Maley's Energy Blog

Scientists have discovered a hitherto-unknown oil-chomping microbes in the cold, briny depths of the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find free oil out in the Gulf, either on the surface or in a subsurface plume, a little more than a month after the flow from the Macondo well was controlled.

If you’re a bacteria, the BP spill was like Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner all in one. Nom-nom.

Which really shouldn’t come as a surprise to one who knows a thing or two about the natural environment of the Gulf. Given that a million or so barrels seep by natural processes every year into the Gulf, one would expect that specialized organisms would evolve to process it.

But it did come as a surprise to the professional hand-wringers, the environmentalists whose predictions come in a predictable mode (dire) and whose emotions know only a single chord (panicked). The same environmentalists whose “progressive” politics and thirst for control trump their commitment to scientific truth.

Note the parallels with the Climate Change debate. Just as the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem is vast and largely unknown to science, so the worldwide climate system and the interactions of the atmosphere and the oceans are poorly understood. The predictions of the Climate Changers can never be nailed down. The goalposts are constantly shifting.

Those skeptical of the cataclysmic predictions for the BP spill have been vindicated, and it’s taken just over three months. The worst consequences have been self-inflicted, by a hysterical media community and an Administration in Washington who latched onto the spill as a pretext for making the oil industry its whipping boy.

I’m willing to bet the AGW crowd is wrong, too, but it takes generations to prove it. They have designs on hog-tying the U.S. economy; they’ve gone all-in at this point, and they’ll be damned if they let little things like facts get in the way of their policy juggernaut.

Newly discovered microbe is eating the Gulf oil spill

Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who published a groundbreaking study of microbial activity Tuesday in the online research journal Science Express, has had a team of researchers out in the Gulf since May 25 collecting water samples. They noticed a dramatic drop-off in the amount of oil in the Gulf immediately after the well was idled July 15, and now they can’t find any oil in the ocean.

“In the last three weeks we haven’t been able to detect a deep plume anywhere,” Hazen said. “We can’t see it now. We can’t see anything at the surface. We can’t see anything in the deep subsurface either.” [emphasis added]

…

Meanwhile, Hazen’s team of researchers believe that the large amount of natural oil seeps in the area have helped the bacteria to adapt to oil in their environment over a long period of time, so when the BP blowout came long, they thrived. Even as the amount of oil in water increased the longer the well flowed, microbe levels remained constant, suggesting that they were able to keep pace with the oil.

“The bugs in this area have become adapted to using oil as a carbon source,” Hazen said.

Link: New oil-eating bug thrives at 41F. Resilient Mother Nature, Part XLIV. #rsrh Who’d’a thunk it?

Some crudites with your salad dressing?

The Obama Administration has filed some 27,000 pages of documents in Federal court which disclose the process by which it decided to forge ahead with a deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, in spite of expert advice, public opinion and a Federal judge’s ruling.

The documents also show that the Administration stonewalled a U.S. Senator’s request for information, a point apparently lost on the mainstream press. They show that the bureaucracy contemplated a de facto moratorium: since the bureaucracy has the power of the permit, who needs a moratorium? And they also show that ignorance (willful or otherwise) caused them to grossly misrepresent the economic impact of the moratorium to the court.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Administration forged ahead with plans to stop all drilling in water depths over 500 feet until November 30, even though its own estimates showed the ban would cost some 23,000 jobs.

[The documents] show the new top regulator or offshore oil exploration, Michael Bromwich, told Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that a six-month deepwater-drilling halt would result in “lost direct employment” affecting approximately 9,450 workers and “lost jobs from indirect and induced effects” affecting about 13,797 more. The July 10 memo cited an analysis by Mr. Bromwich’s agency that assumed direct employment on affected rigs would “resume normally once the rigs resume operations.” [emphasis added]

Hmm. July 10. That’s very interesting, because on July 28, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), chair of the Senate Small Business Committee, included the following remarks in her opening statement at the Committee’s hearing on the spill’s impact on business:

I note for the Record that on July 21, 2010, I invited Dr. Christina Romer, Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers to testify before this committee to provide the Administration’s perspective and its own economic analysis in support of the moratorium. Unfortunately, the Administration was unwilling to provide a witness for today’s hearing. Yesterday, I spoke to Dr. Romer personally and she indicated the Administration does not currently have the economic impact data, which is very disappointing to learn. It is my understanding that such a review has been initiated, however, which is encouraging.

Sen. Landrieu had received no data on economic impact as of July 28, nearly three weeks after Mr. Bromwich’s memo to Sec. Salazar, which contained the figures the Senator was searching for.

There’s also no basis for the Agency’s assumption that employment levels will return to pre-moratorium levels any time in the foreseeable future. These deepwater rigs are mobile; given the choice between $0 per day to sit idle in the Gulf or whether to pursue overseas contracts for $500,000, which would you choose? And they will not move without a four to five year work commitment. Once the big rigs leave, they’re gone for good.

