Government to Oil Plume Discovery Team: Shut Up

[flyarm]

Government to Oil Plume Discovery Team: Shut Up | The Seminal

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/48816#

Government to Oil Plume Discovery Team: Shut Up
By: Jim White Tuesday May 18, 2010 6:06 am


The research vessel Pelican. (photo: Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium)

On Saturday, the New York Times brought the world’s attention to the discovery by a team of researchers on the the vessel Pelican that there are large underwater plumes of oil emanating from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Remarkably, the response of the government to the attention focused on this discovery has been to tell the researchers to stop granting interviews with the press. At the same time, the blog on which the researchers had been providing updates has also fallen silent since Saturday.

Pensacola television station WEAR filed a report (video at the link) on the oil plume and broke the news about the scientists being muzzled by the government:

Over the weekend, a research crew from the University of Southern Mississippi found evidence that there are 3 to 5 plumes… About 5 miles wide, 10 miles long and 3 hundred feet in depth.

But after giving that information to the press, the lead researcher now says he has been asked by the federal government… Which funds his research… To quit giving interviews until further testing is done.

What an interesting change of course for the government. Even the government’s website on the Deepwater Horizon response had been touting the mission of the Pelican as recently as May 6:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Could you post from a credible source?

Kthnxbai

[rudy23]

2. Yes -- FireDogLake fails the DLC purity test.

We need something from an Obama-approved source.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. It fails the common sense and scientific literacy test.

NOAA: "Evidence on the underwater plume is preliminary and inconclusive."

Liardogfake: "ZOMG! OBAMA IS SILENCING THE SCIENTISTS!"

[flyarm]

5. No you fail that! go on to another thread and leave this to the grown ups! eom

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Greyhound]

18. His daily demonstration of the wisdom of Confucian Philosophy. n/t

[Donnachaidh]

54. here you go now stop the poutrage

http://www.weartv.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wear_vid_8434.shtml

"But after giving that information to the press, the lead researcher now says he has been asked by the federal government... Which funds his research... To quit giving interviews until further testing is done.""



"Waahhh Waahhhhh -- FDL doesn't play NICE! They don't share! They gave me an indian burn!!!!!" :sarcasm:

[notadmblnd]

4. When did FDL become a a not credible source?

[Name removed]

6. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[janx]

7. I was following this blog,

but the initial mission came to an end. I assume they're involved in arduous testing now.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/earth_environment_ecology/oil_spill_science/

It's a blog by a guy at nature.com . He was aboard the Pelican.

[amborin]

21. FDL *is* a credible source; and nytimes repeats these facts, so, too, many other outlets

[KamaAina]

34. There's a link to the story as reported by Pensacola's ABC affiliate

http://www.weartv.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wear_vid_8434.shtml

That M$M enough for ya? :shrug:

[donco6]

53. Ah, the old shoot-the-messenger theme.

Too bad it's verified several other places.

You're not really defending the Administration on its silencing of scientific findings?

[blindpig]

8. Information management...

I thought only the 'bad guys' did that...

k&r

[Cetacea]

12. Great graphic. Thanks.

k+R

[amborin]

22. +1

[uponit7771]

9. I would like to hear from the lead researcher themself, this isn't good if this is true

[jtrockville]

11. If he wants to keep his funding, you're not likely to hear from him

[janx]

15. Conspiracy theory.

This blog is cobbling together bits and pieces from other sources and imagining that the researcher said such a thing...but there is no evidence that he did. :shrug:

[flyarm]

30. You should have read the article and looked at the info from NPR perhaps?

conspiracy Theory? maybe maybe not..I would say possible..possible cover up? we will know soon enough..and you would have known that had you read the entire article..and seen the reference to a NPR interview with one of the researchers!..........


One way to judge the answer to that question will be to see how quickly the research team is able to find ship time for gathering more data. Here is one of the researchers, Dr. Vernon Asper, speaking with NPR on May 16 with interviewer Guy Raz (in the only post-May 15 interview I’ve been able to find for any of the researchers):

RAZ: Vernon Asper, what will you and the scientists aboard the Pelican be looking at in the coming days and weeks?

