The Gulf oil spill is coating the Louisiana coast in scum that looks like diarrhea that won't wash off. In a post widely distributed on the blogsphere this week, I criticized the US government for not requiring BP to put on the web a live, continuous feed of the oil spill. "No wonder they will not show the continuous feed of videotape from the broken pipes underground, no more than show the caskets of US soldiers as they are brought home from wars fought to maintain our dibs on Mideast sources of oil. If you are an oil producer in the Mideast, now is the time to lower the price of oil." As the Deepwater Horizon oil spill deepened, the commodity price of oil dropped. Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA, Chairman Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming) demanded that BP put up a live video feed of the spill. Although BP complied yesterday, the government server is being overwhelmed with traffic. BP should put the video feed up on its own server with a public web address: maybe one of its servers that is not being used to calculate the spill volume.
Misleading figures on the Gulf oil spill continue from the US government and from BP. Bloomberg reported on May 20, "BP Plc is capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day from its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico. The company couldn’t say whether that was all of the crude from the well, which has been estimated to be leaking at that rate." Until now, the only spill rate that BP has acknowledged is 5,000 barrels per day. Today, AP reports, "BP and U.S. federal agencies have estimated the leak rate as 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day since April 28, a figure disputed by scientists who say that it may be 10 times bigger than that."
Up to now, the US government has not pushed BP to provide a clear analysis of spill volume. Better late than never. Better, never at all. McClatchy has a good report, today, on the spill volume issue. Click 'read more'.
Posted on Fri, May. 21, 2010
BP could benefit with cloudy oil-spill size
BY MARISA TAYLOR, RENEE SCHOOF AND ERIKA BOLSTAD
McClatchy News Service
BP's estimate that only 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking daily from a well in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Obama administration hasn't disputed, could save the company millions of dollars in damages when the financial impact of the spill is resolved in court, legal experts say.
A month after a surge of gas from the undersea well engulfed the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig in flames and triggered the massive leak that now threatens sea life, fisheries and tourist centers in five Gulf Coast states, neither BP nor the federal government has tried to measure at the source the amount of crude pouring into the water.
BP and the Obama administration have said they don't want to take the measurements for fear of interfering with efforts to stop the leaks.
That decision, however, runs counter to BP's own regional plan for dealing with offshore leaks. ``In the event of a significant release of oil,'' the 583-page plan says on Page 2, ``an accurate estimation of the spill's total volume . . . is essential in providing preliminary data to plan and initiate cleanup operations.''
KEY EVIDENCE
Legal experts said that not having a credible official estimate of the leak's size provides another benefit for BP: The amount of oil spilled is certain to be key evidence in the court battles that are likely to result from the disaster. The size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, for example, was a significant factor that the jury considered when it assessed damages against Exxon.
``If they put off measuring, then it's going to be a battle of dueling experts after the fact trying to extrapolate how much spilled after it has all sunk or has been carried away,'' said Lloyd Benton Miller, one of the lead plaintiffs' lawyers in the Exxon Valdez spill litigation. ``The ability to measure how much oil was released will be impossible.''
``It's always a bottom-line issue,'' said Marilyn Heiman, a former Clinton administration Interior Department official who now heads the Arctic Program for the Pew Environment Group. ``Any company wouldn't have an interest in having this kind of measurement if they can help it.''
The size of the spill has become a high-stakes political controversy that's put the Obama administration and the oil company on the defensive. In congressional testimony, an engineering professor from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said that based on videos released this week he estimated that the well was spewing at 95,000 barrels of oil, or four million gallons a day into the Gulf.
The Obama administration Thursday demanded that BP publicly release all information related to the disaster.
BP officials had pledged in congressional testimony to keep the public and government officials informed, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a letter to BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward.
``Those efforts, to date, have fallen short in both their scope and effectiveness,'' they wrote.
That letter came after members of Congress made similar demands of BP, leading to the release Tuesday of the new videos. One showed oil still billowing from one underwater pipe, despite an insertion tube BP now says is capturing 5,000 barrels of crude a day -- its entire initial estimate of the spill. The other showed a previously unseen leak spewing clouds of crude from just above the well's dysfunctional blowout preventer.
The EPA on Thursday ordered BP to switch to a less toxic version of the chemical mix it's using to disperse the oil. The EPA also for the first time posted on its website BP's test data of the dispersant's use in deep water. Those orders came days after McClatchy reported doubts about the dispersant's safety and members of Congress made a similar demand.
PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE
Scientists and environmentalists praised the government for demanding that more information be made public.
``This is exactly the role the government needs to be playing -- they need to be overseeing BP's actions to assure that health and natural resources are protected, as much as possible, and that information is available to the public,'' said Gina Solomon, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
John Curry, a BP spokesman, said he hadn't seen the letter from Napolitano and Jackson and couldn't comment specifically, but added: ``We're just trying to provide the information people are asking for at the same time we are trying to position a lot more resources to stop the flow of oil.''
Curry offered no new estimate of how much oil is flowing from the leaks, but acknowledged that capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day in the insertion tube is evidence that the official 5,000-barrel per leak estimate is low.
``We've said at best it's a highly imprecise estimate,'' Curry said.
Calling the disaster site a ``crime scene,'' Larry Schweiger, the president of the National Wildlife Federation, accused BP of a cover-up.
``BP cannot be left in charge of assessing the damage or controlling the data from their spill,'' Schweiger said. ``The public deserves sound science, not sound bites from BP's CEO.''
Margaret Talev and David Lightman contributed to this report.
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1 comment:
OK; let's stipulate it's somewhere between 5,000 barrels per day and 100,000 barrels per day. Enough mental masturbation about that. Next subject, on the subject.
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