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When a BP oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico last April, killing 11 workers, authorities first reported that no crude was leaking into the ocean. They were wrong.
…Thousands of birds and other wildlife died. …Sea turtles were hit hard. The western population of the bluefin tuna, which breeds only in the northern Gulf, was breeding just as oil spewed from the ocean floor. Contamination may have reduced juvenile tuna production by 20 percent.
(an oyster buyer at Pass Christian's harbor in Mississippi reports)… this time last year she was buying up to 1,500 sacks of oysters a day. Last week that figure was down to 47 on some days.
When officials inspected the offshore beds, they found large numbers of dead oysters, so they did not do the dredging necessary for the new season.
Experts are yet to identify the cause of those deaths, though tests show live oysters are clean… [!]
This year, 153 bottle-nosed dolphin carcasses have washed up on Gulf coasts: 65 of those were infants: new born, stillborn or born prematurely, according to figures from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
…in February the government halted all external investigations into dolphin deaths and turned the matter over to NOAA, which is yet to release any findings.
…."We are absolutely confident that the water is safe. ...," Mike Utsler, chief operating officer of BP's Gulf Coast Restoration Organization wrote in Facebook comments published this week.
A big positive for the Gulf is … A lot of the crude from a spill also naturally evaporates, breaks down because of waves and exposure to ultraviolet light from the sun, or just gets diluted, says ]Mahlon C. Kennicutt II, a professor of chemical oceanography at Texas A&M University, who was part of the team that assessed the damage done by the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. "The Gulf of Mexico has a fairly significant ability to recover," says Kennicutt.
Does crude oil evaporate?
It seems some kinds do evaporate BUT according to the US Environmental Protection Agency "these classifications are dynamic for spilled oils; weather conditions and water temperature greatly influence the behavior of oil and refined petroleum products in the environment. For example, as volatiles evaporate from a Class B oil, it may become a Class C oil.". Evaporation is not necessarily a good thing.
And a kind of crude that evaporates easily also "penetrate porous surfaces such as dirt and sand, and may be persistent in such a matrix" and "may be highly toxic to humans, fish, and other biota."
In short, oils do not evaporate readily, because they are large molecules and are tangled together too tightly for easy separation while changing into the gaseous state.
What temperature does crude oil evaporate?
Since crude oil contains a variety of hydrocarbon components of different molecular weights, there is no single evaporation temperature. As crude oil is heated the lower molecular weight components boil off first. At temperatures above 650°F the crude oil will begin the process of "cracking" in which the larger components thermally degrade into smaller components. If crude oil is heated in this manner in the absence of oxygen, a final solid product called petroleum coke will be left behind, which consists of carbon, as well as the other impurities in the crude oil that were not removed such as sulfur, vanadium, etc.
Whether it's fair or not, the company to blame for last year's epic oil disaster is recovering faster than the environment. The simple reason is that the world needs energy.
the seabed looks like a sea-creature graveyard, says one recent visitor.
It's "a very depressing sight," University of Georgia marine scientist Samantha Joye recently said in an online interview, describing a visit a few months ago. "There were no worms poking their heads out to greet us." She said crabs stood and waved feebly, instead of scurrying away as they should have. An oily sediment appears to have killed the coral and other life on the seabed.
The disaster wiped about $70 billion from BP's market value, knocking its share price down from $61 a few days before the explosion to $26.75 in late June. The stock has recovered to close Thursday at $45.54 a share.
BP at least is upbeat about the Gulf's recovery.