Dr. ASPER: The first thing we’re going to do is analyze our data and analyze the samples. And, of course, we’re planning our next cruises. We’re already making inquiries into finding ship time. It turns out that the limiting factor for studying this plume is the availability of research vessels.

The research fleet in the United States for academic purposes has been dwindling over the last few decades, and there just aren’t ships available. So we’re having a hard time getting access to vessels that can take us out there.

If the US government, acting through NOAA, is truly interested in understanding the extent of underwater oil plumes emanating from the Deepwater Horizon spill, then they will be able to arrange access for this team to gather more data aboard the Pelican or another research vessel very soon. On the other hand, if the desire of the government is to divert attention from what could be very disturbing results, then somehow this team just won’t be able to find ship time in the next few months.

[janx]

35. There is nothing in the NPR interview which suggests

that Dr. Asper was told to "shut up" by the government. The last paragraph you posted came from a poster at Firedoglake.com, suggesting that because the scientists have to wait for another vessel before they can go on another mission, the government is trying to "shut" him "up."

It's just conspiracy nonsense, doubly ludicrous because he is part of a team funded by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--so in that respect, you'd have to believe that he is shutting himself up. :rofl:

_____________________________________________________

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/earth_environment_ecology/oil_spill_science/

Oil spill science: The mission begins - May 10, 2010

Science journalist Mark Schrope is aboard the research vessel Pelican, which is spending the week studying the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Check back to The Great Beyond for daily mission updates.

I'm on my way to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill zone, some 220 kilometres southeast of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico, aboard the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium's 35-metre research vessel Pelican, part of the US research fleet

The seven scientists aboard, from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology, a NOAA-funded cooperative effort based at the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi, had originally been scheduled to study and map formations where methane seeps from the seafloor, and historically significant shipwrecks with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. After the disaster they decided to put that work on hold so they could study the spill.

[flyarm]

37. I guess you missed my point when i said clearly......the following.......

conspiracy Theory? maybe maybe not..I would say possible..possible cover up? we will know soon enough..and you would have known that had you read the entire article..and seen the reference to a NPR interview with one of the researchers!..........


as this was pointed out in the article i posted by the writer..

[janx]

38. I sympathize and can only imagine what you're going through

since you live there. But this source is probably not the best if you really want to know what's going on.

Edited to add this twitter link from a thread we were both posting in yesterday:

http://twitter.com/#/list/BreakingNews/gulf-oil

Lots of different entities post there. It's quite interesting to note who is involved. :hi:

[flyarm]

49. BP withholds oil spill facts — and government lets it

KPETE just posted this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4387651


BP withholds oil spill facts — and government lets it
Source: McClatchy


* Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2010

BP withholds oil spill facts — and government lets it

By Marisa Taylor and Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — BP, the company in charge of the rig that exploded last month in the Gulf of Mexico, hasn't publicly divulged the results of tests on the extent of workers' exposure to evaporating oil or from the burning of crude over the gulf, even though researchers say that data is crucial in determining whether the conditions are safe.

Moreover, the company isn't monitoring the extent of the spill and only reluctantly released videos of the spill site that could give scientists a clue to the amount of the oil in gulf.

BP's role as the primary source of information has raised questions about whether the government should intervene to gather such data and to publicize it and whether an adequate cleanup can be accomplished without the details of crude oil spreading across the gulf.

Under pressure from senators, BP released four videos Tuesday, but it hasn't agreed to better monitoring.




Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/18/94415/bps-secrecy...

[jtrockville]

10. Thanks flyarm. Sad to know the Obama adminstration is part of the coverup.

[FLPanhandle]

14. IF, and I repeat, IF true, then this will become Obama's Katrina

Not good.

[pinto]

16. Oil spill science: Mission’s end - May 16, 2010 (research mission was completed)

Apparently the blog went silent because the research mission was completed. And has moved on to analyzing their data, samples, etc. ~ pinto

Oil spill science: Mission’s end - May 16, 2010

Science journalist Mark Schrope is aboard the research vessel Pelican, which is spending the week studying the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Check back to The Great Beyond for daily mission updates.

