There is an article dated May 25 that was authored by David Biellow of Scientific American, stating that “microbes are the only thing that will ultimately clean up the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico”.
This statement is based on the fact that the last (and only) defense against the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is tiny—billions of hydrocarbon-chewing microbes, such as Alcanivorax borkumensis. These microbes occur naturally around the globe and have been chewing up oil molecules for thousands of years. They are already in and around the Gulf of Mexico and are already degrading some of the oil.
While the jury is out on whether it is safe to use dispersants, David believes that using dispersants can actually break up the oil so that the naturally occuring microbes can digest the oil even sooner. “If the oil is in very small droplets, microbial degradation is much quicker,” says microbial ecologist Kenneth Lee, director of the Center for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who has been measuring the oil droplets in the Gulf of Mexico to determine the effectiveness of the dispersant use. “The dispersants can also stimulate microbial growth. Bacteria will chew on the dispersants as well as the oil.”
If you wish to read the original article you can find it here.
Keep in mind that while microbes occur in nature, we are proposing to BP that they use the trillions and trillions of oil-eating microbes commercially available and waiting in the warehouses of companies that have been using them successfully for years to clean up oil spills.
Our goal is to influence BP and our Government to supercharge nature’s efforts to remove the oil as soon as possible. There is still residue at the site of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and its been twenty years! No one wants to wait another day before earnest clean up efforts begin.
The important thing to remember is that the application of ‘natural’ microbes grown and made to reproduce quickly in a commercial environment has been proven to be safe. These products are being used extensively for small oil spills at drilling sites, automotive shops, in parking lots and for tanker spills all over the United States now.
Unfortunately, many misinformed persons believe that the typical ‘oil eating microbe’ is genetically engineered, which does raise fears about the strain mutating or changing its natural tendencies. In David’s article, he describes a company that is seeking a patent on a ‘lab grown’ oil eater, but it is not ready for commercial use. I’m sure that it will benefit from our efforts to deploy the ‘natural’ microbes on this spill.
June 6th, 2010 
jbtutt1e 
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