Soon after the Deepwater Horizon inferno, U.S. government scientists – with grant funds supplied by British Petroleum – started giving us solid clues as to what they were doing with all that crude oil and gas. In May 2010, National Geographic quoted Dr. Terry Hazen from the U.S. government’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who said,

“…we could introduce a genetic material into indigenous bugs via a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria – to give local microbes DNA that would allow them to break down oil. Either that, he said, or a lab could create a completely new organism that thrives in the ocean, eats oil, and needs a certain stimulant to live…”

There were two possible solutions according to Dr. Hazen, who is considered to be the foremost crude oil bioremediation expert in the world.

1. Either use synthetically engineered viruses called bacteriophages, or ‘phages’, to infect and alter the genetics of indigenous Gulf bacteria; or,

2. synthetically create an entirely new organism, i.e. a new species of bacteria, to eat up the oil and/or gas and introduce it into the Gulf of Mexico.

[link to blueplague.net]