Oil from spill degrading quickly in Gulf's warm waters
The Washington Post
Oil from the BP blowout is degrading rapidly in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and becoming increasingly difficult to find on the water surface, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday.
Related headlines
BP TO SEEK $10 BILLION TAX CREDIT FOR LOST INCOME
BP said Tuesday it plans to seek a $10 billion tax credit from the U.S. government because the company has lost so much money from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
In announcing its second-quarter results, BP said it would record a $32.2 billion charge against its earnings to reflect the cost of the spill. Under U.S. corporate tax law, companies can take credits on up to 35 percent of their losses.
That means taxpayers could be covering roughly half of the $20 billion pledged by BP for a fund to compensate people and businesses harmed by the disaster.
Policymakers crafted the tax code this way so that companies can spread their profits and losses over more than just a calendar year. Let’s say a company earns $100 billion one year and pays the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent, or $35 billion. The next year, the company loses $100 billion. Over those two years, the company earned zero dollars, but it still paid $35 billion in taxes.
From the tax code’s perspective, the company overpaid in previous years. To rectify this, companies can claim a credit for lost income. Companies can apply the refund to tax bills from the previous two years or, if there’s money left from the credit, carry the refund forward 20 years.
“What they’re trying to do is take the arbitrariness of what you did this particular year over the life of the company, or over a long period of life of the company,” said Douglas Shackelford, a tax professor at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School.
– The Washington Post
"The light crude oil is biodegrading quickly," NOAA director Jane Lubchenco said during the response team daily briefing. "Significant oil has been dispersed and broken down by bacteria."
Lubchenco said, however, that both the near- and long-term environmental effects of the release of several million barrels of oil remain serious and to some extent unpredictable.
"The sheer volume of oil that's out there has to mean there are some pretty significant impacts," she said. "What we have yet to determine is the full impact the oil will have not just on the shoreline, not just on wildlife, but beneath the surface."
But much of the oil appears to have been broken down into microscopic particles that are being consumed by bacteria. Little or none of the oil is on the sea floor, she said, but is instead floating in the gulf.
Her conclusions come from the work of several NOAA boats now collecting water samples, as well as the analysis of academics brought in to help study the spill effects. The goal, she said, is to get a scientifically sound assessment of the overall environmental effects of the spill. "We're close to being able to put together a comprehensive picture of what is still out there -- how much has been removed by skimmers and burned off and how much remains," she said. "We're getting close to an answer."
NOAA has been at the center of several disputes about what has been happening to the oil from the BP well. Early reports by university scientists of large plumes of oil moving below the water's surface were generally dismissed by NOAA, and the agency has also determined that sea turtles and sea mammals that washed up on shore after the spill do not appear to have died from the oil. These conclusions have led some to charge NOAA is underestimating the spill's environmental damage.
A significantly more optimistic assessment of the environmental effects of the oil well blowout came Tuesday from Edward Owens, who worked with Exxon for four years on the Valdez spill in Alaska and who has been hired as a consultant to BP. Owens was quoted as saying the fragile Louisiana marshes would be close to pre-blowout condition within months and that the environmental impact on the gulf as a whole would be "quite small."
Lubchenco rejected the sanguine conclusions of a BP restoration consultant. "Anyone who classifies the results of the accident as anything less than catastrophic has not been watching," she said.
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3 COMMENTS
common_cents said...
Someone said that the leak when compared to the total volume of the Gulf, amounted to a beer can dumped into a swimming pool........bioremediation specialists were 'shut up' by a White House bent on whipping up a frenzy of media and public hysteria, and now we can see just how quickly the volatiles are dispersed---as they have for thousands of years from the natural fissures. This was a 'light' crude and very different from the 'heavy' crude in the EXXON VALDEZ; the much colder waters off Alaska prevented natural dispersal...very different ecosystems. Lasting damage? Have to wait a year or two for the Gulf's wetlands; and until November to restart the Gulf's economy!
July 28, 2010 at 8:28 AM Report abuse
SilentK_ said...
BP TO SEEK $10 BILLION TAX CREDIT FOR LOST INCOME - This is a steaming heap of crap.
July 28, 2010 at 9:40 AM Report abuse
Bole said...
It's all dissolving in the water. That's good? Maybe you'd like a glass.
July 28, 2010 at 10:33 AM Report abuse