There's worrying news from the House of Representative's commerce and energy committee hearing on the size of the oil spill from BP's broken Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to independent experts testifying before the subcommittee hearing, the daily spill estimate of 5,000 barrels, used by BP and government agencies in recent weeks, is far too low. The real figure is more likely to range between 20,000 barrels a day or up to 100,000 barrels a day– with the experts arguing that because BP was not releasing vital data, it was difficult to make an accurate estimate.
Some of the most chilling testimony came from Steve Wereley, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. Based on the latest video that BP released, he told the committee that the two wellhead leaks combined to gush 95,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico, with 70,000 barrels from the largest leak and 25,000 from the smaller.
Wereley also said his estimate could be wrong by plus or minus 20% – so the daily rate of leakage would be between 76,000 and 104,000 barrels a day. He told the committee: "The media keeps using the 5,000 barrel a day estimate, but there is scientifically no chance... BP's estimate is nowhere near correct. It is certainly larger." He later said: "I don't see any possibility, any scenario under which their number is accurate."
Update: My colleague Suzanne Goldenberg, the Guardian's US environment correspondent, interviewed Wereley last week about how he arrived at his estimates:
Wereley told the Guardian he based his estimate on techniques which track the speed of objects travelling in the flow stream.
"You can see in the video lots of swirls and vortices pumping out of the end of the pipe, and I used a computer code to track those swirls and come up with the speed at which the oils is shooting out of the pipe," he said. "From there it is a very simple calculation to figure out what is the volume flow."
Suzanne's Twitter feed is also a must-follow for all those interested in news from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
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This has been known for some time now - but the close relationship between the U.S. government and BP has ensured that Coast Guard officials and administration spokespeople are backing BP's estimates.
The close relationship involves public-private partnerships at the Department of Energy (both Chu and Koonin, have worked closely with BP - in fact, Steve Koonin, the number 2 at the DOE, was previously BP's chief scientist) as well as extensive federal lobbying and campaign contributions (BP employees gave more money to Barak Obama than to any other candidate).
Administration officials have in turn rewarded BP with relaxed oversight at the Minerals Management Office (the same situation as under Bush, of course) and have astonishingly parroted BP talking points after the spill. Obama's "anger" at BP and Transocean and Halliburton seemed to be more about the lack of a united PR statement, than about the spill itself.
Obama has also sent his national security adviser, James Jones, to Brazil to offer Petrobras a $2 billion loan for expanded offshore oil drilling (Aug 2009) and has checked off on Shells "emergency cleanup plan" for offshore drilling in Alaska (Beaufort).
Likewise, you see expanded support for coal-to-gasoline projects (sure to benefit the high-sulfur coal barons in his home state of Illinois), a refusal to fund renewable energy projects, and lots of lip service for implausible "zero emissions clean coal plants) - again, $2 billion went to the shady FutureGen project in Illinois - despite a complete lack of transparency when it comes to CCS performance data - it's all proprietary, we're told, so we can't see any of it.
Imagine if climate scientists took that stance with their data - would they get $2 billion in funding from the DOE? I seriously doubt it..
The only plausible conclusion is that, in this disaster, Obama has chosen to serve BP's interests instead of the public interest - and his refusal to require BP to actually measure the leak rate using modern scientific equipment is a glaring example of this problem. Neither has he stepped in to block Transocean's $1 billion dividend payout - curiously timed though it is.
Steve Werely is right - at least in the ballpark. And you don't need to be a Professor of Mechanical Engineering to work it out (though I presume it helps.)
My rationale 3 weeks ago, as my wife and friends will testify, was this;
5000 barrels/day is equivalent, at a gravity flow rate, to the exit from a 2.5" diameter pipe. (you can find e.g.a chart here - http://www.flexpvc.com/WaterFlowBasedOnPipeSize.shtml). That's about 5 US domestic faucets running in parallel.
This is a 21" well head, and 3 weeks ago we already had miles long slicks at the surface. Even though we hadn't seen the leak then, it was pretty likely, since it blew the entire freaking rig off the surface of the ocean, that the pressure exceeded that of your average water main.
Therefore, BP's number was always BS, and the Coastguard and the press reaffirmed their conventional stupidity by parroting BP's numbers.
There's a whole internet of information out there - we don;t have to be ignorant any more.
It just gets worse. I have to admit that I didn't realise that Obama was so similar to Bush in his attitude to the oil industry. According to Larry Chin, "The Obama administration has granted 27 new waivers to big oil companies since the BP explosion, allowing them to engage in yet more drilling and exploration without proper environmental review- in the Gulf of Mexico".Mind boggling. Full article here(thanks to lambaster for originally posting link).
