The White House claims ‘the vast majority of the oil is gone.’ But most Gulf Coast residents aren’t

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state’s Department of Marine Resources has opened up shrimping and oyster grounds.

An order was issued for all local coastal governments to halt ongoing oil disaster work funded by BP and granted to the state. Of $25 million, only $500,000 has been invoiced for oil response work even though there have been massive fish kills near Cat Island.

Fisherfolk with a conscience are saying its too early to allow fishing to resume, and they see the move as another attempt to create good PR for BP, the criminal put in charge of cleaning up the crime scene. Has the oil “disappeared”?

Last month, three weeks after BP applied a containment cap to check the massive flow of crude spewing from its broken wellhead, we were told that surface slicks in the Gulf of Mexico have supposedly disappeared. In an attempt to put the disaster in the administration’s rearview mirror, White House Energy Advisor Carol Browner proclaimed that “the vast majority of the oil is gone.”

However, most Gulf Coast residents aren’t buying it. They know their environment, and they know crude oil and toxic dispersants when they see and smell them in the air, water, and sand.

To reassure the public, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Commission (NOAA) announced that 74% of the estimated 4.9 billion barrels of released oil is gone. On Aug. 4, the industry-friendly agency said that the oil had either evaporated or it had been burned, skimmed, recovered, or dispersed.

The dubious report stated that less than half of the petroleum remains in the environment, with about BP’s scientific integrity questioned Students at UC Berkeley recently protested the university’s $500 million, 10-year partnership with BP, waving signs reading “Berkeley Petroleum.” A university spokeswoman claimed BP’s influence on the Biosiciences Program at Berkeley Livermore Lab is minimal. The lab was formerly headed by the current Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, who was the beneficiary of BP funding. No conflict of interests there! — C.F.

6 Socialist Action september 2010 only 26% still on the surface as sheen or tarballs, 16% dispersed naturally, and 8% dispersed by chemicals. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchencko stated, “Much of the dispersed oil is in the process of relatively rapid degradation.”

However, independent scientists questioned the report’s dodgy methodology, saying there is a lot of uncertainty in the figures. For instance, it didn’t explain how they determined what had been naturally versus chemically dispersed or how they estimated the evaporation rate of the hydrocarbons, which is difficult to do over large areas of seawater because of temperatures, wind and wave action, etc.

Five scientists with the University of Georgia and the Georgia Sea Grant criticized the government’s figures and analysis, saying instead that the amount of petroleum remaining is more like 79%! The Georgia team said that the federal estimates, which are based on very limited data, offer a far too rosy picture.

They tossed out the 800,000 barrels BP supposedly collected (17% of the flow) because it had never actually spilled and reduced the estimated evaporation total, cutting it to 7-12% as compared with the fed’s 25%. The latter is merely an industry standard for light sweet crude in warm Gulf waters.

The oil hasn’t gone anywhere and is till lurking at depth in the water and on the seafloor and will take years to degrade. Charles Hopkinson, one of the team members, said that much of the oil remains trapped beneath the surface under dense temperature and salinity layers that will limit evaporation. Cold temperatures will keep the oil at depths for a long time to come.

A satellite image of Aug. 2 shows a trail of oil heading southeast away form the spill area. The Georgia micrograms/liter. If all the thousands of compounds in petroleum were included, the density would be even greater.

The plume has “persisted for months without substantial biodegradation,” the team reported last month in the journal Science. In other words, they found no dead zones from oxygen depletion that would indicate microbes are busily doing their job. To the contrary, microbes seem to be insufficient to biodegrade the oil at a significant rate, and the plume is expected to persist for many months.

The volume of oil in the plumes clearly dwarfs the amount coming from natural seeps from vents in the seafloor. Natural seeps release 14 barrels daily while the BP spill released 60,000-104,000 a day, depending on which estimate one goes by. Nonetheless, only the tiniest fraction of the gusher was sufficient to form the massive plume. BP has been absurdly claiming that its spill, compared with the volume of natural seeps, will not have much of an impact on Gulf ecosystems.

University of South Florida researchers on the vessel Weatherbird II just completed a 10-day cruise and have released their preliminary findings. They found evidence of dispersed oil droplets spreading eastward along the continental shelf and settling into the De Soto Canyon, in shallower waters. There are toxic levels of oil in seafloor sediments of the canyon, a vital fish-spawning area located 40 miles off the Florida Panhandle.

Shining ultraviolet light on the sediment samples, (taken from depths of 215 to 900-feet) they viewed tiny dots in the form of oil droplets that sparkled like a constellation of stars. They found toxic contamination in damaged bacteria and phytoplankton, which will undoubtedly make its way through the marine food web.

The team delivered additional bad news for the Florida coast. Right now cold water is upwelling across the continental shelf and headed toward the coast and will eventually hit the western beaches of the state, carrying with it oil and dispersants. Obama and Sasha took their swim from a Florida beach just in time. Dangers of dispersant spraying Whistleblowers in Mississippi have revealed to independent investigative journalists of TruthOut the (continued on page 6)

