Slashdot Mirror
Can Oil-Eating Bacteria Help Clean Up the Gulf Oil Spill?
sciencehabit writes "At this point it's unclear how much of an environmental threat oil spreading from the BP spill will cause, but the federal government is mobilizing thousands of workers to prepare for the worst. They have a potential ally: microbes that have evolved an ability to break down oil that seeps from the ocean bottom. It gets devoured by a variety of bacteria, which eat it by chemically transforming its compounds into useful cellular constituents."
Wired has some pictures of the spill from orbiting satellites.
I'd say it depends on what they poop.
Michalangelo Progr
Humans always have good luck introducing a new species into an untested environment. *popcorn*
Free BP brand sunscreen for everyone. Just reach down and smear a tar like glob on your face. The article made it pretty clear the bacteria is not a solution. Neither is burning. This will be an environmental disaster. Too late to stop it now. Thanks BP.
You go!
The article makes it very clear that the bacteria convert the oil into harmless lipids, peptides and amino acids.
Obviously, over a sufficiently long time, all but the nastiest flavors of hydrocarbon are subject to biological attack(which, among other reasons, is why there isn't much free oil just sitting around on the earth's surface, and what is close to the surface has mostly degraded into a hardened mass of tar).
However, if anybody thinks that bacteria that evolved to metabolize oil seeps are going to be able to eat the output of a more or less uncapped modern production well before it floats and oils a whole lot of birds/beach/furry animals, they are dreaming.
There are practically no complex organic compounds that are truly persistent, between UV and adventurous microbes; but there are plenty that are persistent enough that you'll be dead by the time they've worked themselves out.
If solutions are needed, then those in need, need only exercise the same degree of ingenuity /. editors exercise in bringing non tech stories to the front page via tortuous, tenuous, inventive ways.
ideopath @ play
"If the bacteria will eat the oil"; but "Will it ever stop if released?"
I bet the little guys can't each much more than their own body weight in oil per day. Have you seen how big the oil slick is? who the heck has that much oil-eating bacteria ready to go?
needs to read Neal Stephenson's Zodiac to talk about fallout of such action. Everything's connected, once you employ the bacteria in the process, something changes, maybe some other organisms start to feeding on them. Once the harmony is unbalanced, it'll take a while to regulate itself to sustainable state. I'm no eco-scientist, but I believe, there would be dozens of experts arguing against such action.
she swallowed a fly; Perhaps she'll die.
Listen, I don't want to get crucified for this, but I did the math yesterday. 5,000 barrels a day sounds like a lot, but this spill only adds about 45% to the total daily runoff coming out of the Mississippi anyway. If this gets plugged in 30 days, the total increase in annual oil going into this 'neighborhood' will be about 4%.
Again, I'm not defending the spill, it needs to get plugged, but this isn't going to dramatically change the situation in that area of the Gulf, mostly because the Gulf is such a mess already.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Did this plot
http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Wind-Kevin-J-Anderson/dp/0765357763/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0
"When a panicky oil company tries to clean up a major spill in San Francisco Bay by dropping genetically engineered oil-eating microbes on it, the little organisms go berserk and start devouring most of the world's long-chain polycarbons (gasoline, plastics, etc.). "
Really? They want to put nitrogen fertilizer down to clean up the beach environment?
So, let's harvest a bunch of coal and natural gas and put a bunch of energy into refining it into fertilizer.
Then, let's put it on the beach and in the shallows where it can help the bacteria break down the oil into fats and acids. That and the excess runoff of nitrogen fertilizer should really help with the algal explosion and resulting fish and sea plant dead zone to come.
So instead of having oil in the shallows of the gulf, we can have tons of dead sea life releasing fats and carbon dioxide into the water, further fucking up the environment and acidifying the water. And to get there, we need to process more fossil fuels to clean up these fossil fuels. While fertilizer can be made without fossil fuels, IIRC it rarely is at this point, at least in the US.
Also, TFA says that if we didn't have natural bacteria eating the oil that we'd be knee deep in the stuff. If oil is that abundant and all we have to do is get to it before the bacteria get it in the sea water, why the hell are we worried about peak oil again?
Fish consist for a big part of oils... What will the bacteria do them? Someone might know this?
The single-handedly saved the world from the Exxon spill. I saw it on TV so it must be true!
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
What ever happened to those chains of floats used to encircle a spill and contain it? True, it is huge now but what about earlier when it could have been manageable?
Paul Stamets at TED, 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World
This is truly profound. This soil was not only cleansed of diesel fuel, but returned to a viable healthy ecosystem that attracted other forms of life to re-colonize it.
Can't recall exactly how, but an oceanic solution was touched on during the talk as well.
There is the fundamental problem of drilling in the ocean, never mind what government thinks it can regulate and what an Oil driller thinks they can handle, the pressure from the 5000 feet of water/soil is huge, it pushes the light Oil out of the reserve and up, I wonder if it is not possible for the opening to widen into something gigantic, like a crater that doesn't just trickle the oil as it is doing now but is gushing it out through some enormous opening a few hundred meters wide.
