Sunday, May 23, 2010
Underwater footage of Deepwater Horizon Spill
BP’s ruptured oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico could be spewing nearly 20 times more petroleum into the ocean than the company—with the Obama administration’s complicity—has claimed. Since the April 20 accident that caused the Deepwater Horizon platform to explode and sink, BP has steadily said the broken pipe is releasing 5,000 barrels of oil a day. But Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering from Purdue University, told Congress on Wednesday that the well could be spewing 95,000 barrels of oil daily into the gulf, based on video footage released by BP.
That assessment was backed up by Bob Cavnar, a Houston engineer and blogger who’s been involved in oil and gas exploration and production. “I’m sitting here looking at it right now, and it ain’t 5,000 barrels a day, I’ll guarantee it,” Cavnar told McClatchy Newspapers.
As long as the Obama administration allows the 5,000 figure to stand, BP could be in a better position to avoid paying millions of dollars more from lawsuits because settlements will take into account the size of the spill. Federal officials have supported BP’s public stance that measuring the rate of the leak is not as important as stopping it.
“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.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Low Estimate of Oil Spill's Size Could Save BP Millions in Court (by Marisa Taylor, Renee Schoof and Erika Bolstad, McClatchy Newspapers)
BP Withholds Oil Spill Facts—and Government Lets It (by Marisa Taylor and Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers)
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