Posted on 08/17/2010 7:05:02 AM PDT by lbryce
While officials claim most of the oil from America's worst-ever spill has disappeared, fishermen hired by BP are still finding tar balls—and being instructed to hide their discoveries.
Two weeks ago, as federal officials prepared to declare that some three-quarters of the estimated 5 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf over three months had disappeared, Mark Williams, a fishing boat captain hired by BP to help with the spill cleanup, encountered tar balls as large as three inches wide floating off the Florida coast.
Reporting his findings to his supervisor, a private consulting company hired by BP, the reply, according to his logbook came back: "Told—no reporting of oil or tar balls anymore. Don't put on report. We're here for boom removal only," referring to the miles of yellow and orange containment barriers placed throughout the Gulf.
Williams' logbook account, which I inspected, and a similar account told to me by a boat captain in Mississippi, raises serious concerns about whether the toll from the spill is being accurately measured. Many institutions have an interest in minimizing accounts of the damage inflicted. The federal and local governments, under withering criticism all summer, certainly want to move on to other subjects. BP, of course, has a financial incentive
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
Hope we still got the receipt because "the gift" we were given on election Day oughta be returned today.
There have been tar balls in the Gulf for about the last two hundred million years.
“The Daily Beast” a source beyond reproach. (sarc off)
So, everytime you see one, you log it?? Doesn't even make sense.
Someone needs to shoot picts of all the dead sea animals and release them in October.
Tar balls have been a fact of nature from long before mankind began drilling for oil. This is so much like the “comtrails/chemtrails” tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists....
>Two weeks ago, as federal officials prepared to declare that some three-quarters of the estimated 5 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf over three months had disappeared, Mark Williams, a fishing boat captain hired by BP to help with the spill cleanup, encountered tar balls as large as three inches wide floating off the Florida coast. <<
So. This doesn’t pass the smell test. It is prose that attempts to push the reader to the inference that if three quarters of the spill had disappeared that it would have been impossible for Mark to discover three inch wide tar balls.
Now, if they had said 100%, there would be a story here.
I disagree.
Oil is constantly being generated beneath the Earth. Buoyancy makes it rise towards the surface. Either it finds itself “trapped” (good for humans) or it makes it to surface, usually along a fault plane. I have never seen a number quoted but I would venture to guess that 99% makes it to the surface.
Tar balls are normal they also are not a bvig deal compared to a major oil spill. The effort to perpetuate a crisis that isn’t one.
Light crude does not become tarballs. It dissolves in the seawater and is eaten by bacteria.
There are always tarballs washing up. You cannot trace a tarball to its source.
If this logic holds, then they should have been “logging the tar balls” BEFORE the spill ... what’s that? ... negligence?
Those boat owners are welcome to go and report what they saw...And what did they see??? Tar balls....Imagine that!!
Bush’s fault
My sister and her husband had a house on the MS Gulf Coast for many years, until Katrina, and they used to get tar balls on their little bit of beach all the time, and that was inside the barrier islands.
Light crude is a designation of the average viscosity of the crude oil. It contains components of heavy oil but more lighter, smaller hydrocarbons molecules are present.
When separated out by distillation at the front end of a refinery, light crude has a broad spectrum of hydrocarbons including heavies.
OK, then. I’ll have to stop linking to their articles.
I grew up on the west coast of FL, and 40 yrs ago, there may have been a couple tar balls you could find on any weekend, but nothing the size of these. They were more the size of peas or smaller.
And there are millions of them now?
And you have documentation for this?
Summer of 2009, we spent a week in Pensacola, FL. I saw a few tar balls each day... from pea-size, up to about 3 inches across.
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