Is BP really capturing most of the oil leaking from the site of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident?
After it sliced through a ruptured pipe and put a containment cap on top, the oil company said it was capturing somewhere around 11,000 barrels a day. Yesterday it said it had captured 14,800 barrels of oil. Going by official estimates of the amount of oil leaking that could be anywhere between 50 to 90% of leakage.
But now there are reports that some are thinking the flow rate is far, far worse since underwater robots sliced through the riser pipe. Oil is still clearly leaking on the live feeds from the robots (eg: here and here).
“The well pipe clearly is fluxing way more than it did before. By way more, I don’t mean 20 percent, I mean multiple factors,” Ira Leifer, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the NY Times.
Leifer told McClatchy Newspapers that there was nothing in the data he had seen as a member of the government’s Flow Rate Technical Group that was “inconsistent with BP’s worst-case scenario” – which is 100,000 barrels a day. That would mean BP was capturing only around 10% of the leaking oil.
The real import of this containment cap is that BP is now talking ‘containment’ not cure. It seems the only thing that is going to shut down the leaking are the relief wells being drilled, a painfully slow process that will probably take at least until the end of July.
More Deepwater Horizon spill news
“This well was different in the fact that they were having so many problems, and so many things were happening, and it was just kind of out of hand. BP was in a crunch, and they were behind on the well and they had fallen behind schedule. Wyatt, he was pressured and trying to hurry up to get things done.”
Courtney Kemp, wife of Roy Wyatt Kemp who died in the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig, says there were problems long in advance of the explosion that sank the drilling vessel (The Times-Picayune).
“We are now working on the 21st licensing round. It will be conducted in light of what we have experienced in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not appropriate for me to allow drilling in any new licenses in deep water areas until we have good knowledge of what has happened with the Deepwater Horizon.”
Terje Riis-Johansen, Norway’s energy minister, says all deepwater oil and gas drilling in new areas is now on hold (Financial Times).
“It’s going to take some time. It’s not going to be easy. But this is a resilient ecosystem. These are resilient people down on the Gulf Coast. I had a chance to talk to them, and they’ve gone through all kinds of stuff over the last 50, 100 years. And they bounce back, and they’re going to bounce back this time.”
US President Barack Obama tries to be upbeat.
“We have bought search terms on search engines like Google to make it easier for people to find out more about our efforts in the Gulf and make it easier for people to find key links to information on filing claims, reporting oil on the beach and signing up to volunteer.”
BP spokesman Toby Odone tells ABC News why the company has bought up the advertising for Google search terms such as ‘oil spill’ [Hat tip: Good Morning Silicon Valley].
Image: a US Fish and Wildlife Service employee about to capture an oiled pelican in Barataria Bay on 5 June 5 / Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class John Miller.