5-17-10 by dugan
So how much oil is really spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s exploded and sunk oil platform? 5,000 barrels a day (210,000 gallons) is the mainstream figure, issued by the government weeks ago after some hasty guesses. Scientists now think it’s many times that amount, but BP won’t even let a crack team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute plant underwater measuring equipment near the site. BP’s lame excuse that it is doing all it can, no matter what the size of the spill. The government’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric administration says it doesn’t have the money or people to do any better measurement. It’s all good for BP, since every unmeasured gallon can mean less legal liability.
It would be in the interest of every gulf-front government and business threatened by the spill to force BP to allow independent measurements of the spill.
The 5,000-barrel figure, even if it was calculated correctly from not-so-accurate visual observations, doesn’t count any oil that remains hidden underwater, a lurking sea monster:
Scientists said on Sunday they had found vast underwater plumes of
oil, one 10 miles (16km) long and a mile wide, lending weight to the
fears of those who believe the actual spill could be many times greater
than the estimate of 5,000 barrels daily.Researchers from the
National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology said they had
detected the slicks lurking just beneath the surface of the sea and at
depths of 4,000ft (1,200m).Samantha Joye, a marine science
professor at the University of Georgia, said: "It could take years,
possibly decades, for the system to recover from an infusion of this
quantity of oil and gas."We’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s impossible to fathom the impact."
Chemical
dispersants BP has been dumping underwater may be preventing the oil
from rising to the top of the ocean, the scientists said.The
find suggests the scale of the potential environmental disaster is much
worse than previously feared since the rig blew up, killing 11 workers.
Those underwater plumes, millions of gallons worth, may also be reaching–or already in–a major current that would carry them throught the Florida Keys and over to Miami and the east coast of Florida. The unseen and uncounted underwater spill plumes are also sucking oxygen from the seawater, and could ultimately turn into a vast oxygen-starved dead zone. From the New York Times:
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what
you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia
who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather
details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous
amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in
the water column.”The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying
scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low
as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
So when BP crows about a soda straw that it stuck into one of many leaking areas to siphon off 1,000 gallons of crude oil a day, there’s no need to applaud except in BP’s public relations department.
No one on the Gulf Coast should believe a word of what BP says until it allows scientists to run cameras deep underwater and count both the rate of the spill and the number of leak areas, using more credible calculations than an aerial look at what’s on the surface. If PB won’t let the Woods Hole experts and others come to the spill area, it’s time for the White House to issue the invitation, and make BP open the door. Or citizens are likely to do it themselves, in the courts.
AP Photo: Dolphins under oily sheen in Chandeleur Sound, LA.