Six weeks ago, as the oil giant BP sought to rehabilitate its reputation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the company announced it would put $500 million into scientific research into the effects of the spill. Now, it appears that money may not be forthcoming.

And that has thrown into disarray plans involving the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), as well as other scientific organizations looking to study the long-term consequences of the blow-out of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

On the basis of BP’s offer, made on May 24, WHOI had entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with two other institutions, Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, to initiate a long-term collaborative study effort called the Gulf Oil Research Program.

It seemed a perfect marriage. The university had expertise in wetland and coastal environments and fisheries science. The marine consortium had a waterfront research facility and they operate one of the U.S. fleet of research vessels, called the Pelican. Woods Hole brought advanced technology for deep ocean work.

WHOI began formulating a 10-year plan of research. It believed it could plan long-term research because BP had promised long-term money. The company’s announcement said the $500 million would be distributed over a decade.

However, the oil company’s commitment lasted only a little more than three weeks. On June 16, after a meeting between BP executives and President Obama at the White House, it was announced the BP would put $20 billion into an escrow account, to pay for oil spill damages. The $500 million was subsumed into that account.

So while the escrow deal may have given some comfort to Gulf Coast shrimpers, fishermen and others who have suffered financially because of the oil spill, it was bad news for the scientists of Woods Hole.

The chances of WHOI being able to rely on BP funds for its long term study now appeared “extremely low,” according to Rob Munier, vice president for marine facilities at the institute.

“That money seems to have sort of been gobbled up in the $20 billion escrow account,” he said.

A month ago, Mr. Munier said, the game plan seemed clear, on the basis of BP’s own outline of how the funding would work.

“The original BP release talked about establishing up to four research centers that were multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary. To be considered, you had to establish a broad capability in science as well as the wherewithal in project management and finance,” he said.

“For all those reasons Woods Hole was an obvious candidate to be in a leadership role in a research center that would include other research institutions that brought other things to the table, including local capabilities.

“Through the MoU we agreed to collaborate on a long-term program, that allowed us to provide our unique expertise, playing to our strengths and them playing to their strengths,” he said.

But now, he said, the way forward is anything but clear, although the consortium of institutions would endure.

“The MoU was not restricted to that particular funding source, although that was the prime mover for establishing it,” Mr. Munier said

“The thought was — and continues to be — that there will be other sources of funds, although probably not as much or for such a long term.”

And long-term study was of vital importance he said, for the effects of such a large spill could continue for decades.

He cited a spill near Falmouth, which occurred in 1969 and is still having consequences.

“That 1969 spill helped us develop our expertise in oil spills,” Mr. Munier said.

“We now have a third generation of scientists, as well as some who are still around from the time of that original spill, who worked on that and now are working on the Deepwater Horizon spill.

“We have a legacy of expertise that’s been handed down over the years.”

“One of the things we want to look at, just as an example, is the effects down in the water column of the oil and dispersant mix. Oil is broken down by natural processes, but one concern is that down the water column, if the quantities are sufficiently high, there might be insufficient oxygen to do that microbial breakdown. That’s something we want to study.

“That was part of the long-term plan we had worked up.”

Because of its unique expertise in deepwater science, WHOI has been involved in the Deepwater Horizon response almost from the start.

When the federal government set up a task force to determine how much oil was gushing from the broken well, the institute was there.

“We employed a sensor called an Acoustic Doppler Profiler, that was put on one of several these remotely operated vehicles you see taking the pictures at the blowout site. And it indicated a much higher flow rate than had originally been estimated [by BP].”

The Doppler profiler was developed by Woods Hole for quite a different purpose, by the way. It was first used to study the flow rates of material gushing from deep hydrothermal ocean vents.

And WHOI technology is still being used, among other things, to study the spread on deep plumes of oil resulting from the blowout.

“We’ve just finished a 10-day research cruise using some unique tools to identify and track the plume,” he said. That cruise is just arriving back in St. Petersburg.

“It’s been using one of our undersea vehicles called the Sentry, which is self-propelled, not connected by any kind of umbilical cord, which runs a preprogrammed trackline in three dimensions. It has on board a sensor suite, including side-scan sonar, as well as a mass spectrometer, which allows us to make real-time determinations of the chemical composition of the water.

“So you can track the chemical composition of the water and you can draw a 3-D map of the distribution of whatever is in the water column. In this case we’re looking for oil as a result of this spill.

“The data is accumulated on board, so at the completion of an individual dive you get a big dump of data. It operates for 12 hours, comes back, you download the data, then you can use that to plan your next dive while recharging the batteries of the vehicle.”

It’s a capability unique to Woods Hole, he said.

“We’ve also been involved in more traditional sampling, working with NOAA, using acoustic techniques to identify targets in the water column — basically density differences — and then you drop water samplers into those targets, take samples and send them ashore for analysis.

“But that’s a multi-step process that does not give such quick turn-around results, whereas the Sentry with the mass spectrometer and other sensors allows you to map almost in real time.

“We’ve also employed a glider, which is another untethered vehicle, which can stay out for 10 days or two weeks at a time, which also has a suite of instruments on board, and then you can look at what it has seen over its track.”

Once all the data is analyzed, probably within a matter of a few weeks, it should provide the best picture yet of the spread of the oil/dispersant mix deep beneath the surface of the gulf.

And perhaps beyond the gulf. One of WHOI’s senior scientists, Breck Owens, who directs the glider, has been analyzing the changing patterns of the loop current, which swirls around the gulf and then sometimes out through the Straits of Florida and up the East Coast. Depending on the eddies of that current and of the Gulf Stream, oil could wind up coming up as far as the Carolinas, or even into waters near the Vineyard.

Mr. Munier said biologists, too, including one of the institute’s mammal specialists, were on call for emergencies.

“There are also people working with sediment traps, which are things which catch sediment as it settles down from the water column,” he said.

“We actually had sediment traps deployed not too far from the blowout site before it happened. So those are going to be very valuable bits of data, which will allow us to see the impacts on the sea floor.”

WHOI is doing a lot down there. But a lot more remains to be done and it seems BP’s broken funding commitment will see less of that work done.

BP did not respond to an approach for comment yesterday.