Tallahassee, Florida – Scientists are sitting on the edge of their seats, and they have their fingers crossed that the natural oil-eating bacteria being used off the Gulf of Mexico’s Coast have voracious appetites.

One scientist from the Florida State University, Markus Huettel, is studying the natural oil-eating bacteria, trying to determine just how long it will take them to eat up the oil which has penetrated deep into the sediment.

Huettel is a biological oceanographer, and has collected many samples from the beaches in and around the Pensacola area, and is rather astonished by the findings. It appears that oil has penetrated as deep as eight inches into the sand.

The oil is quite an eyesore, and sticks out like a sore thumb on the normally pristine white sandy beaches of the Florida Panhandle.
What is not known at this time, and what Huettel is devoting his time to, is just exactly how long the oil will remain there. He explained that these natural oil-eating bacteria rely upon the proper mixture of oxygen and nutrients to eat up the oil. What is unclear is if the mixture is right deep in the sand.

Under appropriate conditions, Huettel has said that the oil-eating bacteria should be able to complete the task of cleaning up the oil from the BP spill in a relatively short timeframe. “We are talking days, weeks, sometimes a month, you see a substantial degradation of this oil. The situation changes dramatically if you isolate the oil from oxygen and nutrients and that can happen deep in the sediment.”

An attempt to look at the bright side. The media writes a lot about all the problems the high oil price causes. The problems it causes in house hold budgets, how it affects the US trade deficit and how it drives inflation but we don’t take the time to see the positive effects associated with a higher oil price. You might not think the benefits are large enough to offset the drawbacks and you might be right but it can none the less be good to be aware of the benefits. Below I will list a few of the benefits but there are many more.

Reduced oil consumption

The increased oil price means that people drive less which reduces the carbon dioxide emissions. It might feel like an inconvenient to walk to the movies instead of taking the car or otherwise change ones travel habitats but it do help the environment. Even if we look beyond our personal driving habits we can see that high oil prices can have more far reaching benefits as it creates an incentive for car manufacturers to make more fuel effective car as a mean to compete in the market. It can also change the buying pattern towards not buying bigger cars than we actually need. The high energy price can also affect our consumption in other areas such as air tickets. Hopefully some of these changes will stick even after the oil price has return to more acceptable levels.

Alternative energy sources

Higher oil prices makes new greener energy sources more economic viable. Some green energy sources become more compatible and are economically competitive when energy and oil prices rise. Higher oil and energy prices also create more incentive for companies to develop and refine green technologies and energy sources as there is a potentially larger, more lucrative market available to sell these products on. One green energy source that becomes more viable with the higher energy price is algae oil. Algae can be used to produce high quality oil that can be used to produce gasoline and even jet fuel. Algae is much more productive than other crops and one acre used for algae farming can produce several hundred times more oil than other crops used to produce green fuel such s corn. A few algae oil plants are being built this year but the technology is still to be considered experimental. I will post more info on algae oil in a separate article later this week if you want to know more about it. Algae oil is just one example on green energies that becomes more viable when oil prices are higher.

Unfortunately high oil prices also increase the pressure to explore oil resources in sensitive are such as in Alaska and of the Florida coast.

Some fish species get a much needed break

The high oil prices can give a much needed breather for some fish species as fishermen no longer find it economically viable to fish these species or in certain areas. An example of one fish that might end up benefiting from the high oil price is the idiotfish. The idiotfish is a deep sea fish living of the coast of British Columbia and is an appreciated food item in parts of Asia. It was listed as a species of special concern last year by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. The high oil prices have resulted in large parts of the deep sea fishing fleet in British Columbia’ staying in port or fishing in shallower water closer to land. This gives the idiotfish population a much needed chance to rebound. Other fish are in a similar situation and might benefit from the high oil prices.

This was just a few of the benefits of higher oil prices.

Nothing you have read will make it less painful to pay the current gas prices but it can still be nice to know that this misery have a silver lining.