Hydrocarbon Pollution
January 27, 2023
Seeing Through Turbulence to Track Oil Spills in the Ocean – EOS Magazine
After oil and tar washed up on eastern Mediterranean beaches in 2021, scientists devised a way to trace the pollution back to its sources using satellite imagery and mathematics.
In mid-February 2021, heavy storms brought intense downpours to the eastern Mediterranean coast, keeping residents indoors. After the storms passed, residents returned to local beaches and noticed signs that something amiss had occurred offshore. In Israel, clumps of tarred sand appeared on beaches, along with oil-covered wildlife like turtles and fish. A dead 17-meter-long fin whale also washed ashore—an autopsy revealed oily liquid in its lungs, although the source of the oil was not identified definitively.
Experts estimated that more than a thousand metric tons of tar had landed along 180 kilometers of the Israeli and Lebanese shorelines in mid-February (Figure 1). Gaza also reported that similar arrivals of tar had reached its beaches. The findings forced Israeli authorities to announce the temporary closure of the country’s beaches on Sunday, 21 February, and prompted calls to identify the source (or sources) of the oil, which was not immediately clear…
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Authorities working to determine source of oil slick off Santa Barbara coast – the Los Angeles Times
The U.S. Coast Guard was working with state officials Saturday to determine the cause of a large oil slick in the waters off Santa Barbara County.
The 1½- to 2-mile sheen was spotted Friday about five nautical miles from Summerland Beach, an area with a petroleum-rich sea floor that is home to numerous abandoned gas and oil wells…
How Long Until Alaska’s Next Oil Disaster? – the Atlantic
More than 30 years after the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill, many Alaskans are still haunted by the possibility of another such disaster. Some felt that those fears were about to be realized in 2020, when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) began preparing to auction off development rights to a million acres of Cook Inlet, a proposal known as Lease Sale 258…
Shipping’s dirty secret: how ‘scrubbers’ clean the air – while contaminating the sea – the Guardian
Told to reduce air pollution, the shipping industry could have switched to cleaner fuels – instead, many vessels turned to special devices that simply dump the toxins into the water.
The toxins do not just disappear. Aside from being acidic, scrubbers contain heavy metals that accumulate in marine food chains…
History of DDT ocean dumping off L.A. coast even worse than expected, EPA finds – Los Angeles Times
After an exhaustive historical investigation into the barrels of DDT waste reportedly dumped decades ago near Catalina Island, federal regulators concluded that the toxic pollution in the deep ocean could be far worse — and far more sweeping — than what scientists anticipated.
10 years after BP spill: Oil drilled deeper; rules relaxed
Industry leaders and government officials say they’re determined to prevent a repeat of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. Yet safety rules adopted in the spill’s aftermath have been eased as part of Trump’s drive to boost U.S. oil production.
‘We’ve been abandoned’: a decade later, Deepwater Horizon still haunts Mexico
Amid public and political outrage in the US, BP took full responsibility for the worst oil spill of the 20th century. But BP denied the oil reached Mexico, claiming the ocean current propelled the huge spill in the opposite direction. However, fishermen and Mexican scientists knew this wasn’t true.
Scientists have found oil from the Deepwater Horizon blowout in fishes’ livers and on the deep ocean floor
Over the decade since the Deepwater Horizon spill, thousands of scientists have analyzed its impact on the Gulf of Mexico. The spill affected many different parts of the Gulf, from coastal marshes to the deep sea.
Coalition Unveils Recommendations for Continued Recovery 10 Years After Gulf Oil Spill
As the 10th anniversary of the Gulf oil spill approaches on April 20, Restore the Mississippi River Delta released a report today with nine recommended strategies for advancing critical ecosystem restoration in the delta.
The toxic reach of Deepwater Horizon’s oil spill was much larger — and deadlier — than previous estimates
The spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was far worse than previously believed, new research has found.