Natural Seeps – Mother Earth Weeps Petroleum and Methane

So, with all the venom being spilled over BP’s http://www.bp.com/ big boo-boo in the Gulf of Mexico, it got me to thinking about crude just “bubblin’ up”, like it did for old Jed Clampett, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=beverlyhillb across the planet. Truth be told, the Earth’s been weeping and seeping petroleum for eons – and she still is, even without BP’s crack assistance. Think of the famous La Brea tar pits http://www.tarpits.org/ – yes, the place where all those fossilized and preserved remains have been unearthed near Los Angeles over the last century – and you’ll know what a petroleum seep is, land-wise.

The gurus at the federal Minerals Management Service – the same folks that brought us the Gulf disaster, bribes, payoffs, pandering, prostitutes and Minerals Mis-Management, and a host of other sins – are responsible for monitoring and reporting on these natural seeps, many of which are located in California, both on land and in coastal waters, especially near Santa Barbara. Occasionally, they come up with good ideas that actually work. Time Magazine http://www.time.com/ wrote an article about one such idea back in 1982 – jointly funded by ARCO, Mobil and Aminoil – that’s still working: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,923013,00.html  

In fact, in a study some two decades ago, and that pilot project started then, two underwater containment structures - not unlike the multi-story concrete and steel structure BP futilely attempted to corral the Gulf spill with in May – were put on the ocean floor near Goleta Point to capture both seeping oil and natural gas. In their nearly two decades of operation they have captured over 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas – enough, according to the MMS, to supply the natural gas needs of 25,000 residential users annually. See the recent comments on the study at http://www.mms.gov/omm/pacific/enviro/seeps1.htm  - ironically, released April 15, 2010, just a few days before the Gulf’s current disaster unfolded.

So, with all this seepage and weepage, how does BP’s blunder asunder measure up to the Earth’s daily dosage of crude and methane? Good question. No less a think-tank than the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute http://www.whoi.edu/ has written volumes about methane and petroleum seeps distributed widely throughout the world’s oceans, postulating that of all the seepage and weepage, less than 2% ever makes its way in to commercially tapped reservoirs – meaning that 98% of what’s in the ocean is being put – and typically kept there – by Mother Nature herself: http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2441  Now that’s a staggering thought.

On May 14, 2009, Christopher Eddy, Woods Hole’s Coastal Ocean Institute Director, noted that a “result of our study is that for the first time, we can quantify the amount of oil residue that ends up in seafloor sediments after a “natural” oil spill. To compare the amount the oil in the Santa Barbara sediments with a figure people might understand, it's equivalent to 8 to 80 times the oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident. But our study by no means is a direct comparison on the overall fate and impacts of the Exxon Valdez spill and the Santa Barbara seeps. … That estimate is as close as we could get, since we don’t know how thick the layer of sediments is. But before this research, for all we knew, it could have been the equivalent of 0.0001 or 10,000 Exxon Valdez spills.” http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=57272  

So – it would appear to be relatively clear that Mother Earth has been belching, bleeding, seeping and weeping fantastic amounts of crude and methane daily for decades, centuries, millennia, eons and epochs. That is not said lightly as to minimize the mess BP’s made of the Gulf – what’s happened there is no less than criminal, at least to some – but in the sense that this old blue planet has more going on than we might ever understand. Although we don’t need to encourage and assist the old girl in urping up oil and gas without equally slurping it up, we need to understand that as a biosphere, we still don’t understand enough.

Now that’s zooty, isn’t it?