And the Oil comes to shore...

[the_future_modernes]

The OTHER Gulf Gusher

Though BP sticks to the ludicrous number of 5,000 barrels per day, scientific examination of either the videos that the oil giant has reluctantly shared, or the all too visible slick spreading across the ocean tell a different story. The trouble is, right now they're telling two stories.

Because the video of the gusher, available to BP shortly after the explosion that killed 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon, was until very recently hidden from the public, the oil slick on the surface was for many days the only way to measure the size of the disaster. In fact, BP wouldn't have even bumped their estimate to 5,000 if it hadn't been for the actions of SkyTruth, which took the approach of simply measuring the oil slick and calculating how much oil it contained. While BP has kept its fingers in its ears since then, SkyTruth has been updating its estimates. As of yesterday...

It's Day 35 of this fatal incident. Our estimated spill rate of 1.1 million gallons (26,500 barrels) per day, now on the conservative end of the scientific estimates, leads us to conclude that almost 39 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf so far.

Meanwhile, we were supposed to have an "official" estimate from the government over the weekend. Instead we got an official reshuffling of the members of the committee making the estimate. And we still have no number.

However, while SkyTruth is estimating that BP is off by a factor of 5, other engineers looking at the video of oil gushing from the broken pipe have placed the rate of flow closer to 100,000 barrels a day -- 20 times more than BP is pretending to believe. Just as with SkyTruth's estimates, this number isn't that hard to derive. Looking at the speed of the flow by going frame by frame through the video and knowing both the size of the pipe and reference objects in the frame, it's simple geometry to determine how much material is emerging from the blown well. So why the difference? If the rate underwater is really that high, how could SkyTruth be underestimating by such a degree?
Blame it on the other Gulf gusher.


...


As NALCO indicates, removing the oil from the surface does mitigate some of the effects on birds and other animals that live near the surface. However it has another effect that's more beneficial to BP than to the Gulf's full time residents: it hides the size of the spill. BP hasn't just been spraying Corexit onto the oil that has reached the surface, it's been injecting tens of thousands of gallons a day of Corexit directly into the rising column of oil.

This is a technique that has never been used before. It has undoubtedly prevented much of the oil from reaching the surface, just as BP has said. And as a result much of the oil that has blasted out of the opening has traveled in "plumes" at varying depths below the surface. Scientists have encountered these plumes hundreds of miles away from the original well site, and now oil washing into the marshes of Louisiana isn't just moving along the surface, but actually flowing up along the bottom of the sea, rendering the usual booms and floats useless in stopping the advance.

Not only is this unprecedented use of dispersant hiding the true size of the disaster and making the oil impossible to contain, the effect on sea life is absolutely unknown.  The EPA's safety sheet for Corexit lists only short term toxicity tests for silverside minnows and mysid shrimp. That's an astoundingly limited amount of study for something that BP has now deployed in quantities exceeding half a million gallons.MORE

BP could get away with it: The Corporate Stranglehold: How BP Will Make out Like Bandits from Its Massive, Still Gushing Oil Disaster

However, under the Clean Water Act, civil suits may provide a way to make BP pay up to $4,300 per barrel for the spill, IF US gov't has the political will. Please keep in mind that BP's 2009 profit last year was 14 billion dollars. They can damn well afford to pay for their sins.

This scenario is way more likely though The Corporate Stranglehold: How BP Will Make out Like Bandits from Its Massive, Still Gushing Oil Disaster



In the meantime: BP Cleanup Workers Getting Sick After Exposure to Oil, Chemicals


And there may be a way to make BP pay up to $4,300 per barrel for the spill, IF US gov't has the political will.

Why drilling the Artic as Shell is preparing to do is a REALLY BAD IDEA.


Nevermind the part where killing off the marshes might do this
Coast Pipelines Face Damage as Gulf Oil Eats Marshes? Spill could hasten marsh erosion, leaving infrastructure vulnerable. Basically, kill the marshes, expose the oil pipes inthose marshes, and since those pipes easier to damage now, more spills. GREAT.

Big Picture at the Boston Globe has pics of the Oil coming to shore: Oil reaches Louisiana shores