Then there’s the case of the Non-Moratorium Moratorium, the near-total cessation of shallow water drilling permits, despite the President’s and the Secretary’s insistence that the deepwater moratorium is the only one currently in place.

In another document, William Hauser, chief of the regulations and standards branch of what was formerly called the Minerals Management Service, outlined the risks of various drilling activities in an email to colleagues and then wrote: “The more I write this stuff the more I believe we can/should/could regulate/stop activities through a prudent management process versus a moratoria scheme.”

He added, “I guess the moratoria approach is necessary because the MMS cannot be trusted to regulate.”

Here’s the third whopper:

The administration has said in court filings that the economic effect of suspended drilling wasn’t as severe as the industry asserted. In a filing with federal court in eastern Louisiana June 23, the day after a judge overturned the initial six-month halt, Justice Department attorneys said it affected 33 deepwater wells, “less than 1% of the existing structures in the Gulf dedicated to oil exploration and production.”

I’ve heard this blather before, out of the mouth of Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA). So the twisted thinking goes, “What’s 33 rigs, out of 3,800 platforms in the Gulf?”

It’s shocking that we entrust regulation to people with so little knowledge and so little interest in the things they regulate.

Yes, rigs and platforms are both “offshore structures”, in the sense that jetliners and bicycles are both “modes of transportation”. They have grossly different jobs.

“Rigs” drill wells. That’s the activity where money is spent in big chunks, so lots of jobs are dependent on rigs. One big deepwater rig accounts for 1,200 or so jobs, between direct labor, transportation and shore-based support. That’s before you factor in the impact of all those jobs on the local merchants and governments.

“Platforms” are structures for accessing producing wells. They hold a dozen or more wells and contain processing equipment, but there are many, many platforms in the shallow Gulf that only support a single well.

Rigs are the economic driver that make the industry work, that makes the oil-based economies of the Gulf States work.

Throughout this extended nightmare, I’ve wondered whether we have a) an Administration that’s truly naive and ignorant of the impact of their policies on our region, or b) an Administration that fully intends for their actions to kill domestic jobs, irreparably damaging an industry and a region.

Their own evidence now points to b).

Cross-posted to RedState.com.

A group for researchers from the Georgia Sea Grant grabbed headlines yesterday by challenging NOAA’s claim that 75% of the BP oil is accounted for – that it has been captured, burned, evaporated, degraded, dissipated or munched by microbes. The study by the Georgia group claims that 80% still lurks somewhere in the environment.

Who’s right?

First off, the numbers aren’t comparable because the Georgia group’s percentage does not account for the oil BP captured in its operations, some 800,000 barrels. By focusing on only the oil that hit the water, they publish a larger number.

The Georgia group also has a very low estimate of the amount of oil that should have evaporated. With a light crude oil, quite a bit of the volume should evaporate. Even if this is true, the Georgia Sea Grant folks are still worried about it:

Questions have been raised by the state’s scientific community about the vulnerability of communities living downwind of the Gulf of Mexico, including the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Playing to the crowd, maybe?

The Georgia researchers seem to be concerned about the presence of any oil molecules in the pristine natural environment, no matter how dispersed, no matter how dilute. Are they aware that almost 1,000,000 barrels of crude oil enters the Gulf ecosystem from natural seeps each year?

Dilution is also a key factor that seems to be acknowledged in the NOAA assessment. I haven’t checked the math, but something I’ve heard seems credible: that the volume of the oil spill, compared to the volume of water in the Gulf would be like comparing the contents of a can of beer to the volume of the cavernous Superdome.

A 24-ounce can of beer, but still.

Reading the Georgia report left me with the impression that these folks are desperately clinging to the fear that oil is eventually going to foul Georgia’s Atlantic beaches.

It ain’t gonna happen. The spill has stopped. The oil in the water, whatever percentage is left, is too dispersed and too dilute to be of any consequence to anyone more than 100 miles from the spill.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Link: More proof that journos are numerically challenged @dailybeast: http://bit.ly/cB8Pvd #rsrh

Billion gallons, million barrels … hell, I don’t know but it was 5 of something really BIG!

Link: Interior to allow some shallow water projects to proceed. #rsrh

In a nutshell, Shelf projects can still fall under “categorical exclusions” if there are no unusual environmental risk factors. Operators must comply with more rigorous requirements for their Oil Spill Response Plans.

All new Deepwater projects will require environmental assessments.

Virtually the entire environmental community showed a blatant disregard for the science and the facts, leading to an overblown forecast of the impact of the BP oil spill on the Gulf Coast.

All the observable factors which would serve to mitigate the spill’s impact were ignored by the hand-wringing greenies. The press cooperated, parroting dire predictions of oil fouling the entire Gulf Coast and possibly the Atlantic Coast, too. Life on the coast might never be the same!

Less than four months into the spill, however, and the Louisiana marsh is recovering, in the same growing season. Only 350 acres of marsh were oiled, compared to the 15,000 acres that erode per year.

The greens’ politics trumped their commitment to scientific truth. Their mistake was in making predictions that could be proven true or false over a short period of time — about three months, as it turns out.

