BP disputes government estimates of volume of Gulf of Mexico oil spill

[Pathfinder]

Published: Friday, December 03, 2010, 8:15PM BP disputes government estimates of volume of Gulf of Mexico oil spill


BP believes that the amount of oil that gushed out of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico may be as little as half what the government now estimates, the deputy chief counsel of the National Oil Spill Commission informed the commission on its last formal day of meetings Friday.

"BP has not offered its own numbers yet, but BP has told us that it thinks the government's numbers are too high," Priya Aiyar told the commissioners, some of whom seemed stunned by the revelation. "It thinks the actual flow rate could be 20 to 50 percent lower."

The dispute over the exact dimension of the worst spill in American history has enormous consequences for BP's bottom line, and, potentially, for coastal restoration efforts along the Gulf Coast.

Full text:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/12/bp_disputes_government_estimat.html

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: BP disputes government estimates of volume of Gulf of Mexico oil spill

Videos appear to back BP's contention that oil flow increased over time

Published: Saturday, December 11, 2010, 10:00 PM Updated: Saturday, December 11, 2010, 10:24 PM

David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

Image from BP video
Oil and gas spews from a yellowish, broken pipe 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The stream occasionally can be seen becoming lighter as natural gas mixes into the gusher.

During the three months that BP's broken Macondo well was shooting orange and brown plumes of crude oil and natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico, scientific estimates of the spill's flow rate grew so much that many, if not most, people assumed there had been a joint effort by BP and the Obama administration to soft-pedal the spill's true impact.

On May 27 -- when government scientists said 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil were spilling each day, dwarfing previous estimates of 1,000 to 5,000 daily barrels -- Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., accused BP of "low-balling the size of their accident, since every barrel spilled increases how much they could be fined by the government."
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Two months later, when researchers tripled the worst-case figures from May, Markey was indignant again.
"It took over 100 days and the pressure of flow-rate calculations by independent scientists using high-definition undersea video to tell the world what BP most likely suspected from the start," he said.

Others said the government was complicit in the ruse. An environmental group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, filed suit, with the group's director saying in September that the Obama administration "took, and is still taking, steps to falsely minimize public perception about the extent and severity of the BP spill."

When a consensus finally emerged that a total of 4.9 million barrels of oil escaped before the well was capped July 14, it seemed that the early lower estimates had been put to rest -- until this month, that is, when members of the presidential Oil Spill Commission called attention to BP's latest contention that the true number is actually 20 percent to 50 percent lower.

Billions in fines

With potentially billions of dollars in water-pollution fines hanging in the balance, some scientists are saying the smaller estimates, particularly those from May and June, may have been closer to the truth at that time than the larger figures that a government science team came up with later. The idea that the flow rate increased over time could also explain why the government and BP were constantly caught off guard by new, larger oil-discharge estimates as mechanisms for containing the oil repeatedly came up short.

A BP report from November, a document that BP hasn't publicized, challenges in great detail the findings of both independent researchers and government-endorsed groups.

Read more:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/12/videos_appear_to_back_bps_cont.html