Today is the one month anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf, and the news isn’t really getting any better – if anything, it’s getting worse.
For example? Try yesterday at the House Energy Subcommittee meeting, where Steve Wereley, an engineering professor at Purdue University, said after studying a videotape of a second leak in the oil well, that he sees 25,000 barrels of oil coming out of that leak alone.
From the NPR story that aired this morning on Morning Edition:
Wereley says the oil in this part of the pipe is under tremendous pressure. Add his current figure to last week’s estimate of about 70,000 barrels a day, and his total is now approaching 100,000 barrels a day. And, there’s another leak he has yet to analyze.
Wereley’s flow rate includes both gas and oil, so he says his figures may come down once he sees enough video to be able to quantify the amount of gas.
“But from what I see in the videos, I don’t see the numbers coming down that significantly,” he says.
BP of course, has been saying that it’s only been 5,000 barrels a day leaking, and they report that in the past few days they’ve been able to capture 3,000 of those barrels. So when Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey asked Werelely about that, he responded that he didn’t see “any possibility, any scenario under which their number is accurate.”
Also yesterday in Washington, scientists began criticizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s handling of the spill, saying they’ve been too slow and have allowed BP to run too much of the show.
The New York Times reports that on May 6, NOAA hailed the fact that they had helped finance a small research ship called the Pelican. But when scientists aboard the Pelican 9 days later announced that they had discovered large plumes undersea that looked like they consisted of oil droplets, ” NOAA criticized the results as premature and requiring further analysis.”
This article appears in May 20-26, 2010.
