April 18, 2014 — Four years after the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and the uncontrolled release of as much as 200 million gallons of crude oil, scientists are still struggling to understand how the oil and the dispersant chemicals used to break it down into tiny droplets have affected the environment of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and the Louisiana shoreline and wetlands where a large amount of oil was deposited.
“In many regards, we were fortunate,” said Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the time of the spill. “Much of the oil disappeared relatively quickly, thanks to the existence of bacteria (in the Gulf of Mexico), many of which we didn’t know about, the warm water of the Gulf, and the bathtub sloshing circulation of the Gulf, all of which contributed to its quick consumption by those bacteria.
“But there were likely acute impacts (to organisms) before the oil disappeared, and, in fact, some of the oil did indeed come ashore, and continues to be suspended in the environment,” she said.
“So, it could have been much worse, but the caution is that we still don’t fully know the true nature, the true extent of the damage, which is why it’s so important that the ongoing damage assessment efforts continue.”
Under the federal Oil Pollution Act, several federal agencies, the Gulf Coast states and BP are required to complete a “Natural Resource Damage Assessment” that determines the environmental damage caused by the spill and the effects of that damage on the community’s economy. Once the damage review is completed, the team is supposed to come up with ways to restore the damage or compensate for the lost environmental resources, a process that public officials say is likely to cost billions of dollars.
Some scientists still have doubts that all of the oil released in the Gulf has been accounted for.
“We still don’t have a perfect handle on where all that oil went, particularly in the deep ocean,” said David Valentine, professor of microbial and earth science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.