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The Fate and Persistence of Deepwater Horizon Oil

November 6, 2015 8:55 AM

Presenter

Dr. George Burch Fisher
Jackson Postdoctoral Fellow, Jackson School of Geosciences

Abstract

The tragic sinking of the Deepwater Horizon in April of 2010 marked the beginning of an unprecedented quantity of oil being irrupted into the Gulf of Mexico. Both the magnitude, style, and extreme depth of irruption made this event both difficult to contain as well as to predict in terms of the amount and fate of the oil discharged. In this talk I will 1) provide an overview of the event and the subsequent sampling strategies; 2) discuss recent work by my colleagues and I aimed at understanding the fate of ~2 million barrels of oil believed to have been trapped in deep intrusion layers between 1000-1300 m depth; and 3) provide some insights on our ongoing work aimed at understanding the persistence of the oil associated with the spill.

George Fisher

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