Gulf Bacteria Quickly Digested Spilled Methane 136
masterwit writes "From an AAAS news release: 'Bacteria made quick work of the methane released by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, digesting most of the gas within the four months after its release, according to a new study published online at ScienceExpress.' This study, however, did not deal with other chemicals (oil) from the disaster's fallout. A glimpse of good news from the disaster's aftermath."
Reader iamrmani points out a related article suggesting that things may be looking up for BP after the Presidential Commission said blame for the disaster should be shared with service contractors and government regulators.
Re:"Our" Fault? (Score:5, Interesting)
"...most of the gas..." (Score:2, Interesting)
It's nice to know that ScienceExpress is 'express' enough to not bother including any real data along with their story.
Yeah, I read most of the article...of course, if I were the typical slashbot, most=whatever the slashdot summary included (along with the sassy editorial at the end, making it ever so painfully obvious the submitter wants to steer the reader's opinion of the article..I mean, Fox News anchors are better at doing that, and they're horrible!)
Is BP a good investment? (Score:5, Interesting)
Before the spill, BP was trading at $60+/share. Today, they're at $45/share. I can't help but think that since they have already paid out most of the money that will have to and since they have settled most of the claims, and since the well is good and dead, that the stock price has to recover to it's previous levels. If you buy today at $45 and it recovers only to $60 in a year, then that's still a 33% return on investment, which is absolutely terrific, especially in a down economy. Any thoughts?
Re:Sure, it got the gas. (Score:4, Interesting)
Several news reports indicated that much if not most of the oil was digested by bacteria.
Some doubt this but nobody has been able to map plumes big enough to account for anywhere near the amount oil that was claimed to have been released. Not even close.
The oil was broken up into fine mist in the gulf which exposed the maximum amount of surface of each oil droplet, allowing for a rapid bloom of oil eating bacteria. In this region, (unlike some other spill zones) these bacteria are always around because there are always natural oil seeps in the gulf.
So how marine life is affected over the long term is yet to be determined. There may well be disperse clouds of oil affecting deep marine life which won't show up for several years.
Re:Shared? (Score:4, Interesting)
Capitalism works, except that's not really what we are dealing with when it comes to oil. We have placed the regulations so high that it's virtually impossible for anyone to enter in meaningful way. There are 5 major oil companies that touch about every gallon of oil in the US before it's used, shipped off, refined or whatever else. Of those 5, no more then 4 operate in any one state at a time.
There might be some independent operators out there who pump small quantities of oil or transport it to the refineries, but that's about it. They all got purchased by the larger companies or went under.
I'm not even sure why we would need to dissolve any company anyways. As long as they are made to pay the costs of the cleanup, the costs of lost business or reputation to areas effected, and fines associated with their failures, all should be fine. I mean dissolving the company is not going to make those who were harmed, hole again. It's not going to make sure the gulf is cleaned up. In fact, it's going to explicitly slam the costs of the cleanup into the tax payers lap when we find out 20 years from now that something really got screwed up and they aren't making any revenue to cover their costs.
Dissolving the company is probably the last thing we would want to do right now or in the next couple of decades.