BP Oil Spill: Clean-Up Crews Can't Find Crude in the Gulf

ABC News ^ | July 26, 2010 | Jeffrey Koffman

[lbryce]

For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it.

At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire.

Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen.

"That oil is somewhere. It didn't just disappear," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

Salvador Cepriano is one of the men searching for crude. Cepriano, a shrimper, has been laying out boom with his boat, but he's found that there's no oil to catch.

"I think it is underneath the water. It's in between the bottom and the top of the water," Cepriano said.

Even the federal government admits that locating the oil has become a problem.

"It is becoming a very elusive bunch of oil for us to find," said National Incident Cmdr. Thad Allen.

Skimmers Pick Up Less Oil

The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels.

Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

"[It's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

Experts: Gulf of Mexico Oil is Breaking Up

The light crude began to deteriorate the moment

[lbryce]

You want to know where all the oil is?
Follow the TARP money..

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

"[It's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

I think I recall Rush saying early on in this disaster that nature would deal with this spill in its own way, and he was excoriated for it.

Evidently, Rush was right again.

[Larry Lucido]

"I think it is underneath the water. It's in between the bottom and the top of the water," Cepriano said.

Great deductive reasoning.

[4rcane]

oil is a natural substance. Nature has their own way of dealing with it

[wombtotomb]

exactly what I was going to say. This was not refined crude, it was oil coming up directly from the gulf floor itself. It happens naturally so often and in such volume that we can’t possibly imagine. It was not the same type of event as a tanker spilling refined crude.

[Caipirabob]

Basically, due to the delays and completely incompetent handling of this crisis, they’ve missed the window in order to actually clean it up.

[duckworth]

I remember talking to a Gulf Oil guy in a bar back in the 70s. He said more oil comes out of cracks in the ocean floor than we’ll ever drill.

[Diogenesis]

Keyser Söze “And then the oil, like Megrahi, was gone.”

[ROCKLOBSTER]

The Sky is Falling...

The Sky is...

Uh...

Hmmmm...

[I still care]

Is this not what Rush said was going to happen?

He’s going to gloat today, guys.

[umgud]

Who cleaned up the oil spills from the thousands of ships sunk in WWII?

[Past Your Eyes]

Hmmmm. From Kansas sized to New Hampshire sized. Maybe when it gets the size of John Eff Kerry’s yacht they’ll be able to handle it.

[ThePatriotsFlag]

The "disappearance" is (correct that, WAS) all explained here. It's all about a natural system Mother Nature built into the process long before the BEACH BALLS (not tar balls) appeared on the pristine beaches. Oleophilic bacteria have been "doing the job" literally forever because there are ALWAYS oil leaks into oceans. The "nasty, poisonous Corexit" (that "wasn't") ... did its job nudging Mother Nature's process. It's all explained HERE at The Patriot's Flag - Dispersants and the Piper.

[camp_steveo]

dispersant?

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

“That oil is somewhere. It didn’t just disappear,” said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

Sure it did dumbhead

[NavyCanDo]

Reason for me to gloat a little myself. I was saying all this right here myself in the first days of this spill - that a tourist visiting the area 2 years from now will see life back to normal, the marshes back, and the shrimp boats bringing their catches back.
Yes a huge mess, and a costly cleanup, but the Gulf would return faster than they think.

[Dr. Thorne]

According to oil expert Matt Simmons, the oil is a "submerged lake of oil [which] has grown larger than the size of Washington state and is approximately 500 feet thick" Simmons' Take on the Oil Spill in the Gulf

Simmons described the real blowout as an open hole gushing 120,000 barrels of toxic crude every day below the surface of the Gulf six or seven miles away from the riser. And BP is ignoring it, he said.

"What you are seeing on television, what BP is saying about relief wells . . . that's a total ruse," said Simmons.

[radioone]

“see life back to normal, the marshes back, and the shrimp boats bringing their catches back.” Not if the Bureaucrats can find a way to muck the whole thing up.......

[MrB]

I expect this to be all over the MSM -

NOT.

(as a side note, isn’t it odd that the “main stream media” has the same acronym as that class of men who can’t donate blood?)

[MrB]

Dispersant?

Otherwise known as “sea water”.