This report by Bloomberg basically confirms what we've known all along---BP was lying about the original oil estimate from the start. They knew the oil estimate could possibly be higher than the 1,000 barrels a day, and this is precisely why we've needed an independent official estimate of the oil spill----and we still don't have that estimate.
May 26 (Bloomberg) -- A BP Plc document shows the company’s well in the Gulf of Mexico may be leaking about 14,000 barrels of oil a day, more than publicly estimated, U.S. Representative Edward Markey said today.
The internal BP document from April 27 put a high estimate for the leak at 14,266 barrels a day, Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said today at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing. At the time, BP was saying publicly that its well was leaking 1,000 barrels a day, Markey said.
Please read for more information about the BP internal document below the jump, and the excellent work that Representative Markey (D-MA) has done on this issue:
"According to this BP document, the company’s low estimate of the leak on April 27 was 1,063 barrels a day," Markey said. "It’s best guess was 5,758 barrels a day. Its high estimate was 14,266 barrels a day. So when BP was citing the 1,000 barrels a day figure to the America people on April 28, their own internal document from the day before showed that their best guess was a leak of 5,758 barrels a day and their high estimate was over 14,000 barrels a day."
And why would BP have the incentive to lie about the actual estimate of the oil spill? To reduce its financial liability since the liability is based on the size of the oil spill.
Devilstower had an excellent post on this earlier about the fudging by BP on the oil spill, and here's a brief excerpt for you guys to read:
However, while SkyTruth is estimating that BP is off by a factor of 5, other engineers looking at the video of oil gushing from the broken pipe have placed the rate of flow closer to 100,000 barrels a day -- 20 times more than BP is pretending to believe. Just as with SkyTruth's estimates, this number isn't that hard to derive. Looking at the speed of the flow by going frame by frame through the video and knowing both the size of the pipe and reference objects in the frame, it's simple geometry to determine how much material is emerging from the blown well.
So, independent estimates have this oil spill at much higher than the ones by BP. And what is our government doing in the meantime to estimate the actual size of the oil spill?
The government has formed a task force to determine an independent estimate of the rate of the spill. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told reporters today that she has recently received new video footage of the well 5,000 feet below the surface and that she expects the task force to issue its findings within two weeks.
The amount of the spill will figure into BP liability, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told the House hearing.
Just how new is this video footage? Is this from this week, or at the start of the oil spill, or at the start of the top kill operation? We don't know yet at this point.
Will the findings by the task force line up with the findings by independent scientists?
There's another news article that talks about what the scientists in the task force are doing:
Government scientists are currently reviewing satellite imagery and videos of the disaster to determine the rate of oil gushing out and the overall amount that has spilled, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen said at a White House briefing. He said estimating the size of the spill is difficult because the well is nearly a mile deep and only robotic devices can operate safely at that depth.
He said the government's estimates will likely be a range rather than a hard and fast number. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the estimates will likely be completed this week.
What Admiral Thad Allen is saying isn't true---it is NOT difficult to estimate the size of the oil spill. Here's our own Devilstower again on this issue:
Just as with SkyTruth's estimates, this number isn't that hard to derive. Looking at the speed of the flow by going frame by frame through the video and knowing both the size of the pipe and reference objects in the frame, it's simple geometry to determine how much material is emerging from the blown well.
And why the range rather than a hard and fast number? The problem with this is that it gives BP the ability to be held liable for the low range rather than the high range. There is no need to have a range, since it's pointed out by many scientists and environmental advocates that an actual hard estimate can be reached.
Here's an earlier New York Times article about the calculation of the size of the oil spill:
Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well.
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.
And what about that 5,000 barrel estimate? It was taken by a NOAA unit using a questionable method of measurement. If this method of measurement is used again for the official estimate by the task force, we could end up with a very low estimate of the oil spill, which would work out to BP's benefit:
However, Alun Lewis, a British oil-spill consultant who is an authority on the Bonn convention, said the method was specifically not recommended for analyzing large spills like the one in the Gulf of Mexico, since the thickness was too difficult to judge in such a case.
Even when used for smaller spills, he said, correct application of the technique would never produce a single point estimate, like the government’s figure of 5,000 barrels a day, but rather a range that would likely be quite wide.
Now given the reports about the official estimate being a range, rather than an actual hard estimate, this is the kind of measurement that the task force is making. It means that this measurement works out to BP's benefit.
It's a damn shame.