The team has gathered critical sediment samples that can be used as a baseline for future studies of whether oil eventually makes it to the seafloor in substantial quantity and if so what the effects might be. Creating this and other baselines simply wouldn't have been possible had the team not managed to make it to the accident zone so quickly.

And, of course, they got early information about a plume nobody even knew existed, and water samples that will eventually tell much more of the story about where the oil is going and what effects it might have in the water column.

All of that information will be crucial as this team and others work over the coming months and even years to study the impacts of the spill, but this is just a start. Given the complexity of the oil and the ocean, combined with the sheer volume of oil that's been released, it's clear that adequately studying what's going on out here will be a Herculean task.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/05/oil_spill_science_missions_end.html

[janx]

17. YEP.

(I just posted a link to that, above.) Right now they're doing the science and planning the next mission.

I love that blog!

[Scurrilous]

19. Thanks.

:thumbsup:

[SemiCharmedQuark]

27. Well shoot. I guess that conspiracy theory didn't pan out.

[flyarm]

31. see my post #38.........and do read the entire article and interview with NPR of one of the

researchers aboard the Vessel.

maybe if you did some reading of full articles you might know wtf is going on and the cover ups going on..don't we that live on the gulf deserve the fucking truth about what we are living with???????????

we will know soon enough if there is a conspiracy ..when people start getting seriously sick..I do remember when Chrristine Whitman lied about the air quality over ground zero..her lies became deaths!!

we on the Gulf have been experiencing horrible air making our eyes burn and throats burn.,and eyes water..and headaches..

Over 2 weeks ago one of our Tampa news stations reported the oil was already in the Loop Current..then the story changed..and it keep changing as those in power want to hide the fucking truth!

is that a conspiracy?????????? or just another fucking cover up and covering the asses of those who have had their pockets greased???????????

at the expense of the Gulf Of Mexico and those who live on it!

Thanks Omaha Steve for posting this.........


“Worse than Katrina,” La. labor leaders warn oil spill worse than media says



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=367x26596


NEW ORLEANS - Labor leaders here say the oil spill will be worse for workers in this region than Hurricane Katrina was almost five years ago and that the major media, both locally and nationally, are actually downplaying its significance.


"First they said it was a thousand barrels a day, then 5,000, now 200,000 and the oil is getting closer every day," said Robert "Tiger" Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO and leader of the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers). "And once it gets into the marshland it will become a bigger catastrophe than Katrina." "Tiger," as he is known in the labor movement and on job sites all over this city, said he fully expects workers here to be hit with a "double whammy" on top of Katrina because, "even if they succeed in building a side by side well that would mean at least 75 to 90 days more of oil gushing into the Gulf. That brings us to hurricane season ad very possibly oil washing up all over this region."

"Tiger," in an interview yesterday with the World, said, "I'm hearing already about people with strange rashes and there are whole stretches near the shores and elsewhere where you can already smell the oil. Fish, animals and sea gulls are dying and there is not enough publicity about it. It's a matter of the people's health and of their lives. And then, if the oil reaches those marshes more than 100,000 people will be almost immediately out of work - this, on top of Katrina and on top of the economic depression already going on is a lot for workers to have to handle."

David Magee, vice president of the dock workers' union (ILA, Local 3000), said that environmentalists and others the union has consulted warn that all major commerce here is in imminent danger. "We have a heads up that this spill will affect our industry adversely in the next two or three weeks. We have spoken to the membership and we are all trying to do our best to be prepared."

Union workers are already a key to the effort to minimize environmental damage and keep ships flowing through the mouth of the Mississippi River which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. "There are cleaning stations where our members are already cleaning the oil off the hulls of ships before they enter and pollute the river," Magee explained.

FULL story at link.

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We will know if it is a conspiracy if our government makes sure these research scientists are kept out of the Gulf snd kept from doing what they do best..research!

We in Fla already know that reporters have been kept away from the oil by BP!! That has been reported extensively by our local news!..but don't expect it to be covered by the big major media whore corps!

