BP Misleading the Public? Internal Documents Show Analysis That Oil Leak Could Be 100,000 Barrels Pe

[Nathanael]

Shocking...

House Representative (Democrat-Massachusetts) Ed Markey has released a BP internal document showing that the company's own early analysis believed the worst-case scenario could be the that the broken oil well was leaking 100,000 barrels a day.

The document states that "if the blowout preventer and the wellhead are removed are removed and if we have incorrectly modeled the restrictions – the rate could be as high as ~ 100,000 barrels per day up the casing or 55,000 barrels per day up the annulus."

Read the full story: http://www.energyboom.com/policy/bp-misleading-public-internal-documents-show-analysis-oil-leak-could-be-100000-barrels-day

[TheWraith]

1. A worst case scenario is not the same as a real world estimate.

This situation is more than bad enough without exaggerating it--one memo describing the worst possibility is not the same as "misleading the public."

[Nathanael]

2. Yes, But...

The flow rate has been a point of contention since the beginning. And BP has been absolutely clandestine in releasing details. The fact they had analysis that said the worst possible scenario was 100,000 barrels per day; yet they maintained that only 5,000 was the flow rate to me is very problematic. I would like to be privy to all information, and if you have information that you are not sharing that is critical to a situation, I consider that misleading.

[TheWraith]

3. The distinction is possibilities versus actual scientific estimates.

Based on the diameter of the well and some idea of the pressure the oil is under, I could produce a rough estimate of the maximum flow rate. What the ACTUAL rate of oil release from the damaged equipment is, you need much more specific measurements taken from the site. Besides which, this 100,000 estimate was based on the assumption that all the remaining hardware would be removed, AND that the engineers calculations were wrong about the underlying facts that governed the rate of flow.

[damntexdem]

4. Yes, but in the case of BP, it's likley to be better than the real world.

There may be a potential for up to 600k barrels per day.