Five thousand gallons of oil a day. That's what's become the conventional wisdom of the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. But experts, after reviewing underwater video of the gushing well, have suggested the leak could be "four or five times" that estimate. And more troubling is what appears to be an unwillingness on BP's part to allow a more accurate measurement of the leak.
BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing.
Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. ... Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who have routinely made such measurements, spoke extensively to BP last week, Mr. Bowen said. They were poised to fly to the gulf to conduct volume measurements.
But they were contacted late in the week and told not to come, at around the time BP decided to lower a large metal container to try to capture the leak. That maneuver failed. They have not been invited again. (Link)
Steven Wereley, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, studied videotape of the leaking well using advanced analytical techniques and estimated the oil is flowing at fourteen times the official estimate. 70,000 barrels a day. 2.94 million gallons per day. That's the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every four days.
Meanwhile, there are some fears that it will simply be impossible to shut down the gusher of oil, and that the spill will get worse until it's tapped dry. BP's chief executive has estimated "that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil." That's about 2 billion gallons -- making this disaster easily the worst ever. (Link)
It's really impossible for me to put this into some kind of perspective. It's unfathomable.
Recent Comments