Natural oil seeps: Not proof oil spill worries are overblown

Forbes and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour say we shouldn't really worry much about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill—after all, natural oil seeps are constantly leaking hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and everything is fine. So, are they right?

As you might guess, there's a bit of distortion going on here.

Natural seeps are real—kind of the underwater oil deposit equivalent of a natural spring of water popping up through the ground on land. They really do release a lot of oil into the world's oceans—as much as 14 million barrels per year. But, as Cutler Cleveland, Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at Boston University, wrote on the Oil Drum blog, they do that at a much slower rate than man-made oil spills.

The Deepwater Horizon site releases 3 to 12 times the oil per day compared to that released by natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico. By May 30, the Deepwater Horizon site had released between 468,000 and 741,000 barrels of oil, compared to 60,000 to 150,000 barrels from natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico over the same 39 day period.

Natural seeps also don't run constantly or consistently. They stop and start, and put out more or less oil over time. And most of the seeps have been seeping for a very long time.

Why does all this matter? I've said it before and I'll say it again: Dose makes the poison.

Smaller amounts of oil, released a slower rate, into a local ecosystem that has evolved in tandem with the ongoing natural seep isn't as big of a deal as a whole metric crap-ton of oil dumped quickly into a larger area of ocean. (Just like smaller amounts of Corexit oil dispersant can be legitimately safe, even though we don't know anything about the toxicity of the product when used in huge quantities.)

The existence of natural oil seeps is not a legitimate argument against the very real need for concern about the effects of a massive oil spill. Tell your friends. And maybe Gov. Barbour, if you get a chance.

Oil Drum blog writers Gail Tverberg and Prof. Dave Summers were instrumental in answering my questions about oil seeps. For more details on the seeps, read Cutler Cleveland's full post, and this follow-up by Summers.
Tar ball on the beach in Alabama. Tar balls can be cause by both natural seeps and spills. It's impossible to know which without testing. Photo by Flickr user EveMBH, via CC

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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Anonymous

For our point in history, oil is a great resource for energy! What else are we going to do with it?

I love how we pull trillions and trillions of barrels from the ground over time and when we spill some, everyone is up in arms!

First, if you are sitting in a room with electricity, or using a computer or driving in your car to a protest or out on your fishing boat complaining, then you are truly a hypocrite!

Oh, and for those of you who feel better because you have a solar panel or purchased an “energy efficient” car, your a sucker for marketing – period. If you want to do the planet a favor, walk, cut your electricity, don’t work for anyone that uses electricity etc etc…

Sure – someday future generations will look back at us with disgust, but we simply do not have the technology to create the amount of energy the world demands. Unless you extremist on BOTH sides finds realistic common ground we will never advance with respect to energy!

Just my two cents!
~33DegreesNorth@gmail.com
bobhughes

Are these people really this stupid? Or do they just think everyone else is? Trying to play a card like “the natural oil seeps don’t hurt…” is a blatant, desperate grab at straws to defend big oil’s & the fed’s anti-safety practices.

While we’re at it, lets go ahead and whine about the money wasted on cleaning up 3 mile island & enforcing the new regulations it brought, since anyone with a smoke detector gets a dose of radiation each day already!
- Phlip
  
  Anyone with a natural gas stove gets a dose of Radon each time they use it…
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    …and everybody has to eat a bushel of shit before they die.
    It’s the law.
Anonymous

Nobody is saying that the oil spill should be ignored, just that it isn’t the end of the world and the entire coast from Texas to the Keys is not covered hip deep in oil. Nobody is denying that it is a crappy deal and it could have been prevented. Mississippi had very little, if any of the oil from the Horizon wash up as tar balls for around 40 days and that was all he was trying to convey.
Ultan

Those numbers assume 12,000 – 19,000 barrels per bay from the Deepwater Horizon gusher. The correct number is between 20,000- 100,000 barrels per day according to estimates from the Coast Guard and academics. The higher part of that range comes from more reputable sources, such as a professor who has published a book on flow rate estimation. The precise number is difficult to calculate because the flow varies, part of the flow is natural gas, the average flow rate has increased as the pipe has eroded, and BP denied access to the video feed needed to monitor the flow rate for weeks in an effort to reduce its liability (standard fines for spills are about $1,100 to 4,300 per barrel depending on negligence.)

The DH gusher is therefore putting out 12 to 60 times the natural seep rate of the whole Gulf, and doing it at a single point. With the well casing mostly gone, its integrity entirely lost, and oil now spewing up through widening cracks in the seafloor, there is now no way of cutting off the flow. It could go for several years before it tapers off to merely doubling the natural seep rate.
bjacques

Riiiiight, so the tar balls are not washing up on beaches elsewhere or and didn’t on Mississippi beaches before late April why exactly?

And, as on Amity Beach, you won’t want to go swimming there on Labor Day Weekend. We’re gonna need a bigger bullshit spreader.
jphilby

The same approach is used to poo-poo nuclear radiation exposure. “Ah heck, you pick up a REM every time you fly in a jet plane.”

1. I don’t fly in jet planes.
2. That’s voluntary. And consistent. But when you live downwind from a nuclear plant, your dose is neither.

Some people are cavalier about their own health and hey, that’s their poison. I demand the right to name my own.