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ahhh the strange bedfellows.....remember Dashle who pushed Obama during our primaries..and was one of his top advisors...........working with Whitman..the lady who lied about the air quality at Ground zero in NY?? Can i tickle your memory..she lied and people died and keep dying!! And that is just one example..

Spill, Baby, Spill
By Michael Isikoff, Ian Yarett and Matthew Philips | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 10, 2010

BP has been trying hard to burnish its public image in recent years after being hit with a pair of environmental disasters, including a fatal refinery explosion in Texas and a pipeline leak in Alaska. One major step was to announce, in 2007, that it had hired a high-powered advisory board that included former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and Leon Panetta, who were each paid $120,000 a year. (Panetta left when he became President Obama's CIA director.) Two years ago the oil giant's chief executive, Robert Malone, flew board members out to the Gulf of Mexico on a helicopter to demonstrate the safeguards surrounding BP's advanced drilling technology. "We got a sense they were really committed to ensuring they got it right," Whitman told NEWSWEEK.

Now BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, finds itself blamed for what could prove to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. And only weeks after Obama announced an ambitious plan to open up more U.S. offshore waters to oil drilling, shunting aside environmental concerns from his own Democratic Party, his administration is facing a comeuppance from hell. "There was a lot of wishful thinking, I guess," says Villy Kourafalou, a scientist at the University of Miami's Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "The new technologies were said to be so wonderful that we'd never have an oil spill again." Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who had sought to block the expanded drilling, says the oil and gas industry was pushing this idea hard. "They said, 'We'll never have a repeat of Santa Barbara,'?" referring to the 1969 rig explosion off the California coast. Both the Bush and Obama administrations "were buying the line that the technology was fine," Pallone adds.

BP pressed hard to make that point in D.C. Its PR efforts included payments of $16 million last year to a battery of Washington lobbyists, among them the firm of Tony Podesta, the brother of former Obama transition chief John Podesta. Last fall, after the U.S. Interior Department proposed tighter federal regulation of oil companies' environmental programs, David Rainey, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico exploration, told Congress that the proposal was unnecessary. "I think we need to remember," he said, that offshore drilling "has been going on for the last 50 years, and it has been going on in a way that is both safe and protective of the environment."

Read the full article at:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237298



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Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf
Source: McClatchy

Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf

By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama's vow that his administration would launch a "relentless response effort" to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling.

The exemptions, known as "categorical exclusions," were granted by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, or MMS, and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a British Petroleum exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.

"Is there a moratorium on offshore drilling or not?" asked Peter Galvin, the conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration's continued approval of the exemptions. "Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred, and nothing appears to have changed."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/07/9376 ...

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and never forget this..we Floridans won't!!!


YouTube - Barack Obama on Offshore Oil Drilling ( to Florida voters while asking for their votes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8fkbEuCQss ...

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Obama: “Oil Rigs Today Generally Don’t Cause Spills”

Obama Repeats Katrina Oil Spill Myth To Defend Offshore Drilling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm8gLmuTvJ4 ... ...


By: David Dayen Thursday April 29, 2010 1:42 pm

snip:

What a difference 18 days makes. Here was Barack Obama, on April 2, before the BP oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming that oil rigs are safe to justify his position on offshore drilling:

I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

Not only does this quote look ridiculous in hindsight, it wasn’t true at the time, as Brad Johnson points out:

Obama’s claim that oil rigs did not cause any spills during Hurricane Katrina is simply false, as the Wonk Room reported in June, 2008, when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other conservatives made the same false claim:

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused 124 Offshore Spills For A Total Of 743,700 Gallons. 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused Six Offshore Spills Of 42,000 Gallons Or Greater. The largest of these was 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a “major spill.”

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/04/29/oba ... ... ’t-cause-spills/


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ahhh yes no conspiracy...and who has their people surrounding our White house..oh yeah Goldman..........

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4387163&mesg_id=4387163

BP And Goldman Sachs Sued For Oil Fraud
Source: Forbes

Dozens of small oil and gas producers across Oklahoma and the Midwest are suing Goldman Sachs, BP and ConocoPhillips, claiming the defendants conspired to defraud them out of proceeds for crude oil they delivered just before the collapse of Oklahoma-based pipeline giant Semgroup in the summer of 2008.

