Gulf oil spill 'may top 100,000 barrels a day'
Jacqui Goddard, MiamiBP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico may be up to four times the scale estimated by a government scientific panel, pumping out 100,000 barrels a day in what equates to the company’s “worst case scenario” and prompting new accusations that executives are stonewalling the truth.
The news — revealed by one of the members of President Obama’s Flow Rate Technical Group, a panel that previously estimated that the flow was in the region of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day — counter to BP’s claims that it is now capturing “the majority” of the oil and channeling it into a tanker.
Dr Ira Leifer , a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California who is a member of the technical group, said that the oil company’s operation to cut the leaking pipe and cap it with a new containment device last week may have increased the surge of oil not by 20 per cent, as BP and the White House had warned may happen, but several times over.
“How much larger I don’t know, but let’s just quote BP,” he said, referring to the 100,000 barrel rate that BP executives indicated weeks ago would be their “worst case scenario.
“In the data I’ve seen, there’s nothing inconsistent with BP’s worst case scenario,” he added in comments to McClatchy newspapers, stating that the previous 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day estimate had simply been the “lower bound” estimate.
BP’s “top kill” effort two weeks ago to stem the flow by firing mud and junk into the well appeared to have stepped up the rate of the leak, Dr Leifer said.
The revelations are likely to form part of a lively congressional hearing next week, when BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, will appear on Capitol Hill to face a grilling by legislators.
He will be quizzed not only on BP’s response to the disaster, and controversial personal statements that he has made himself in recent weeks, but also on its lack of preparedness for such a disaster.
The company’s 2009 response plan setting out what it would do in the event of a leak in the Gulf of Mexico was seriously flawed, it emerged today, and showed a lack of understanding for the environment in which it was drilling.
One of the wildlife experts it listed in the plan as a potential adviser died in 2005. Under the heading “sensitive biological resources,” the 528-page document lists marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals — none of which are found anywhere close to the Gulf.
The names and phone numbers of several marine life specialists to which it would turn for help are out of date, and marine mammal assistance services that it names are in fact no longer in service.
Yet the document was approved by the federal government last year, prior to the Deepwater Horizon rig starting drilling on the Macondo well, despite vastly underestimating the potential impact that an accident might yield, even based on a leak ten times worse than the current spill.
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Jacqui Goddard, MiamiBP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico may be up to four times the scale estimated by a government scientific panel, pumping out 100,000 barrels a day in what equates to the company’s “worst case scenario” and prompting new accusations that executives are stonewalling the truth.
The news — revealed by one of the members of President Obama’s Flow Rate Technical Group, a panel that previously estimated that the flow was in the region of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day — counter to BP’s claims that it is now capturing “the majority” of the oil and channeling it into a tanker.
Dr Ira Leifer , a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California who is a member of the technical group, said that the oil company’s operation to cut the leaking pipe and cap it with a new containment device last week may have increased the surge of oil not by 20 per cent, as BP and the White House had warned may happen, but several times over.
“How much larger I don’t know, but let’s just quote BP,” he said, referring to the 100,000 barrel rate that BP executives indicated weeks ago would be their “worst case scenario.
“In the data I’ve seen, there’s nothing inconsistent with BP’s worst case scenario,” he added in comments to McClatchy newspapers, stating that the previous 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day estimate had simply been the “lower bound” estimate.
BP’s “top kill” effort two weeks ago to stem the flow by firing mud and junk into the well appeared to have stepped up the rate of the leak, Dr Leifer said.
The revelations are likely to form part of a lively congressional hearing next week, when BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, will appear on Capitol Hill to face a grilling by legislators.
He will be quizzed not only on BP’s response to the disaster, and controversial personal statements that he has made himself in recent weeks, but also on its lack of preparedness for such a disaster.
The company’s 2009 response plan setting out what it would do in the event of a leak in the Gulf of Mexico was seriously flawed, it emerged today, and showed a lack of understanding for the environment in which it was drilling.
One of the wildlife experts it listed in the plan as a potential adviser died in 2005. Under the heading “sensitive biological resources,” the 528-page document lists marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals — none of which are found anywhere close to the Gulf.
The names and phone numbers of several marine life specialists to which it would turn for help are out of date, and marine mammal assistance services that it names are in fact no longer in service.
Yet the document was approved by the federal government last year, prior to the Deepwater Horizon rig starting drilling on the Macondo well, despite vastly underestimating the potential impact that an accident might yield, even based on a leak ten times worse than the current spill.
READ MORE
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