This report describes the results of chemical analyses performed on portions of sediment samples collected in 2000 by ABL personnel for a separate project entitled "Evaluation of Yakataga Oil Seeps as Regional Background Hydrocarbon Sources in Benthic Sediments of the Exxon Valdez Spill Area".
This project, referred to herein as the Yakataga Project, was funded by the EVOS Trustees to be performed by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and Payne Environmental Consultants. For the Reference Oils Project, samples collected for the Yakataga Project were analyzed independently by ABL and GERG.
Descriptive and limited data analysis here is performed as called for by the contract in light of the draft manuscript entitled “A Direct Assessment of Hydrocarbon Contributions from Native Coals and from Seep Oils to Marine Sediments of the Northern Gulf of Alaska” (Short, personal communication, 2005).
Of the four samples analyzed by both laboratories for the Reference Oils Project, only two were reported in the manuscript by Short (2005).