With this lawsuit, filed in Oklahoma district court, we're one step closer to finding out if Goldman Sachs was responsible for helping to goose oil prices to record highs in the summer of 2008 by conspiring against Semgroup in massive crude oil trades. As first detailed by Forbes Magazine a year ago in this article, Semgroup collapsed into bankruptcy under $3 billion in short sale losses on oil futures trades. Goldman, through its J. Aron commodities division, was Semgroup's largest counterparty, and appears to have been responsible for giving Semgroup its final push off the cliff by unleashing a massive margin call on Semgroup as oil prices spiked. In the process, assert plaintiffs like billionaire John Catsimatidis, Goldman's actions may have helped push up the price of oil to its record of $147 a barrel.

J. Aron and other big oil traders like BP regularly bought thousands of barrels of physical crude oil from Semgroup, which in turn bought the oil from the plaintiffs. Those plaintiffs still haven't received more than $400 million they're owed for their oil, because J. Aron and other counterparties still owed money from Semgroup refuse to pay.

Attorneys for the small oil companies believe that Goldman, which was one of Semgroup's bankers, had improperly shared information on Semgroup's trading positions with J. Aron. The allegation is similar to those leveled at Goldman in relation to the ongoing probe of its sale of complex collateralized debt obligations: that the bank was selling clients a particular trade, then taking the other side of that trade, and profiting from its clients' losses.

Read more: http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/05/18/bp-gold... /


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


In another suit Semgroup is also suing BP and Goldman for fraud which pushed Semgroup over the edge of bankruptcy.

[nashville_brook]

k n r

[nashville_brook]

44. k n r

[flyarm]

28. even though their mission ended there is no excuse for trying to shut up these scientists..

and possibly threatening their funding for research! Or silencing their reporting on their research!

We all have the right "TO KNOW The Truth"

My back yard is the Gulf..i damn well have the right to know what i am walking in on the beach ..and what the dead birds on my beach have been exposed to and what the rotten air we have had to breathe has in it!

My eyes burned from what ever it was..my throat burned as did all my neighbors...and their grandparents and their children..we damn well have the right to know the truth!
And anyone who believes otherwise is complicit in the cover ups going on!

I damn sure are going to listen to these folks over the fuckers at BP or even many in our congress that have had every orifice of themselves greased by the BP fuckers!

[Karenina]

52. I wish you all good things in a difficult situation, flyarm.

[amborin]

20. K&R massive media sanitizing going on, too, in addition to

WH attempts to appear responsive (NOT)

[earth mom]

23. Obama & Co are doing nothing but playing politics while our oceans are in major jeopardy!

Un FUCKING believable and SICK beyond belief!

It looks like we've got nothing but sociopaths running Washington DC!

:grr:


Thanks for posting this flyarm!!!

[Lorien]

57. +1000.nt

[ProdigalJunkMail]

24. something doesn't jibe right here...math

5 miles wide, 10 miles long and 3 hundred feet in depth

5 miles wide = 26400 feet
10 miles long = 52800 feet
300 feet thick

Math 300*52800*26400 = 418,176,000,000 cubic feet

1 cubic foot = 7.48 US gallons

3,127,956,480,000 gallons? this cannot be all oil...especially if there are FIVE of them...nearly 16trillion gallons...

Even if 11million gallons have flowed out so far...that volume of space would be .00003% oil (give or take a decimal place).

sP

[uponit7771]

25. Oil, oil "mud", sea floor, methane....

[ProdigalJunkMail]

26. so even LESS oil than 30 ppm???

hell, my drinking water probably has more than that...

sP

[nashville_brook]

29. sure would be nice if we were allowed to know real flow from the leak

[SidDithers]

32. Good post...

Not sexy, like the headline in the OP, but I prefer unsexy and accurate.

Sid

[girl gone mad]

40. The math on that one is bad.

Come on, people, you don't need to be a math genius to look at the figure and see they make no sense.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

41. what do you see as wrong? n/t

[girl gone mad]

47. Not your calculations..

but the estimates for how much is leaking.

