Macondo oil dispersal update validates August report from US NOAA

Houston (Platts)--23Nov2010/414 pm EST/2114 GMT

A peer-reviewed report on the fate of the oil released during the BP Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico generally confirms the percentages initially announced by the US government in August, the government said November 23.

But the updated report now indicates that chemical dispersants did twice as good a job as initially believed in dispersing the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil released from the blown-out well, said Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"We believe the dispersed amount of oil is larger on the chemical side and slightly smaller on the natural dispersal side," said Lubchenco during a telephonic press conference conducted to elaborate on the new report.

That update indicates that the government now believes chemical dispersants handled 16% of the total spill, up from an estimate of only 8% in August when the Macondo response was still under way.

At the same time, the report indicates that natural reaction dispersed only 13% of the spill, down from an estimate of 16% in August.

The new report also indicates that 23% of the spill remains in question -- down from an estimate of 26% in August -- with the remainder either burned, skimmed or recovered by the BP devices designed to divert portions of the spill from the wellhead.

Noting the slight differences in the updated categories, Lubchenco called the update a "validation of the original numbers."

She said: "The bottom line is that even under the intense pressures of providing information to inform the response effort, the scientific team did a remarkable job of providing accurate calculations of the oil that was in different categories...This oil budget did what it was supposed to."

Lubchenco emphasized that this oil budget report is unrelated to the government's Flow Rate Technical Group, which estimated the actual amount of oil released from Macondo between the April 20 blowout and the successful installation of a capping device on July 15.

She also said the report does not address the impact of the Macondo oil spill or indicate where the missing oil is located now.

"Fully understanding the damages and impacts of the spill on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem is something that will take time and continued monitoring and research by federal and academic scientists," she said.

--Gary Taylor, gary_taylor@platts.com

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