Hazen, on the other hand, believes that most of the oil is gone due to degradation and dilution. He is the lead author of a paper in Science about the amazing microbes that ate much of the oil. In his team’s continuous sampling of 120 sites in the Gulf from May through October 2010, he hasn’t seen much oil– only seven sites that have oil above EPA standards. He admits he may have missed some areas.

While they started the conference by saying they agreed about much, they seemed to disagree about everything brought up: the southeast plume that came out of the well; the oil on the surface, shore, sea floor and water column; the amount of oil that naturally seeps into the Gulf; what did or didn’t happen with the way the oil dispersed after the riser was removed on June 3rd.

Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, spoke after the conference and said that indeed, they were both right, “It’s not a contradiction to say that most of the oil is gone but some still lingers out there.”

(Her conference was actually an announcement of the next step of restoration in the Gulf– you can read more about that here.)

But remember, the press conference was supposed to be on “Deepwater Drilling: Worth the Risk?” Rao did address this issue. He thinks it’s worth it if there were better support onshore for these deepwater wells– with real time data available to experts and regulators, who would be perhaps monitoring several wells at the same time.

Lubchenco was not so certain it was worth the risk, “We must further evaluate the trade-off.”

Two smart reporters, trying to steer the original press conference back on course, asked Hazen if the oil-eating (and Gulf-saving) microbes were present near other sites of deepwater drilling. Some of the bacteria are found in the Arctic, and possibly the Atlantic, as well, Hazen said.

What do you think? Worth the risk? Oil there or gone? Share your thoughts.

(To learn more, you can check out the recent report on the monitoring of the Gulf or Samantha Joye’s blog. Science News also posted an interview with Joye over the weekend.)

After five months of and a total of 205.8 million gallons of oil leaked into the gulf, the death of the well may be cause for celebration…

Or, maybe not. It’s true that many reports do appear upbeat about the damage done—taking the stand that it could have been a lot worse. Marsh grasses are coming back and there were fewer birds harmed in this oil disaster than the much smaller Exxon Valdez spill twenty years ago. From the New York Times:

…as the weeks pass, evidence is increasing that through a combination of luck (a fortunate shift in ocean currents that kept much of the oil away from shore) and ecological circumstance (the relatively warm waters that increased the breakdown rate of the oil), the gulf region appears to have escaped the direst predictions of the spring.

However, oil sediments continue to be found on the gulf floor. And it may be years before scientists are able to measure the total destruction to the region. The Ocean Conservancy’s Stan Senner, told Discovery News that

it will take scientists at least three years to understand the ecological damage from the Gulf spill, and that it will last anywhere from 10 to 20 years.

Hopefully, we can learn from this disaster sooner than that and perhaps prevent future spills. According to the 80beats blog in Discover:

Offshore oil drilling will go on, eventually. But the ongoing fallout from the BP disaster means that when drilling resumes, oil companies will have to figure out not only how to do it more safely, but also how to convince the public they’re doing it more safely.

So, if we’re not celebrating, let’s at least let out a sigh of relief, if not more. Ding Dong the well is dead, the wicked well…