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Natural gases flare while collected after Deepwater Horizon oil spill
As the sun sets over the Gulf of Mexico, natural gases including methane, ethane, propane and butane, collected with a containment cap on the seafloor, flare at the surface by the drillship Discoverer Enterprise. The amount of gas being flared represents about 15% of the gas emitted into the deep ocean by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and trapped there.
More about this image
This work was done by a team of researchers, led by David Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and John Kessler of Texas A&M university, that embarked on a research cruise with the mission of determining the fate and impact of hydrocarbon gases that were escaping from the deep-water oil spill. The disaster provided a rare opportunity to study the behavior of methane and other natural gases in deep water. Experiments by the team were conducted as close as 1,500 feet from the epicenter of the active spill. Underwater sampling devices and sensors were used to measure hydrocarbons and oxygen depletion at various depths, and to collect water samples to study the biodegradation of natural gas and the associated blooms of bacteria.
[Research supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (grants OCE 1042097, OCE 0961725 and OCE 1042650) and the U.S. Department of Energy.]
Learn more about the research in the Nature story Oil-spill Bacteria Gobbled Gases First. (Date of Image: June 2010; date added to Multimedia Gallery: Feb. 1, 2013)
Credit: David L. Valentine, University of California, Santa Barbara
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