Cover-Up of Undersea Oil & Gas

Speaking of the BP cover-up, there are two very important pieces of news today about the extent to which the real impacts of the disaster have been hidden. In the St. Petersburg Times, Craig Pittman has this scathing report on how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration attempted to silence scientists who discovered the vast undersea plumes of dispersed oil in the Gulf:

A month after the Deepwater Horizon disaster began, scientists from the University of South Florida made a startling announcement. They had found signs that the oil spewing from the well had formed a 6-mile-wide plume snaking along in the deepest recesses of the gulf.
The reaction that USF announcement received from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agencies that sponsored their research: Shut up.
"I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil", USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF's public announcement, he said, comparing it to being "beat up" by federal officials.

It gets worse; NOAA's top brass confirmed that they tried to keep the reports quiet:

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, in comments she made to reporters in May, expressed strong skepticism about the existence of undersea oil plumes - as did BP's then-CEO, Tony Hayward.
"She basically called us inept idiots", Asper said. "We took that very personally".
Lubchenco confirmed Monday that her agency told USF and other academic institutions involved in the study of undersea plumes that they should hold off talking so openly about it. "What we asked for, was for people to stop speculating before they had a chance to analyze what they were finding", Lubchenco said. "We think that's in everybody's interest. ... We just wanted to try to make sure that we knew something before we speculated about it".

There's another extremely important piece out today, wherein the Associated Press documents how oil is already finding its way into the food web. Scientists are finding traces of oil in crab larvae:

The government said last week that three-quarters of the spilled oil has been removed or naturally dissipated from the water. But the crab larvae discovery was an ominous sign that crude had already infiltrated the Gulf's vast food web -- and could affect it for years to come.
"It would suggest the oil has reached a position where it can start moving up the food chain instead of just hanging in the water", said Bob Thomas, a biologist at Loyola University in New Orleans. "Something likely will eat those oiled larvae ... and then that animal will be eaten by something bigger and so on".

This, of course, does not help efforts to convince the public that seafood from the region is safe. Not does it help in promoting the idea that the oil is less of a threat because we can't see it, as the government and BP have been busy doing for the past week.

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USF officials draw ire of NOAA over oil spill research
ROB SHAW
Published: August 10, 2010 - Updated: 08/10/2010 03:20 pm

ST. PETERSBURG - Bill Hogarth hopes the "us versus them" mentality is over.

When University of South Florida researchers stood before television cameras and the world in May to announce they had found evidence of vast plumes of invisible undersea oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the dean of the College of Marine Science didn't get kudos from federal officials.

Instead, Hogarth said, he got grief from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"They were concerned about the data and wanted to know if we were sure of what we were saying", Hogarth said this morning. "They felt we were making statements that were not substantiated".

That wasn't the case at all, the dean said. And today, even as the gusher in the Gulf has been capped, he wouldn't change a thing that he and his researchers did.

"We had taken every precaution to make sure what we did was right. As a university, we need to inform the people", said Hogarth, himself a former NOAA employee of 16 years. "We reacted quickly and did what we thought was right and best".

On Monday, Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of NOAA, met with Hogarth and some USF scientists to try to get on the same page. Hogarth described the meeting as productive and said it was something that should have occurred a long time ago.

Hogarth is confident the two sides can work together to share information and help determine the long-term impact of the oil in the Gulf. He and others say that things have improved in their work with NOAA.

But it hasn't always been that way.

"One thing that bothered me is it has seemed it has been the federal scientists versus academia", the dean said. "That's not good for anyone. There's a place for both of us".

USF officials aren't the only ones who have drawn the ire of NOAA.

Samantha Joye, professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, had a similar experience when she started talking about what she and others had discovered underwater.

"We felt like our wrists were slapped a little bit when we came forward and talked about the plumes", Joye said. "NOAA wanted a vetted, concrete story. We felt we had a concrete story. The plumes were real; the data was very solid".

Joye is critical of the one-way flow of information that she said has plagued the effort. She said university researchers give plenty of data to NOAA or the Unified Command, but very little comes the other way.

"That is bothersome to me", she said. "Everybody needs to be sharing data".

Joye said she also is puzzled why NOAA won't begin checking for submerged methane gases in the deep waters of the Gulf - something she said her studies have proven exist.

"It seems crazy", she said. "There is no reasonable explanation as to why it's not being done. It just doesn't make sense".

Hogarth said the scope of the disaster was one factor that made it difficult for people from various institutions - government or universities - to work together.

"It got to be such a massive event", Hogarth said. "It pitted people against each other. I am hoping we have learned a lot from it".

Ian MacDonald, a biological oceanographer at Florida State University, faults NOAA for not taking advantage of the vast educational resources that made up the state's oil spill academic task force. That group was created soon after the oil started spewing into the Gulf.

"I would have thought there would have been a close working relationship", MacDonald said. "We formed the task force to make our expertise available to anyone who needed it. Nobody at NOAA took us up on our offer".

The FSU professor said it was ironic that NOAA talked of underwater oil in its report last week that said much of the oil could be accounted for.

"They were quite critical and they specifically challenged the veracity of their methods", MacDonald said of NOAA's rebuking of USF efforts. "They questioned the whole possibility. And yet that is what they say in their report.

"That's kind of too little, too late after they have slammed the scientists who were pointing this out quite rightly", the researcher added. "I have no idea what the politics of this are, but in terms of the science, this is irresponsible".

Reporter Rob Shaw can be reached at (813) 259-7999.