That’s where the Climate Change community has the upper hand. Their predictions are long-term and hard to verify. And they have the latitude to move the goalposts at will.

Nonetheless, the BP spill and its interplay between the environmentalists and their willing accomplices in the press justify and reinforce my Climate Science skepticism.

Consider the parallels.

In both cases, you have a scientific establishment whose politics trumps its science. Much of the environmental movement starts from an implicit anti-development, anti-industry perspective. Ditto Climate Change. Funny how their “scientific” conclusions always confirm, and never refute, their politics.

In both cases, you have a complicit, gullible and scientifically illiterate journos feeding on the scientists for juicy headline fodder. They are savvy enough businessmen to realize that the narrative “The Sky Is Falling!!!” sells more papers and attracts more viewers than “More of the Same Tomorrow”.

In both cases, you have governmental entities that gain power from the junk science. The BP spill is a pretext to kill industry, punish red states and encroach on state authority. In the case of Climate Change, not just the EPA but also the U.N. stand to extend their spheres of influence.

The EPA and NOAA are the lead government agencies for data collection and evaluation for both phenomena.

Both events are an excuse to raise the cost of conventional energy sources, thereby decreasing their cost and efficiency advantages over renewable energy sources.

If the scientific shortcomings, the revelations of Climategate and demonstrated groupthink in the Climate Change community weren’t enough to make you skeptical, maybe the parallels with the failed forecasts of the BP spill will do the trick.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

On one hand, Mr. Obama, the “Worst Oil Spill in History” theme serves your Administration well as a pretext for eviscerating the offshore petroleum industry, an industry that, until this spring, was relatively healthy despite the recession. By doing so, you can suck the economic life out of four very red Gulf States.

On the other hand, your Energy Czar, Carol Browner, has joined the “Where has the oil gone?” chorus, maintaining that 75% of the 4.9 million or so barrels spilled (per government estimate) either evaporated, degraded naturally, was recovered or was burned at sea.

So which one is it, Chief?

Marshes fouled by Gulf of Mexico oil spill show signs of regrowth

More than a dozen scientists interviewed by The Associated Press say the marsh here and across the Louisiana coast is healing itself, giving them hope delicate wetlands might weather the worst offshore spill in U.S. history better than they had feared. Some marshland could be lost, but the amount appears to be small compared with what the coast loses every year through human development. [… and natural forces. – ed.]

“Worst Oil Spill”, by what measure? It was a very large spill by volume of oil, but shouldn’t “worst spill” be measured by environmental impact? By any objective measure the impact of the BP spill on the environment appears to be much less than the holocaust predicted by the greenies’ hype.

Meanwhile, we have a scientifically unsupportable deepwater moratorium in defiance of federal courts, and a de facto shallow water moratorium, where drilling is supposedly allowed but, as a practical matter, permitting has ground to a halt.

Life requires us to balance costs, risks and benefits all the time. By setting his threshold at zero risk, Interior Secretary Salazar has foolishly shifted the risk to a less visible but potentially more damaging venue: increased dependence on foreign oil, along with increased tanker traffic in our rivers and harbors.

Nearly every politician touts Energy Independence (or the more reasonable ones, Energy Security) as a goal on the campaign stump. It’s something we all say we want. But this virtual shutdown of the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas business is the biggest, most dramatic retrenchment from that goal in history.

So the question for you, dear reader, is how much are you willing to pay for Obama’s Fullbore Retreat from Energy Independence?

Lest you think I exaggerate about the shallow water moratorium, consider that exactly two new drilling permits have been approved for shallow water wells (water depth less than 500 ft) since the deepwater moratorium began. Both of those permits were for gas wells.

No new oil well permits have been approved, and the permitting requirements have been increased and obfuscated to the point that it’s unclear whether any new oil wells will ever be permitted.

Only sixteen shallow water rigs are working, mostly fixing older wells, not drilling new ones. Shallow water rigs, not just their deepwater cousins, are beginning to exit the Gulf, bound for foreign shores.

No new seismic permits have been granted. That will slow down future exploratory drilling.

No pipeline permits have been granted. (Which is an important feature of the slowdown. Nobody wants to drill a successful well, then not be able to lay a flowline to produce it.)

We are an industrialized economy. Satisfying its energy needs involves some level of risk. The vast majority of the American people seem to understand that, and think that offshore drilling should move ahead.

Enough is known about the failure mode of the BP well that corrective steps can be taken and the deepwater rigs put back to work. The shallow water portion of the industry has a still-unbroken 40 year track record of increasingly safe operations: not perfect, but as safe (or safer) and as clean (or cleaner) than other heavy industry.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Link: Kill the well! Bash it’s head! Do it in! #rsrh

I agree completely. Having drilled the relief well, BP should perform the bottom kill.

Link: TX Att’y General sues Feds over Deepwater drilling moratorium. #rsrh

“The Texas attorney general sued the Obama administration on Wednesday over its new deepwater offshore drilling moratorium, claiming that it is unjustified and that federal officials did not contact the state before issuing the ban. “