Admiral Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander for the Deepwater Horizon Response team, has today established the Flow Rate Technical Team, a multi-agency federal effort to determine oil flow rates from the BP spill at multiple time periods following the explosion, fire, and subsequent loss of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Led by the U.S. Coast Guard, Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), along with technical representatives from the Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the team will work on a multi-agency level in order to compute the total outflow of the BP oil spill, a critical question that still has not been answered by BP.
Lieutenant Commander J.R. Hoeft, the Online Communications Coordinator at the Deepwater Horizon Response Joint Information Center, who provided EnergyBoom.com with the news about the launch of the Flow Rate Technical Team, told me that:
“The team will work to obtain data that is available on the reservoir, wellbore, blowout preventer, subsea flowing pressures, leak points, discharge plumes and surface discharge observations. With this information, the team will identify and run state-of-the-art models to calculate flow rates and compare results.”
BP announced today that it is now capturing an estimated 5,000 barrels a day of crude oil and 15 million cubic feet of natural gas from one of the leaking pipes at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the first time the company has publicly admitted that its earlier estimate that only 5,000 barrels of oil were gushing into the Gulf each day were woefully inaccurate. BP is capturing only a portion of the oil from only one of two leaks on the sea floor, adding further evidence that the company’s daily outflow estimate is far too low.
Several scientists who testified in front of Congress yesterday said the total outflow could be more than 100,000 barrels a day, far above BP’s estimate.
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Kevin Grandia: Experts Say BP Withholding Valuable Data on Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
According to the expert testimony by scientists before Congress, BP continues to withhold this data making it very difficult for outside expert to know how much oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico everyday.
Kevin Grandia: BP Gets Caught Up in its Own Math - 5,000 Barrel a Day Estimate Way Off
BP has just announced that it's operation to siphon off and contain some of the oil gushing out of it's broken pipe in the Gulf of...
Coast Guard has been following BP's lead, and helping BP promulgate THEIR "rules" about what media can cove, MMS has been in bed with BP, and NOAA has consistently ultra-low-balled the estimate to the point you wonder if they measured anything, or simply published the numbers BP gave them.
There is NO independence here. If the entire Obama Administration has been bought off by BP, can we really expect this effort to yield the truth?!!?
Even if the Obama Administration just doesn't wanting to take the blame for being slow, not realizing how awful this is, and foolishly, or worse, following BPs lead, in that case do you expect a more honest number?
How about a group of OUTSIDE experts -- Woods Hole, major universities, any international group with ocean and oil spill expertise.
Get the Navy to do the work: they do the measurements the scientist want done.
Seriously, Coast Guard, MMS, and NOAA have ALREADY screwed this up pretty well, so what do we do, we put them in charge of cleaning up the mess!
A recurring pattern in the Obama Administration: corporations screw up X. So, rather than punish them -- Lord forbid we do THAT! -- we put them in charge of cleaning it up!! So they can screw up a second time, and make yet more money doing so.
Way to go, Kenny! Way to go Obama!!
"It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to marine life and
wildlife."
(4 quarts of oil = 1 gallon, so 1 gallon of this oil makes toxic 1,000,000 gallons of ocean water )
"the volume of water of the Gulf of Mexico Basin is roughly estimated to be 2,434,000 cubic km of water or
643,000,000,000,000 gallons of water".
therefore, 643,000,000 gallons of motor oil is required to kill all marine life in the Gulf of Mexico Basin.
as of may 22, 2010, PBS tracker estimates approximately 34,500,000
gallons of CRUDE released to date .
my fourteen year old friend, Robb, calculates that if oil continues to be released at the present estimated rate,
the Gulf of Mexico Basin will be a DEAD ZONE in 18 days.
Robb , with his limited knowledge and education, has failed to consider many , many factors in his simplistic
"reasoning, but he gave me pause to think.
Came up with on the order of a couple of hundred days, considering just oil.
A very rough calculation, admittedly.
Plus, do need to figure in toxicity of dispersants too.
Point being: YOU END UP WITH A MASSIVE KILL OFF OF THE ENTIRE GULF IN AT BEST A COUPLE OF 100 OF DAYS, MAYBE LESS!
We are currently in, what, day 32?
Earth to the Obama Administration: WAKE UP! It is like the house is on fire, and you don't seem to have the urgency to put it out!!
We can do the arson investigation later, right now, GET THE DAMNED LEAK STOPPED!!!!!
In the Gulf of Mexico, an equivalent of 2 Exxon Valdez's worth of oil is leaked through the NATURAL PROCESS every year. Pumping oil out decreases the pressure and thus the natural oil leak rate into the oceans (this has been observed off the California coast). NASA observed this fact in 2000:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=20863
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000127082228.htm
ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2000) — Twice an Exxon Valdez spill worth of oil seeps into the Gulf of Mexico every year, according to a new study that will be presented January 27 at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
How come Greenpeace did not protest against Evil Nature for this crime? How long has wicked Mother Nature been leaking demon OIL into the Gulf of Mexico? 100 years? 1000 years?
2009 oil slicks (natural cause)
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36873
As much as the oil blowout is tragic, it seems most of the HuffPost audience (at least all the liberals/progressives/environuts) is all wee-wee'd up.
Calm down. I will change your diapers (after donning the gas mask), wipe the snot off your noses, and give you your medication. There. There.
The question remains larger now than before: why is the US bipartisan Congress (both houses) so predictably responsible only to irresponsible corporations?
One possible answer: the leaders believe no one else pays attention (and here they are still largely correct).
The problems that they are having with the depth is because they are trying solutions that will enable them to keep on making profit out of this well. Any mechanical or civil engineer can make that out. There are solutions (like a controlled explosion to shut of the opening of the well) that BP will never consider as it will immediately stop all revenue from this well and they will still have to pay for the clean up.
"Why wasn't all solutions to any possible disaster anticipated before drilling" - simply because it is expensive! We have some of the loosest regulations on the oil companies in the developed world and they practically have run our government for the past 8 years (maybe earlier than that). Of-course they will spend all their efforts and resources in planning ways to siphon off as much profits as possible rather than spending some on safeguards emergency response drills!
The WH has access to the same information the rest of us have...they have seen the estimates from scientists. Now an official commission will determine just how bad the flow had been and BP Lawyers will not be able to claim that his was a hastily put together team that didn't know what it was doing.
Perhaps he has...but I don't know what he could have done much differently. I would have given BP two weeks to get it cleaned up or else...the threat would have been sending out the coast Guard to shut down the other BP wells. However, I am not responsible for the country as a whole, nor the economy and in my "perfect" solution congress could go f- - - themselves if they didn't like it. We always act and think that the Pres is a law or force unto himself...He's not.
On the other side of the argument, Obama is lacking in the "leadership" department...no doubt about it. He could have rallied the people, big time...but would that really have solved anything? The technology just isn't there, which clearly demonstrates how poorly this country has been run for the past 30 years at least. Why in the hell were we drilling when we didn't have the technology to clean up spills at this depth?
I know you saw my post about the the submarines we don't have....Smart bombs and drones we have plenty of, what we need we don't have. I detest the MIC and the people who support it.
I want a corrective statement and appology from the Queen!