TV SOMERSET; Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico | 1998-Nov-23

Initial Notification: At about 1245 CST, Nov. 23rd, a tanker reported losing about 50 bbls of Light Arabian Crude. The location of the spill was given as 28? 43.5' N by 93? 36.5' W. This is about 60 miles offshore of Sabine Pass and within a mile of the dividing line between two USCG response zones. The vessels location is in MSD Lake Charles's Response Zone, but the oil quickly moved into MSU Galveston's Response Zone. MSU Galveston requested an oil trajectory on 24 Nov. (see Hotline #2) and stated that overflights would be conducted by MSD Lake Charles. The NOAA trajectory doesn't anticipate any landfall within the next three days (the duration of the trajectory forecast). In general, given the type of oil, quantity spilled, and current offshore weather and ocean currents, the potential for observable beach oiling is very low. Nearly half of the oil will evaporate and the rest will form small tarballs. The later are very persistent and may travel many hundreds of miles, but will probably be so highly spatially dispersed that they will be virtually undetected. They will be lost among the background tarball population of the Gulf of Mexico. Tarballs in the Gulf of Mexico are derived from both natural seeps and anthropogenic spills. NOAA SSC (Henry) will follow up and update the situation when more information is available. USCG district 8.