  Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe, but its chemistry
in the interstellar medium is still not well understood. In order to critically
examine the entire oxygen budget, we attempt here initially to estimate the
abundance of atomic oxygen, O, in the only one region, where molecular oxygen,
O2, has been detected to date. We analyse ISOCAM-CVF spectral image data toward
rho Oph A to derive the temperatures and column densities of H2 at the
locations of ISO-LWS observations of two [OI] 3P_J lines. The intensity ratios
of the (J=1-2) 63um to (J=0-1) 145um lines largely exceed ten, attesting to the
fact that these lines are optically thin. This is confirmed by radiative
transfer calculations, making these lines suitable for abundance
determinations. For that purpose, we calculate line strengths and compare them
to the LWS observations. Excess [OI] emission is observed to be associated with
the molecular outflow from VLA 1623. For this region, we determine the physical
parameters, T and N(H2), from the CAM observations and the gas density, n(H2),
is determined from the flux ratio of the [O I]63um and [O I]145um lines. For
the oxygen abundance, our analysis leads to essentially three possibilities:
(1) Extended low density gas with standard ISM O-abundance, (2) Compact high
density gas with standard ISM O-abundance and (3) Extended high density gas
with reduced oxygen abundance, [O/H] ~ 2E-5. As option (1) disregards valid [O
I] 145um data, we do not find it very compelling; we favour option (3), as
lower abundances are expected as a result of chemical cloud evolution, but we
are not able to dismiss option (2) entirely. Observations at higher angular
resolution than offered by the LWS are required to decide between these
possibilities.
