Watchman News BP oil spill left a “bathtub ring” the size of Rhode Island, study says

The 2010 BP oil spill left an oily “bathtub ring” on the sea floor roughly the size of Rhode Island, according to a new study.

The rig blew on April 20, 2010, and spewed 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf through the summer. Scientists are still trying to figure where all the oil went and what effects it’s had.

Study author David Valentine, a geochemistry professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, estimated that the spill from the Macondo well left about 2 million barrels (84 million gallons) of oil coagulated on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico around the damaged Deepwater Horizons oil rig.

In the study, using data from the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the scientists analyzed more than 3,000 samples collected at 534 locations, and identified a 1,250-square-mile patch of the deep sea floor where 2 to 16 percent of the discharged oil was deposited.

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