July 2, 2011. The pipeline break was contained early Saturday morning but the spill stretched over dozens of miles.
An Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Sonya Pennock said an unspecified amount of oil could be seen some 40 miles downriver during a fly-over Sunday, and there were other reports of oil as far as 100 miles away near the town of Hysham.
But an Exxon Mobil Corp. executive said shoreline damage appeared to be limited to the Yellowstone between Laurel and Billings, which includes about 20 miles of river.
Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. President Gary Pruessing said company observers flying over the river had seen “very little soiling” beyond Billings, and that the oil appeared to be evaporating and dissipating into the river as the flooded Yellowstone carries it downstream.
A representative of the Montana Disaster and Emergency Services Division said the company’s claim was reasonable but had not been independently verified.
State officials on Saturday had reported a 25-mile long slick headed downstream toward the Yellowstone’s confluence with the Missouri River, just across the Montana border in North Dakota. An estimated 1,000 barrels, or 42,000 gallons, spilled Saturday before the flow from the damaged pipeline was stopped.
“My guess is that as fast as that water is moving, it’s probably dissipating pretty quick,” said DES public assistance officer Tim Thennis.
Exxon Mobil also revealed Sunday that the 12-inch pipeline had been temporarily shut down in May because of concerns over the rising waters on the Yellowstone. Pruessing said the company decided to restart the line a day later after examining its safety record and deciding the risk of failure was low.
The company and government officials have speculated that high waters in recent weeks may have scoured the river bottom and exposed the pipeline to debris that could have damaged the pipe. The state has received record rainfall in the last month and also has a huge snowpack in the mountains that is melting, which has resulted in widespread flooding.
“We are very curious about what may have happened at the bottom of the river. We don’t have that yet,” Pruessing said.
An EPA representative said only a small fraction of the spilled oil is likely to be recovered.
Agency on-scene coordinator Steve Way said fast flows along the flooding river were spreading the oil over a large area, making it harder to capture. But Way said that also could reduce damage to wildlife and cropland along the river.
Crews were putting absorbent material along short stretches of the river in Billings and near Laurel, but there were no attempts at capturing oil farther out in the river. In some areas, oil flowed underneath booms and continued downstream.
~was looking for this~jude~revised as most info was deleted ((
Game “Combined Disaster” card also support the claim of Benjamin Fulford , the horrific earthquake weapon HAARP which attacked Japan on March 11, 2011 resulting in 10 meter long tsunamis along much of Japan’s coast line came from rogue elements of the U.S. government located in underground bases in New Mexico and Nevada. read it all
March 1990 Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games was raided by Secret Service, and his work confiscated. More than three years later Steve was awarded by Federal Judge damages and attorney’s fees for reckless, careless and illegal raid.
In 1995 Steve Jackson published a card game called “Illuminate, The Game of Conspiracy”. I can’t tell you how eerie it is to watch the video I made, as these cards were designed back in the 80′s and the pictures for the “conspiracy GAME’ are accurate depictions of events, and disasters to date!
One could go as far as saying that Steve Jackson inadvertently predicted these events via his playing cards.
There are 400 in the deck . . . I wonder which card will be next?
Likewise another card, issued well before 9-11, showed the twin towers being taken down is one of the most shocking of all, especially in light of the fact that this game first hit the specialty stores in 1995! How in the world did Steve Jackson know that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were going to be attacked? In fact, this card accurately depicted the World Trade Center attack in great detail. This card accurately depicts several facts of 9/11 — on cards created all the way back in 1995! The picture accurately depicts:
* That one tower was going to be struck first; this picture accurately depicts the moments between the first tower strike and the second.
* The card accurately depicts that the place of impact is some distance from the top of the twin towers. The plane hit in this approximate area of the first tower. How in the world could Steve Jackson know this fact?
* The card accurately depicts the Illuminati leadership by showing on the building to the extreme left of the card the Illuminist pyramid with an all-seeing eye in the middle.
* The caption at the top properly identifies the perpetrators of the attack as “terrorists”
30 FACTS EVIDENCING THE ROTHSCHILD LEAGUE OF BANKERS PLANNED THE GULF OIL CRISIS
by
Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz and Sherri Kane
This article explains what is really happening in the Gulf of Mexico, who is really responsible for the explosion, and how the devastation serves investment bankers who sway stocks, create markets, and planned this crisis, among a series of catastrophies, to advance geopolitical and financial agendas for their New World Order.
Introduction
WAR has been declared against We The People. Yet, there is no country or military present to defend us.
Covert infiltrations and corruptions in governments by the “Rothschild League” of bankers and “private equity investors” now poison our bodies, minds, and planet. Yet, appropriate military and/or militia defenses are prohibited.
Crisis-capitalists are massacring us and our environment petrochemically. They have deployed propaganda—mass media deception—to camouflage their real intentions and vast destruction.
