MNeagle
21st May 2010, 09:31 AM
http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-IO656_OilRig_F_20100521085537.jpg
A boat passes through heavily oiled marsh near Pass a Loutre, Louisiana, May 20, 2010.
You’d think after a month of intensive disaster response there would be a punchline to that joke. Think again.
Nobody, least of all BP, knows how much oil is spewing out of the Macondo well, deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The oft-repeated initial estimate of 5,000 barrels a day, based on aerial observations of the growing slick weeks ago, has finally been laid to rest.
BP said Thursday it is now successfully siphoning off just that amount into a tanker on the surface for safe storage. But before you pop those champagne corks, a quick look here tells you that this is nowhere near the total volume of the leak.
So how much oil is flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the marshes of Louisiana and the beaches of Florida?
Scientists who discovered huge plumes of oil that have formed deep in the waters of the Gulf, and observed the flow of oil from the leak, estimated that the leak could be anywhere between 25,000 and 80,000 barrels a day. Estimates like these, and the apparent reluctance of the authorities and BP to update their own low-ball estimate, have stoked increasing outrage. Senior lawmakers like California Senator Barbara Boxer have accused BP of a “cover up†of the size of the spill.
The company has also been accused of deliberately downplaying the scale of the spill in order to minimize its compensation liability.
Sensing perhaps that it was losing yet another PR battle, BP challenged these estimates on Friday. Third parties have got their calculations wrong, BP said, because they haven’t taken into account how oil flows are constricted by the damaged pipeline, which has been squashed and kinked like a garden hose.
Furthermore, BP said the drill bit still stuck in the well is partially blocking the flow and at least half the volume of hydrocarbons spewing from the end of the pipeline is natural gas, which will disperse fairly harmlessly. [Read BP's latest press release here.]
However, BP declined yet again to provide a more accurate assessment of how much oil is leaking into open water.
Facing stern criticism itself, the U.S. government has stepped into the breach and created a task force to develop a more precise estimate of the size of the leak. So how many government regulators does it take to measure an oil spill? The U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Minerals Management Service, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Geological Survey. But not before Saturday.
This joke still isn’t funny.
http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/05/21/how-many-oilmen-does-it-take-to-measure-a-spill/
A boat passes through heavily oiled marsh near Pass a Loutre, Louisiana, May 20, 2010.
You’d think after a month of intensive disaster response there would be a punchline to that joke. Think again.
Nobody, least of all BP, knows how much oil is spewing out of the Macondo well, deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The oft-repeated initial estimate of 5,000 barrels a day, based on aerial observations of the growing slick weeks ago, has finally been laid to rest.
BP said Thursday it is now successfully siphoning off just that amount into a tanker on the surface for safe storage. But before you pop those champagne corks, a quick look here tells you that this is nowhere near the total volume of the leak.
So how much oil is flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the marshes of Louisiana and the beaches of Florida?
Scientists who discovered huge plumes of oil that have formed deep in the waters of the Gulf, and observed the flow of oil from the leak, estimated that the leak could be anywhere between 25,000 and 80,000 barrels a day. Estimates like these, and the apparent reluctance of the authorities and BP to update their own low-ball estimate, have stoked increasing outrage. Senior lawmakers like California Senator Barbara Boxer have accused BP of a “cover up†of the size of the spill.
The company has also been accused of deliberately downplaying the scale of the spill in order to minimize its compensation liability.
Sensing perhaps that it was losing yet another PR battle, BP challenged these estimates on Friday. Third parties have got their calculations wrong, BP said, because they haven’t taken into account how oil flows are constricted by the damaged pipeline, which has been squashed and kinked like a garden hose.
Furthermore, BP said the drill bit still stuck in the well is partially blocking the flow and at least half the volume of hydrocarbons spewing from the end of the pipeline is natural gas, which will disperse fairly harmlessly. [Read BP's latest press release here.]
However, BP declined yet again to provide a more accurate assessment of how much oil is leaking into open water.
Facing stern criticism itself, the U.S. government has stepped into the breach and created a task force to develop a more precise estimate of the size of the leak. So how many government regulators does it take to measure an oil spill? The U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Minerals Management Service, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Geological Survey. But not before Saturday.
This joke still isn’t funny.
http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/05/21/how-many-oilmen-does-it-take-to-measure-a-spill/