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thick, disappears from the surface, no further action Mexico ecosystem a rest. After decades of abuse it is is taken. Instead, divers are seeing oil on the seabed suffering from every form of pollution imaginable. It has 4000 offshore oil and gas platforms and tens of thousands of miles of pipeline constituting 90% of birds. It penetrates the eggshell and shell membrane, causing the embryo to fuse onto it and die within 24 on Valdez impacts are still being felt after 21 years. hours. Dispersed oil is still arriving at the shoreline In Prince William Sound, abnormally high numbers of half a million barrels of oil had already been released from 324 spills since 1964. The seafloor is littered worms, microbes and decomposers. Dolphins are hazardly dumped in the middle of the last century. In addition, tons of agricultural run-off have created a toc-1 blowout of 1979. They still have not recovered three times the amount of the dispersant was spread in the bays of the Yucatan Peninsula, 31 years later. If over the floating oil than previously reported by the the oil is on the marsh grass, it’s in the oysters. Tiny EPA. It’s safe to say that around 2 million gallons have oil globules are being absorbed by the oysters, which subject to 300 civil lawsuits, and investigations by the already been sprayed. Corexit’s actual effectiveness in are filter feeders that take in particles ranging from Department of Justice, a Presidential Commission, the degrading oil is also doubtful. The EPA claims that the 3-12 millionths of a meter. Clusters of dead oysters biodegradation of oil is 50% faster when dispersants cal Safety Hazard Investigation Board, Congress, the diz spill in France, 1978, was to the contrary. Oil there coast. Oil-soaked crabs, which have orange droplets in their tissue, provide further evidence of marine pose is to remove the sheen from the surface, along these legal actions seeing as how Exxon got off with ter revenues of $75.9 billion. The company is selling late hydrocarbons that harm reproduction. They are a troleum distillutes and 2-Butoxyethanol, which is so keystone species that play a crucial role in coastal and $30 billion in assets to ensure it has the money to pay powerful it can dissolve oil, grease, and rubber. The liability claims, which will no doubt by whittled down hard rubber impellors in engines and the soft rubber La handful surviving to adulthood. If large numbers of sels are falling apart. Divers have had to replace the blue crab larvae are tainted, the entire population will ward as the company’s new CEO. Although now exiled soft rubber O-rings on their gear. The oil/chemical take a hit next season and whatever oil is consumed to Siberia, geologist Hayward has been duly rewarded for his faithful service in protecting BP’s profits with a $1.6 million severance package, a $930,000 pension, the UK and EU, is a fetal toxin that breaks down blood and the right to retain shares worth several million. If cells, causing blood and kidney disorders. It can also only Gulf Coast residents victimized by BP had it so cross the placental barrier into the fetus. Needless to deepwater drilling was to have stayed in effect until (continued from page 7) rampant use of toxic dispersants by out-ofstate private contractors. Massive quantities of dispersants are being sprayed by Carolina skiffs, equipped with tanks, as well as planes, over land and water that includes recently reopened fishing grounds. They move in the dead of night.

Lockheed Martin has reported on its website that its C-130 Hercules & P-3 aircraft have been deployed to monitor, map, and spray dispersants under the direction of President Obama and the secretary of defense. The spraying is being conducted as far east as the Florida coast, according to eyewitness accounts from residents and commercial fishermen there.

“Clean-up” is left to private contractors operating under the cloak of darkness. They are not accountable to the Coast Guard, which is complicit and has been lying about the widespread practice, claiming dispersants are being used only directly over the wellhead. Once the oily sheen, which can be three inches and resurface with their wetsuits covered with it.

Corexit enhances the lethal impacts of oil on shoreas sunken clouds, affecting all life in the sediments— hemorrhaging from Corexit in their systems.

Rep. Edward Markey has documentation that two to are used even though the experience of the Amoco Cahas still not broken down. Clearly, its only real purwith BP’s liability.

According to marine toxicologist Dr. Riki Ott, the solvents in chemical dispersants are made up of pebushings on the outboard motors of responder vesstew is strong enough to eat into Hazmat dive suits.

Corexit 9500 & 9527, which have been banned in say, pregnant women living on the coast and their offspring are at high risk.

Long-term ecological impact Gulf marine and coastal ecosystems, independent scientists are deeply concerned over their fate. The Exxfish embryos and fingerlings were found with deformities, which affected productivity for years. have been spotted on the barrier islands of Louisiana.

contamination.

Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Lab, crabs accumumarine ecoystems as both predators and prey.

with them will bioaccumulate up the food chain. Lift of drilling ban?

U.S. Coast Guard While the media is touting a quick recovery for the U.S. offshore production.

Gulf oysters were severely affected by Mexico ’s IxMassive fish kills have been seen on the Mississippi According to biologists at the University of Southern Many of the young are eaten by predators, with only Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s moratorium on Sean Gardner /Getty Images (Left) Deepwater Horizon oilplatform fire on April 21.

Nov. 30 even though the $1 billion Emergency Response Network proposed by the industry won’t be operational for another year. But the White House is beginning to respond to pressure from the oil industry, which is pushing for ran end to the moratorium for reasons of “jobs”— and greed, we might add.

Of course, we have zero faith in their ability to control deepwater oil disasters. Likewise, we put no value in the administration’s recent promise to require full environmental reviews on all deepwater drilling and end all exemptions. We must call for an immediate halt to all offshore drilling of oil and natural gas, and all fossil fuel extraction—conventional and unconventional—across the board.

It is time to give the poor Gulf of Prior to the Deepwater Horizon Rig Explosion, over with bombs, chemical weapons and ordnance hapvast dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

As a result of its gross criminal negligence, BP is now Securities & Exchange Commission, the U.S. ChemiCoast Guard, and the Bureau of Ocean & Energy Management, Regulation & Enforcement.

We have no illusions that anything will come of little more than a slap on the wrist.

BP is hardly suffering since it reported second-quarby industry-friendly courts.

Doug Suttles has replaced the disgraced Tony Haygood! n