What is Oil

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What is Oil??

• Collection of hydrocarbon materials in
  sedimentary deposits
• Residues left behind from transformed marine
  microfossil sediments
• Diatoms, forams radiolaria
• Sediments are compressed and heated to create oil

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What is Oil??
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Geological Oil Traps
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Coal Oil Point Geology
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Oil in the Marine Environment

• Gas oil leases are 2nd biggest source of
  revenue for the U.S. (1 income tax)
• Leases are held by state inshore of 3 nm by the
  feds between 3 200 nm
• History goes back about 100 years or so

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Oil Fields in CA Current
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Oil Fields in CA Current
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Oil Platforms
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What do oil platforms do?
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Drilling
Drilling brings up muds Muds are dirt
fluid Muds settle to seafloor Operational
platforms bring up oil produced water (5 to 20X
oil!!)
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What does the So Cal Bight Get?
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Seeps?
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Seeps?
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Coal Oil Point Seeps
Acoustic backscatter of rising bubbles from Coal
Oil Point seeps
Seep vent image from submersible
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Oil Pollution?
World wide Millions of gallons per year
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Oil in the Marine Environment

• Adverse effects
• Ingested by marine organisms, birds, shell fish
• Leads to elevated mortality rates
• Possible long-term effects
• Covers feathers and fur of birds mammals

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Oil Toxicity

• Crude Oil
• effects limited in time
• more biodegradable
• Refined Oil
• refining concentrates the more biologically
  active components of oil
• more damaging

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What happens to oil?
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Oil Cleanup
Mr. Clean
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Cleaning up Oil Spills in Ocean

• Dispersants
• breaks down oil chemically
• works on fresh, small oil spills.
• Booms
• floating skirt suspended down in the water
• stops the oil from passing intodelicate areas
• Slick-lickers
• conveyor belt of oil absorbing material
• sucks oil squeezes it out

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Cleaning up Beaches

• Most oil clean-ups on the beach actually do more
  harm than good
• Can harm surviving organisms
• Mobilizes the oil
• Not one method works the best

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Cleaning up Beaches

• High Pressure Water
• "spray" surfaces clear of oil
• harms surviving plants animals
• Dispersants
• Chemical agents to break up oil
• Useless on sand or pebble beaches
• Removal
• Remove contaminated sand or pebbles
• Straw or other cut vegetation
• Use straw absorbs oil

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Oil in CA Current

• Big business (govt business)
• Formation extraction
• Coal Oil Point Seeps
• Oil spills their importance
• How to clean this up