The Gulf Oil Spill - Where Did All the Oil Go?

The explosion on April 20, 2010 at the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, resulted in oil and gas rising to the surface and the oil coming ashore in many parts of the Gulf, it also resulted in the dispersment of an immense oil plume 4,000 feet below the surface of the water. Despite spanning more than 600 feet in the water column and extending more than 10 miles from the wellhead, the dispersed oil plume was gone within weeks after the wellhead was capped – degraded and diluted to undetectable levels. Furthermore, this degradation took place without significant oxygen depletion. Ecogenomics enabled discovery of new and unclassified species of oil-eating bacteria that apparently lives in the deep Gulf where oil seeps are common. This data suggests that a great potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil plumes exists in the deep-sea and other environs in the Gulf of Mexico.

 Brief Bio: Terry Hazen is a microbial ecologist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he heads both the Ecology Department and the Center for Environmental Biotechnology. When a deepwater oil plume was formed in the aftermath of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico this past summer, Terry Hazen led a team that was able to directly study the microbial activity within the oil plume. His report that the oil had been degraded to virtually undetectable levels within a few weeks after the damaged wellhead was finally sealed made headlines across the country.

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