Also, new NASA photos are showing the extent of the spill
Sitting here in the UK I get the impression that Obama is getting a relatively easy ride over this issue. You'd have thought that the GOP and conservative media would be up in arms about the failures that led to the leak and the Dems and left wing media to be protesting the aftermath, both the response and the new drilling but this doesn't seem to be the case. Why is this or am I wrong?
@timdp
Nice one,
Just checked the link and did some calculations.
Well lets call BP: Bad Predictions.
The majority of opinions on how much oil is coming out the pipe don't have any basis in reality. At least the scientists are trying to measure something even if they don't really know and can't tell the difference between oil and gas.
As for comparing it to domestic faucets - it all depends on how much the tap is opened! One hundred taps dripping will leak a lot less than one tap fully open.
I know most of the population won't listen to any authority but anyway - NOAA says the plumes are invisible to the naked eye most people think they are great big thick oil clouds underwater. Even a sheen is very thin - as little as single molecules thick - a little oil can spread a long way and makes it VERY difficult to be accurate.
Having said that I can't wait to see the live video that supposedly BP is going to post - with them measuring how much is being sucked up and before and after videos, hopefully we will be given much more accurate numbers.
The most credible evidence about the upper limit of the current release comes from experience - what have been the flow rates of other wells drilled in the GoM over the years?
And the answer is that the most productive wells in that region have topped out at about 60k bpd - and that's a realistic upper limit on what this well might leak if completely unconstrained (which it isn't).
Not saying I know the accurate flow rate, not saying that BP aren't low-balling it, but talk of 100k bpd is not realistic or substantiated in any credible way.
Regards Chris
Boycott BP.
www.boycottbp.com
Whatever he may be, Steve Wereley is clearly no expert - a professor of mechanical engineering WTF? Almost an irrelevant subject and I suspect that he is just another bullshitting half-baked academic looking to cash in on this disaster!
Why not ask a professor of reservoir or petroleum engineering - or would that risk asking somebody who might actually know something?
The figures he quotes are nonsense and would be less valid than figures I could generate. "From the latest video...." - what complete bollocks....
I don't know enough about the spill to know if my numbers are correct but I at least I don't go talking out of my arse to the press.....
What most sites are not reporting is the estimate from Steve Wereley include both gas and oil. He has said himself that if there is substantial gas the amount of oil will be correspondingly lower. Of course journalists are not long on publishing these caveats because they detract from the impact of their story.
The problem with that is that the flow out from these wells is 95% gas! So the actually oil flow rate predicted by Wereley 's measurements in 95,000 times (1-0.95) or 5,000 barrels a day. Exactly what BP and the Coast Guard are claiming.
The press needs to get on top of these facts and stop reporting data that is so wildly incorrect.
You can see the same thing with reports of the "oil plume". If you take the measurements from the press reports literally the content of oil in the plumes would be trillions of barrels. To put that in perspective that is greater than the total oil reserves for the ENTIRE PLANET.
I know that journalists are not long on quantitative skills but this is creating panic and worry which is affecting the economy of the people living in the Gulf needlessly.
Another example was of course the tar balls found in the Keys. Of course these were from the BP spill and were reported as such. Turns out they weren't. So the poor people of Florida were panicked needlessly.
Time to spend a little effort on fact checking and not reporting every wild claim from those with little or no expertise in the field. Including some academic who wouldn't know an oil well from a gopher hole.
How well is the oil spill being collected from the coast line?
According to this insider, not very well. WARNING. Bad language throughout. The presenter is upset by the lack of progress. Just wait until the intro is over and wait for "Booming 101"
BP Fails Booming School 101 Gulf Oil Spill.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx8kMXufu3w&feature=player_embedded
This spill is massive, and I fear that people are too focused on the superficial surface slick.
The ocean is a system that mixes and turns, bringing nutrients from miles below to the surface, and sending debris from the upper layers cascading down to the floor. With thousands of barrels of oil gushing from the broken riser on the seabed, there is a lot of oil that we cannot see that is fouling sea creatures all along the water column. What we see in satellite photos is simply the tip of the iceberg.
Nevertheless, it is a big spill, and it's crazy that the CEO of BP could try to dismiss it as "relatively tiny" when it is anything but:
http://blogs.edf.org/restorationandresilience/2010/05/25/does-this-look-like-a-drop-in-the-ocean-to-you-a-satellite-view-of-the-relatively-tiny-oil-spill/