Why can't someone figure out how much oil is escaping from the big gusher? Thats killing our Gulf

[madokie]

looks to me like if you were to take a video of the oil escaping and put an imaginary line the equal distance of the diameter of that pipe then time how long the oil took to travel that distance and then use the known diameter of the pipe one can then figure out the rate of flow in gallons, barrels, cubic feet or whatever.

I'm just curious

[Junkdrawer]

1. Because it's to BP's advantage to keep the reported flow rate low...

1.) It minimizes their liability exposure

2.) It's minimizes their PR hit

3.) By low balling the flow rate, they can now claim they're capturing 40% of the flow when they're no where near that.

[Owl]

8. Exactly.

[stray cat]

2. Its a mile down, multiple sites, and a dilution effect as soon as it hits water

[madokie]

3. But couldn't that all be learned using known values

I know I can't but it seems to me like someone with an engineering background would be able to arrive at a pretty good estimate. I asked this engineer who I was working with one time how it is that he could always have an answer, how he could possibly remember all it would take and he pointed to the wall of books lining his office and said all I have to remember is where to look for the information as he was pointing to those books.

[kenny blankenship]

4. That would infringe on BP's right to privacy

Corporations are people too you know.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Take what they are admitting to and multiply that by about a hundred and you should be ballpark

[FBaggins]

6. Because it's only of interest to the armchair quarterbacks.

Which includes me btw.

It's like watching a punt with a return, followed by a fumble turnover immediately followed by another fumble and turnover. The fantasy football geek may very well care how long the kick was, how long the return was before the fumble (etc), but all that matters is where the ball is spotted in the end.

It's like stopping the baseball game to measure off how far it is from home plate to where the baseball landed.

It's like stopping on the highway (when there's an accident in the oncoming lanes) to insist that the paramedics tell you what the victims' blood pressure is.

There are no resources sitting on the sideline because the spill is assumed to be smaller than it actually is.

Also, your calculation presumes that the flow rate is reasonably constant and that it's 100% oil. Neither assumption is likely to be true.

[doc03]

7. I have heard estimates anywhere from 1000 barrels a day

to 200,000.

[James48]

9. It doesn't matter

in the end, the measured amount doesn't matter.

It's already more than any other spill in American history, and is on track to be one of the largest in world history anyway.

My question is- instead of BP putting a straw in it so they can suck some out to their waiting tanker on the surface-

why aren't they trying to PLUG it?

Think about that for a while.

the attempts so far aren't to cut it off, they are to capture the oil so BP can load it on a ship- to sell.

Greedy bastards are still thinking in terms of how much money they can make from it.

[dgibby]

10. It's been done.

http://www.propublica.org/ion/blog/item/gulf-oil-spill-update-way-worse-than-they-told-us