What happened to the oil?

Captains,

I posted comments on the fate of the spilled oil from Deepwater Horizon disaster back on July 16th. This week the US Government posted an official report. According to this report, the Unified Command's response operations mitigated about 1/3 of the 4.9 million barrels. This is actually a pretty good measure. Often, spill response efforts manage to mitigate less than 1/10 barrels spilled.

Of the remaining 2/3, note that over 40% evaporates, dissolves like sugar, or naturally disperses into microscopic droplets that get consumed by micro-organisms. This percentage is very typical for any oil spill. So it's the 25% residual amount that response operations hoped to minimize.

Fortunately, the Deepwater Horizon residual sweet Louisiana crude oil is 1. buoyant, 2. far from shore, and 3. in warm water. These three factors greatly assist natural degradation, which will actually be the fate of the recovered oil and oiled debris when it's deposited into the land fills of the four affected states.

RADM W

Flow Rate: The Oil Budget Calculator starts with an estimate of the cumulative amount of oil released

over the course of the spill. The newest estimates reflect the collaborative work and discussions of the

National Incident Command’s Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG) led by United States Geological

Survey (USGS) Director Marcia McNutt, and a team of Department of Energy (DOE) scientists and

engineers, led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu. This group estimates that approximately 4.9 million

barrels of oil flowed from the BP Deepwater Horizon wellhead between April 22 and July 15, 2010, at

which time the flow of oil was suspended. The uncertainty of this estimate is + 10%. The pie chart

above is based on this group’s estimate of 4.9 million barrels of oil.