(Read the recent news about “safe” dental x-rays? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1284843/Just-safe-X-rays-dentist.html

Rather like those shoe fluoroscopes that all disappeared from the shoe stores at once. Linking Straight Dope; the WP article’s been scrubbed. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/599/were-those-old-shoe-store-fluoroscopes-a-health-hazard)
- tsm_sf
  
  Jphilby, hope you don’t drink out of plastic bottles or eat tomatoes from a can.
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    I didn’t: until ALL the manufacturers switched packaging (without asking me, BTW).
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      I lie: for I have NEVER eaten my tomatoes from a can (though I have not always known what goes on in the kitchen).
Antinous / Moderator

To be fair, the Governor is trying to put a better spin on it to keep tourism and jobs from pulling out of the area. Kind of like the Mayor of Amity.
- lewis stoole
  
  >the mayor of amity<
  
  you just blew my mind with that reference.
  perfect.
- Anonymous
  
  “To be fair, the Governor is trying to put a better spin on it to keep tourism and jobs from pulling out of the area.”
  
  While simultaneously fucking over anyone still living and working in the area.
DeWynken

Reads as if the governor is viewing this through rose..er..republican colored glasses..
Brainspore

By the same token, the miners who died in that methane explosion in April simply experienced a higher-than-usual exposure to gases that naturally seep out of the earth’s crust from time to time.
Stefan Jones

And carbon dioxide is plant food!

Really, anybody who propagates this shameless spin should be required to bathe in or breathe the crud in question.
- Yamara
  
  I’ll bring the feathers.
ADavies

Those birds were covered in bown stuff all along. Just nobody noticed before.
igzabier

parts of the US and now Canada’s arctic are like, totally the new Nigeria?
Nigeria’s agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it
The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
- Anonymous
  
  While I agree with what you’re saying, it has no bearing on the US Gulf situation, and it’s the fault of the corrupt Nigerian government, that they’re experiencing those issues, and not taking any action.
Snig

Scale counts. Sunwarmed stones and static electricity are usually fine, but lava flows and lightning strikes are best avoided.
gwailo_joe

Dose makes the poison. Tru dat. Good line. . .

But the very word ‘seep’ proves the point: ‘to pass, flow, ooze gradually through a porous substance. . .’

Gradually!!! What we have is a F**king gusher! To use a BB phrase:

-Just look at it.-

Except a steampunk banana gun and the like is funny and cool:

This Deepwater disaster just makes me sad.
Phlip

A seep near the ground, or sea-bed, that has seeped for a while has already bled off its natural gas and lighter hydrocarbons – like a natural catalytic cracker. The remaining ooze is the tar, which does not disperse as rapidly.

BP’s oil gusher (who are we up to blaming by now? Carter, Abscam, the EPA, and Woody Allen??) is absolutely fresh oil (from a huge field) that contained above average ratios of natural gas & volatiles, under enormous pressure. It is now injecting a different poison into each habitat and ecosystem in the Gulf.

Recovery is going to take a century.
Anonymous

This is great news. If you are correct in your scientific analysis, the hurricane season will clean up this mess for us and there’s no issue to worry about at all!
Mr. Gunn

Another facet to the issue, much dicussed at the recent American Society for Microbiology meeting, is how this will change the levels of microorganisms which metabolize oil. Oil is food for some microorganisms, but if the levels of the microbes get too high in a particular area, they literally consume all the oxygen in the area (like a red tide) and this causes massive fish and wildlife kills. The underwater plumes of oil are sufficient to support growth of the microbes to this level, potentially creating a dead zone for hundreds of miles.
juepucta

A great way of putting it is this:

—–
Of special concern are the hundreds of â€œseepâ€ communities in the gulf, enclaves of crustaceans, weird tube worms, tiny fish, mussels, and crabs that live near natural gashes in the sea floor. These seeps release hydrocarbons, which might suggest that the oil-and-methane plumes are good for these creatures. Unfortunately, the profusion of hydrocarbons is likely to be less like sitting down to a Thanksgiving feast than like being encased in marshmallowed sweet potatoes: deadly.
—–

From this S. Begley piece http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/06/what-the-spill-will-kill.html

-G.
Anonymous

I agree that it’s not the end of the world, but this leads to complacency. The problem is that it was caused due to BP’s cost cutting for the bottom line (poor workmanship on the drilling, lack of pressure fills, etc). One incident of this magnitude won’t cause the world to implode, but treating it as if it doesn’t matter doesn’t set the message that similar incidents will not be tolerated.

It’s the same way with children; a child sneaking a snack behind your back once or twice isn’t a big deal, but if you find out and just laugh it off, they end up sneaking more and more, because they know they can get away with it. They don’t learn any discipline or restraint, which is the problem with BP et al, they just do what they want, and throw money at any problems they run across.
rAMPANTiDIOCY

Here is the logic used:

Background levels of contaminant exist naturally.
Therefore, additional anthropogenic sources are okay, even in higher doses.

Seems flawed to me.
Anonymous

Yes the parallels to CO2 apologetics is uncanny.

How these boobs passed grade school is beyond me.
WestTexas

“Dose makes the poison.” Wow.

As someone who tells the story of a former environmental disaster, I am glad to see such anger and passing along of pertinent facts throughout the blogosphere on this one white-hot issue. I have not seen that before.
voiceinthedistance

I highly recommend theoildrum.com to anybody looking for a deeper level of understanding of the current fuckage, as well as the bigger energy picture. The depth of information available there dwarfs any other source I have found, on both the macro and microcosmic level.