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August 20, 2010

Scientists Confirm Gulf Oil Plume, Dispute White House Claims
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New evidence has cast fresh doubt on the Obama administration’s claim
that most of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has disappeared. On Thursday,
a team of researchers confirmed the existence of a vast underwater oil
plume stretching twenty-one miles from BP’s blown-out well. Christopher
Reddy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution the amount of oil in
the plume is unknown.

Christopher Reddy: "All I can tell you is that we found a plume. And I
can’t tell you how much oil is in it, because we don’t have the values
yet. We know there is a plume. We know its length. We know its shape. We
know that we collected water samples in it. And when we have analyzed
those samples, we’ll be able to constrain how much—what the
inventory of those compounds are in there."

The White House has claimed more than three-quarters of the oil has
vanished from the Gulf. But speaking before the House Energy and
Commerce subcommittee on Thursday, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration senior scientist Bill Lehr acknowledged that only ten
percent of the oil has been cleaned up and that large quantities that
evaporated or dispersed remain in the Gulf ecosystem. Florida State
University oceanographer Ian Mac Donald also said the actual amount of
oil removed from the Gulf is around ten percent and predicted the spill
will likely remain harmful for decades.

Ian Mac Donald: "We really can only account for ten percent of the oil
that was discharged, that 4.1 million barrels that was discharged,
through burning and skimming. The balance of the oil remained in the
environment. There may have been some ten percent that evaporated into
the atmosphere, that is gone from the ocean, but the balance is still in
the ocean. This oil has already degraded, has already evaporated and
emulsified. It is going to be very resistant to further biodegradation.
This oil is going to be in the environment for a long time. I think that
the imprint of the BP release, the discharge, will be detectable in the
Gulf of Mexico environment for the rest of my life. And for the record,
I’m fifty-eight years old. So there’s a lot of oil, it’s not gone, and
it’s not going away quickly."