It's hard to know what the truth is. As I said above, from the satellite images it appears to be be at least 100 Million gallons leaked so far. Then again, the dispersants could make the spill appear more significant by causing the slick to thin and spread out further.

I don't think this is a catastrophe on the scale of the Valdez because the gulf is so much bigger and the water is warmer, both factors that will help the hydrocarbons evaporate quickly. I do wish we could have the truth and put a stop to the leak, yesterday.

[flyarm]

48. BP withholds oil spill facts — and government lets it

KPETE just posted this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4387651


BP withholds oil spill facts — and government lets it
Source: McClatchy


* Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2010

BP withholds oil spill facts — and government lets it

By Marisa Taylor and Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — BP, the company in charge of the rig that exploded last month in the Gulf of Mexico, hasn't publicly divulged the results of tests on the extent of workers' exposure to evaporating oil or from the burning of crude over the gulf, even though researchers say that data is crucial in determining whether the conditions are safe.

Moreover, the company isn't monitoring the extent of the spill and only reluctantly released videos of the spill site that could give scientists a clue to the amount of the oil in gulf.

BP's role as the primary source of information has raised questions about whether the government should intervene to gather such data and to publicize it and whether an adequate cleanup can be accomplished without the details of crude oil spreading across the gulf.

Under pressure from senators, BP released four videos Tuesday, but it hasn't agreed to better monitoring.




Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/18/94415/bps-secrecy...

[SidDithers]

43. How so?...

5 miles x 10 miles x .056 miles =~ 2.8 cubic miles
= 3.08 trillion gallons = 3.08 x 10^12 gallons in that volume

if 10,000,000 gallons of oil were in that volume, that's 3 parts per million.

3ppm is higher than I'd want in my drinking water, but it wouldn't be noticeable in the ocean.

Sid

[girl gone mad]

46. I think the problem may be that people are confusing barrels with gallons.

The estimates I've seen show that 100,000 barrels of oil are leaking per day, and the satellite photos seem to back that up. After all, it would take over 4 million gallons of oil just to cover the surface of 1 square mile of ocean 1/4" deep. As you can see from the image I've posted below, we are looking at far more than 1 square mile of oil on the surface by now. It appears to be an area of at least 800 km^2 = 308 mi^2.

1 barrel = 42 gallons.

[SidDithers]

56. Even if we allow that the volume released is hugely higher than NOAA estimated...

lets go with 300,000,000 gallons for simplicity sake, though that's twice as much as was released from Ixtoc 1, a similar blowout that gushed for 9 months before being capped.

But if we assume that 300,000,000 gallons of oil was contained only in that plume, and not spread out all over the Gulf, it's still:

3x10^8 gallons of oil in 3x10^12 gallons of ocean.

That's 1 part in 10,000.

That's a single ml of oil in 10 litre bucket of water.

It's not inconsequential, but I don't think it's enough to create a plume that can be differentiated from the sea water around it.




Going the other way, if the 5 mile x 10 mile x 300ft plume was just 10% oil, that would be 300 billion gallons of oil. That's more than 7 billion barrels of oil in that single plume. In 30 days, Deepwater Horizon would have spewed 2150 times as much oil into that single plume, as was spilled by Ixoc 1 over the 9 months it leaked.

The numbers just don't jibe.

Sid

[Rex]

36. It all depends on how much oil is actually leaving the hole and

so far I've seen predictions of 100 million to several billion barrels of oil could be in that deposit.

[girl gone mad]

39. dupe

[Individualist]

33. K&R

[HCE SuiGeneris]

42. Fascism is running strong in this country...

we are in dire straits indeed.

[WillyT]

45. Big K & R !!!

:kick:

:hi:

[Duppers]

50. ck. out Chuck Todd's slip

Video: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/37220558#37211320

@ ~ the 54 to 60 sec. point.

Todd: "...seems there's a lot of frustration WITH the Obama...(then, correcting his slip)...IN the Obama administration."

This is stinking like oily dead fish.

K & R.

[Karmadillo]

51. Kick

nt

[lonestarnot]

55. Slowing panic by putting reins on information.