Canada may sue BP over oil spill

[Sushihunter]

http://finance.sympatico.ca/news/canada_may_sue_bp_over_oil_spill/144c37a1

Canada may sue BP over oil spill

09/07/2010 4:21:12 PM

CBC News

The Canadian government is considering a lawsuit against oil giant BP for environmental damage caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

P.E.I. fishermen were briefed about the potential move at a meeting with Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials Friday in Stanhope.

The meeting was called to plan for Canada's share of bluefin tuna stocks in the future, but fisheries scientists are also looking for signs of damage to North Atlantic tuna populations.

The fish spawn in the Gulf of Mexico before migrating to Canada, meaning the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could affect stocks north of the border.

BP's Deepwater Horizon underwater well blew out on April 20, killing 11 crewmembers and leading to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

The broken well has so far spewed between 325 million and 640 million litres of oil, according to U.S. government estimates.

Faith Scattolon, DFO's regional director general for the Maritimes, said legal options are being considered.

Gail Shea, the MP for Egmont and federal fisheries minister, is working with other departments to size up the likelihood of a lawsuit, Scattolon said.

"The potential impacts of that could go beyond tuna. There are concerns of course of migratory birds that migrate from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico," she said.

"She's also consulting with our legal advisers in foreign affairs. At this point, we're investigating what the way forward might be from the Canadian perspective."

Scattolon said the oil spill, and how it affects tuna, will be a big part of the Atlantic quota negotiations this fall.

Paris conference

P.E.I. fishermen will be among the Canadian officials helping to decide quotas later this year at an international conference in Paris.

After years of decline, Canada's bluefin tuna are making a comeback, Scattolon said.

"We're quite optimistic that we're continuing to manage this fishery well and we'll continue to build on the recovery trajectory that we're currently on," she said.

The Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association had already discussed filing a claim over the spill. Tuna fishermen rejected suggestions such a claim would be premature.

"We just want to protect ourselves in case down the road, five, six, seven, eight years' time, the tuna's done, the fishery's closed because of this oil spill," said Walter Bruce, speaking for the association.

"What recourse do we have? We just want to be in there with a notice of claim so that if something does happen in the future, our fishermen would be looked after."


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[agentaqua]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409101952.htm

Dispersant used to clean deepwater horizon spill more toxic to corals than the oil

Date: April 9, 2015

Source: Temple University

Summary: The dispersant used to remediate the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is more toxic to cold-water corals at lower concentrations than the spilled oil, according to a new study that comes on the eve of the spill's fifth anniversary, April 20th.

A coral specimen exposed to oil and dispersant displays declining health over time. The picture on the furthest right is a healthy control sample.

Credit: Courtesy of Erik Cordes/Temple University

The dispersant used to remediate the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is more toxic to cold-water corals than the spilled oil, according to a study conducted at Temple University. The study comes on the eve of the spill's fifth anniversary, April 20th.

In this collaborative study between researchers from Temple and the Pennsylvania State University, the researchers exposed three cold-water coral species from the Gulf to various concentrations of the dispersant and oil from the Deepwater Horizon well. They found that the dispersant is toxic to the corals at lower concentrations than the oil.

The researchers' findings, "Response of deep-water corals to oil and chemical dispersant exposure," were published online in the journal Deep-Sea Research II.

Approximately five million barrels of crude oil escaped from the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010, and nearly seven million liters of dispersants -- chemical emulsifiers used to break down the oil -- were used to clean it up. Normally applied to the water's surface, the spill marked the first time that dispersants were applied at depth during an oil spill.

"Applying the dispersants at depth was a grand experiment being conducted in real-time," said Erik Cordes, associate professor of biology at Temple, who has been studying Gulf of Mexico coral communities for more than a decade. "It was a desire to immediately do something about the oil coming out of the well, but they really didn't know what was going to happen as a result."

Following the 2010 spill, Cordes and his collaborators discovered several damaged Gulf coral populations that were coated with a dark colored flocculent slime that was found to contain oil from the spill and residues from the dispersants.

"We wanted to know if the damages that had been witnessed could have been caused by the oil, the dispersant itself, or a combination of both," said Danielle DeLeo, a Temple doctoral student in Cordes' lab, who was the study's lead author. "We know that the corals in the Gulf were exposed to all of these different combinations, so we have been trying to determine the toxicity of the oil and the dispersants, and see what their impact would be on the corals."

The researchers exposed the corals to a range of concentrations for both the dispersant and the oil to determine a lethal dose for each. They were surprised to find that the lethal concentration is much lower for the dispersant, meaning it is more toxic than the oil.

"It doesn't take as much dispersant to kill a coral as it does oil," Cordes said, adding that the oil in combination with the dispersant increases the toxicity of the oil.

Using dispersants is supposed to reduce the impact of oil spills on the environment, said Cordes, "but there's increasing evidence that's not what's happening."

Cordes said that his lab will be carrying out additional studies to try to replicate the concentrations of oil and dispersant that the corals were exposed to during the Gulf oil spill, but this is the first step in determining the toxic levels of dispersants and their impact on the environment. He said their findings could assist in developing future strategies for applying dispersants at oil spills that may be more helpful than harmful to the environment.

In addition to Cordes and DeLeo, the researchers included Iliana Baums and Dannise Ruiz-Ramos of Penn State. The study was funded by a grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to the "Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf" consortium.

Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Temple University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference: 1.Danielle M. DeLeo, Dannise V. Ruiz-Ramos, Iliana B. Baums, Erik E. Cordes. Response of deep-water corals to oil and chemical dispersant exposure. Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography, 2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr2.2015.02.028 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr2.2015.02.028