How much Oil is there underneath that water and rock right now, does anybody know? What is the worst case scenario if all of it is pushed to the top?
You can't handle the truth.
Familiar tale: First, microbes to eat the oil. Then small fish to eat the microbes, bigger fish to eat those fish, then sharks (with lasers) to take care of those. Of course, we can't have laser-armed sharks around, so just poison it all.
High concentrations of oil kill the stuff.
It's a great approach for small amounts of oil but doesn't work with a big thick slick.
Oil companies use oil eating bacteria to treat storm water runoff in oil refineries - so yes they have heard of this stuff.
these little critters start devouring the overweight gamers for their fat.
Not sure if this is a good or bad end of the story, though.
... the microbes will eat all our oil!
At this point it's unclear how much of an environmental threat oil spreading from the BP spill will cause
Actually, it's pretty clear. This likely will go down as the worst environmental disaster in US history, in terms of its environmental and financial impacts. Estimates say it's leaking 1 million gal per day. That means we're just about at EVE already. It will take at least a few months to get another well drilled and this one capped.
In that time, LA and other Gulf oyster and shrimping fisheries are going away. That's $2.5-3 billion to LA per year. Coastal wetlands are going to be devastated - can't scrub the plants, have to burn the wetlands to clean it up. Hundreds of species of wildlife will be impacted. Their marine and estuarine habitats will be severely harmed. And we haven't even discussed the impact to beaches and Florida's $3 billion Gulf Coast tourism industry, yet. Hope the slick/tar balls don't hit the Loop current and end up in Miami Beach or even Daytona.
This is bad, folks.
Forget it at your peril.
I was under the impression that oil sits underneath the ground in pools, and we (as in mining companies) drill through the earth and suck out the oil.
So why, during earthquakes and the like, don't the oil reservoirs crack open and release oil into the ocean? And if they do, how does nature deal with it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://www.youtube.com/v/aegI9YCM0oA I'm not the only one this morning who thought the swat teams were fucking odd.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4DnU_8RhEg
So what are the possible ways to get the well capped quickly?
I haven't seen reports on what is being tried.
Are they out of ideas?
But it is a splendid opportunity to exploit pork spending tendencies of lawmakers.
I'm not sure the biological agents that breakdown oil would survive in the sea water. Even if it did, I doubt we could produce enough to make a difference for this oil slick.
The big question I have is this. Why can't they just set an explosive charge next to the hole and blow it up. The hole should colapse and fill in with sea floor rubble. All of the options they are focusing on to stop the leak seem to be about saving the well instead of stopping the flow of oil.
What else do they eat after consuming the oil slick? Do they just die away and leave another environmental toxic problem?
this is a bad oil spill, but it isn't the first. my question is, why hasn't govt oversight learned from the previous spills and put into place more effective safeguards that might have prevented this one? if they failed to safeguard things LAST time, and they have obviously failed again THIS time, what's going to prevent the NEXT time from happening? is it an indication that our beloved govt just isn't up to snuff when it comes to 'doing their job'? who is out there working in the planet's interest to insure cost-cutting, bad math or just plain stupididity won't let it ever happen again? thanks fer lis'nin' seekertom
Guessing downsides include igniting the entire reserve (although I think an oxygen source would be needed), making the leak worse, & 3 eyed fish, etc.
Probably obvious, but I have no practical knowledge in any of the domains involved here.
Funny. I read about oil-eating bacteria already in a Scrooge McDuck comic more than 15 years ago and have been waiting for them in real life since then.
Yes OceanEnviro LLC has an oil eating bacteria ready for deployment. These strains multiply, work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and will work in most weather conditions. However, we have already contacted the EPA, several government officials, and British Petroleum, with no replies. All avenues of possible oil removal must be considered. Wish us luck, Gary
I might get blasted for this comment, but WTF r they doing?
Seriously, they are taking way to long to come up with a solution.
The governments are accountable for this one, you don't have 10 countries sitting there waiting for the other to jump in first, they all have to jump in....I am sickened by the lack of action on the US part...Obama should have deployed guards immediately to assess,
and more the second day once the threat was determined. What does he want to teach the big oil companies a lesson, instead do the clean up charge an enormous amount of money to the companies after wards for the clean up at the price they normally charge us tax payers for their budget.
I would have dropped lines down to those leaks and started sucking that extra oil into tankers already and sent them to get processed,
then would have claimed them for the US reserve as the oil is spilled therefor does not belong to anyone. If any big company investing billions were to come in and start sucking the oil from the water above the pipes, they would make a major profit as it is considered lost in the ocean, so they would have to come up with a novel way of splitting the oil from the water, but i think centralfugal force is the key there i think?
This is starting to sound like Metal Gear Solid 2.
I say if we let the bacteria go they will start eating other species food then after a while many species will be exscinded. It just like when people put a burning bush in their yard yes it is pretty, but it is not native so it starts kill all the other plants in the yard. The bacteria will do the same.