Deepwater Horizon Spill Left an Oil Ring the Size of Rhode Island on Sea Floor
October 28th, 2014Via: The Verge:
There’s an oil ring the size of Rhode Island at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and researchers say it belongs to oil company BP. According to a study published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, about 10 million gallons of coagulated oil now coats the sea floor, following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that resulted in 172 million gallons of oil being spilled into the Gulf in 2010. The rest of the oil, however, is still largely unaccounted for.
“Based on the evidence, our findings suggest that these deposits are from Macondo oil that was first suspended in the deep ocean, then settled to the sea floor without ever reaching the ocean surface,” David Valentine, one of the study’s authors and a biogeochemist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the National Science Foundation.
More: Fallout Plume of Submerged Oil from Deepwater Horizon
