As the American-led response effort in the Gulf of Mexico continues to struggle with the leaking Deepwater Horizon well, five UK-based oil experts congregated in London to tell journalists why controlled burns were a bad idea, how microbes could have helped, and why an Arctic leak would be even worse.
Simon Boxall, a pollution and dispersion expert from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, questioned the merit of two major strategies being applied in the Gulf: dispersant application at the leak source on the sea bed and controlled burns of oil on the surface.
“All the dispersant seems to have done is allow the oil to stay at depth. We want the oil at the surface as that’s where it’s going to break down most rapidly,” he told journalists at a briefing organised by the Science Media Centre.
“The problem with burning is all that does is transfer the problem from the surface of the water to the atmosphere.”
Simon Rickaby, managing director of incident response company Braemar Howells, backed Boxall.
“People say the do nothing option is politically not light. Maybe the wording ‘we’re doing nothing at the moment because we’re monitoring and will take the appropriate action’, is more appropriate.”
The concern is that, like in well documented clean up operations following the Torrey Canyon and Exxon Valdez spills, the clean up does more damage than the oil does.
Burning and dispersants keeping the oil at depth will limit natural processes that breakdown the oil. Another expert, Christoph Gertler, is working on enhancing these natural processes.
His group, based at Bangor University in Wales, had developed a method which encourages the growth of microbes that break down crude oil. This is achieved with an oil containment boom which is laced with nitrogen and phosphorus – the availability of which is key to the growth of oil-munching bacteria.
“The potential of this technique is huge,” he told reporters. However, a lack of funding and a lack of access to the spill site has left it firmly on the drawing board.
“There’s a huge amount of research done for a very short period when an oil spill happens and then it goes quiet for a bit,” explains Boxall.
He relates the anecdote of a colleague who worked on a previous spill who said that, “during a spill if he wanted to order in a Hercules aircraft it was no problem at all. After the spill if he wanted a box of paperclips it was a triple application”.
As well as questioning the current response and deploring the stop-start nature of funding, the experts were also united on another point: their worst case scenario.
While the Deepwater Horizon was drilling near the cutting edge of current technology, it is another environment entirely that concerned those gathered together in London*.
“My nightmare scenario would be the Arctic. It would be a true catastrophe,” says Boxall, and others agreed.
Oil under ice would be much harder to clean up and Gertler adds, “At low temperatures there is no potential for biodegradation whatsoever, so the oil lasts in the environment for ages.”
* and by conference call in Boxall’s case.
Image: controlled burn in the Gulf of Mexico on 6 May / US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg.