[highimpact]

I have pictures, but I'm not good with HTML, and I don't know how to post them. If another FReeper knows how, Freep Mail me your email address, and I'll send them to you in an attachment.

[basil]

Fret not—nature will clean these up before long. I’m from the Gulf Coast of TX where every once in a while, we’d wake up to find tar balls all along the beaches, with no spill happening.

Down here, oil is sometimes so close to the surface that it just spontaneously bubbles up. No biggee—nature cleans up her messses.

[TheBattman]

Spent our vacation last Summer in Pensacola (just West of you). Saw a few tar balls every day.

[skr]

You need an image hosting account (some are free), such as Photobucket. You upload your pictures to your account and paste the url for that picture within the quotes of the above. Photobucket and probably others will provide the line to copy and paste, so there isn't any typing for you to do.

[dalereed]

So what!!!

every beach in Southern California was covered with tar for hundreds of years from natural oil seepage until they installed the offshore oil rigs and started drilling.

[Just mythoughts]

You are not seeing TAR balls but BamBamKennedy balls. This is his gusher and he deserves every bit of credit for every ball that gets washed ashore.

[arthurus]

Does anyone know how to find/access satellite recent (June) pictures of the whole gulf? All I can find is pictures of the area immediately around the well and the Delta.

[The Sons of Liberty]

There were tar balls at Portofino, but also cleanup crews. I don’t know if 0bamao and his band of idiots plan to have cleanup crews on every beach indefinitely, but I guess it is one way to get the unemployment figures down.

[skr]

Highimpact's photos

[Jet Jaguar]

OCEAN FLOOR  REDUCED BY OIL PRODUCTION November 18, 1999 (Santa Barbara, Calif.) Next time you step on a glob of tar on a beach in Santa Barbara County, you can thank the oil companies that it isn't a bigger glob. The same is true around the world, on other beaches where off-shore oil drilling occurs, say scientists, although Santa Barbara's oil seeps are thought to be among the leakiest. Natural seepage of hydrocarbons from the ocean floor in the northern Santa Barbara Channel has been significantly reduced by oil production, according to two recently published peer-reviewed articles, one in November's Geology Magazine, the other in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans. The Santa Barbara Channel provides an excellent natural laboratory, as it is among the areas with the highest levels of seepage in the world, said co-author Bruce P. Luyendyk, professor and chair of the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The studies were not funded by oil companies, but rather by the University of California Energy Institute and the U.S. Minerals Management Service, states Luyendyk, responding to the fact that the results favor off-shore oil production and are opposed by some environmentalists. "We've done a good piece of science," said Luyendyk. "We've developed a good understanding of a natural process. It's all public data; it's all straightforward. If I thought the study was compromised I wouldn't be involved in it." Most of the seepage is methane, a potent greenhouse gas which escapes into the atmosphere, said Luyendyk. About 10 percent of the seepage is composed of "higher hydrocarbons," or reactive organic gases which interact with tailpipe emissions and sunlight, creating air pollution. The researchers state that the production rate of these naturally-occurring reactive organic gases is equal to twice the emission rate from all the on-road vehicle traffic in Santa Barbara County in 1990. According to the articles, studies of the area around Platform Holly showed a 50 percent decrease in natural seepage over 22 years. The researchers show that as the oil was pumped out the reservoir, pressure that drives the seepage dropped. "If the decrease in natural seepage found near Platform Holly is representative of the effect of oil production on seepage worldwide, then this has the potential to significantly alter global oil and gas seepage in the future," state the researchers in the article "The World's Most Spectacular Marine Hydrocarbon Seeps: Quantification of Emissions " in the Sept. 14 issue of the Journal of Geological Research - Oceans. They continue, "For example if the 50 percent reduction in natural seepage rate that occurred around Platform Holly also occurred due to future oil production from the oil field beneath the La Goleta seep, this would result in a reduction in nonmethane hydrocarbon emission rates equivalent to removing half of the on-road vehicle traffic from Santa Barbara County. In addition, a 50 percent reduction in seepage from the La Goleta seep would remove about 25 barrels of oil per day from the sea surface, which in turn would result in a 15 percent reduction in the amount of tar found on Santa Barbara beaches." They conclude by saying that the rate of increase of global methane atmospheric concentrations has been declining for the past 20 years, and that a "worldwide decrease in natural hydrocarbon seepage related to onshore and offshore oil production may be causing a global reduction in natural methane emission rates.

[deport]

Navarre Beach

Is that some location along the Gulf Coast?

[isthisnickcool]

It is very simple. We give one tar ball to every Jew and have them take the tar balls back to Poland and Germany - HELEN THOMAS