I found this article a more lucid overview of the situation:
Like the Woods Hole study it was published in Science, a notorious tool of the industrial establishment ^_^.
The "bugs" are of the the order Oceanospirillales.
One item I was able to Google said they are facultatively anaerobic (http://www.springerlink.com/content/v46161x20k433868/), which would explain how they could feast without serious oxygen depletion and that the latter is not necessarily a good proxy for detecting oil.
This further explains how the two studies nicely mesh together (which their PIs agree upon). Woods Hole found oil but normal oxygen levels, LBNL found facultatively anaerobic "bugs" that were eating the oil without serious oxygen consumption.
(We can also assume that if these bugs can be cultured and kept viable, the basic metabolic details can be elucidated (assuming they haven't been already) and such in vitro results will further help confirm the LBNL study.)
And as it noted this is all months old data, but both studies will help guide further searches for BP oil source oil and these bugs.