The air we breathe, food we eat, and water we drink, has been polluted to deliver profitable diseases and depopulation, simulating a “scorched earth policy” of war.
Generalized fear, depression, fatigue, and apathy is incapacitating our defenses, aiding the adversaries, and predisposing us to diseases and early deaths.
Based on the following irrefutable facts, the so-called “accidental explosion” in the Gulf is a Transocean/Halliburton/British Petroleum/Goldman-Sachs attack—the latest in a series of unspeakable war crimes perpetrated by Anglo-American State of “Rothschild League” bankers.
Photos newly released prove that the BP-Government-Media has presented and is presenting to the public, against its best interest, a sophisticated Gulf of Mexico ‘Oil Spill’ illusion. New pictorial evidence tells the real story, truth about a crime against humanity and planet committed, aided by a Psychological Operation with a devastating global impact requiring a united and prompt paradigm shift toward renewable energy.
Typical of any disaster where there is a lingering human toll, like katrina or haiti, the media coverage is spectacular for a few weeks, and then america gets bored with people suffering, so your attention is diverted to the latest idiocy of some celeb or sports figure; or more recently, the mindless babblings of mindless politicians…and we’re guilty to an extent too, because although our coverage of the gulf oil spill here & on affiliates was daily when it was page one news, for the most part we havent mentioned it since the well was sealed…however, thanx to →Washington’s Blog, we can offer you a few gulf coast headlines of the ongoing stories from the last 3 days of last week:
The latest satellite data establishes that the North Atlantic Current (also called the North Atlantic Drift) no longer exists and along with it the Norway Current. These two warm water currents are actually part of the same system that has several names depending on where in the Atlantic Ocean it is. The entire system is a key part of the planet’s heat regulatory system; it is what keeps Ireland and the United Kingdom mostly ice free and the Scandinavia countries from being too cold; it is what keeps the entire world from another Ice Age. This Thermohaline Circulation System is now dead in places and dying in others.
This ‘river’ of warm water that moves through the Atlantic Ocean is called, in various places, the South Atlantic Current, the North Brazil Current, the Caribbean Current, the Yucatan Current, the Loop Current, the Florida Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current (or North Atlantic Drift) and the Norway Current.
The thermohaline circulation is sometimes called the ocean conveyor belt, the great ocean conveyor, or the global conveyor belt.
It is a university level physics experiment to use a tub of cool water and inject a colored stream of warm water into it. You can see the boundary layers of the warm water stream. If you add oil to the tub it breaks down the boundary layers of the warm water stream and effectively destroys the current vorticity . This is what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic Ocean.
The entire ‘river of warm water’ that flows from the Caribbean to the edges of Western Europe is dying due to the Corexit that the Obama Administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster. The approximately two million gallons of Corexit, plus several million gallons of other dispersants, have caused the over two hundred million gallons of crude oil, that has gushed for months from the BP wellhead and nearby sites, to mostly sink to the bottom of the ocean. This has helped to effectively hide much of the oil, with the hopes that BP can seriously reduce the mandated federal fines from the oil disaster. However, there is no current way to effectively ‘clean up’ the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which is about half covered in crude oil. Additionally, the oil has flowed up the East Coast of America and into the North Atlantic Ocean, and there is no way to effectively clean up this ‘sea bottom oil’. It is likely, based on numerous reports, that the oil is still flowing in massive amounts from multiple places on the seabed floor. This effectively means, that even if we had the technology in place to somehow clean up the free flowing thick crude oil deep in the ocean, it would likely not be enough to reverse the damage to the Thermohaline Circulation System in the Atlantic Ocean.
“Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The problems began for the Scheblers a few weeks after the April 20 blow-out. “Our first clue were rashes we both got early in May. Both my husband and I couldn’t get rid of the rashes and had to get cream from our doctor,” Schebler noted, “I never had a rash in my life.”
Then, on “July [23], my husband Warren mowed the lawn. It was hot so he got in the pool to cool off afterward. That afternoon he had severe diarrhea and very dark urine. This lasted about 2 days,” she revealed.
The rest of the story… hopefully you already read this …~jude
Since BP announced that CEO Tony Hayward would receive a multi-million dollar golden parachute and be replaced by Bob Dudley, we have witnessed an incredibly broad, and powerful, propaganda campaign. A campaign that peaked this week with the US government, clearly acting in BP’s best interests, itself announcing, via outlets willing to allow themselves to be used to transfer the propaganda, like the New York Times, this message: “The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.”
The Times was accommodating enough to lead the story with a nice photo of a fishing boat motoring across clean water with several birds in the foreground.
This message was disseminated far and wide, via other mainstream media outlets like the AP and Reuters, effectively announcing to the masses that despite the Gulf of Mexico suffering the largest marine oil disaster in US history, most of the oil was simply “gone.”
Thus, it’s only what is on the surface that counts. If you can’t see it, there is not a problem.
This kind of government cover-up is nothing new, of course.
