BP Still Permitted to Say "NO" to Scientists

[amborin]

Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf

There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

snip

......Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”
The plumes were discovered by scientists from several universities working aboard the research vessel Pelican, which sailed from Cocodrie, La., on May 3 and has gathered extensive samples and information about the disaster in the gulf.
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.

BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.
“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

The undersea plumes may go a long way toward explaining the discrepancy between the flow estimates, suggesting that much of the oil emerging from the well could be lingering far below the sea surface.
The scientists on the Pelican mission, which is backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that monitors the health of the oceans, are not certain why that would be. They say they suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly.

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/us/16oil.html?ref=todayspaper

[faceit]

1. Kick - where is the administration demanding that the oil be measured accurately?

[amborin]

5. looks as if the dispersants did more harm....as scientists already said

[Rex]

2. Okay look at this point BP needs to be forcefully removed if need

be from the site, otherwise we are going to end up with a mess we cannot clean up. If the government was EVER needed it is now! Looks like Obama is willing to be used&abused by a big corporation, not that surprised really.

[amborin]

4. yes...at least put BP into trusteeship....only too quick to do so w/ public schls

[Lorien]

10. Yes, BP's horrfic mismanagement of the situation should have ended by day two

just why they've been left in charge this long is beyond me. The government needs to move them out of the way, FIX the problem, then give the bill to BP/ Halliburtan? TransOcean.

[WillyT]

3. Yep... Considering The Fact That...

the Coast Guard, the DOD, Interior, NOAA, the EPA, and various other Federal agencies are onsite...

One has to wonder if it is JUST BP who doesn't want the full extent of this catastrophe revealed.

:shrug:

[havocmom]

8. BP seems comfy with US agencies being there, but no outside scientists

Hmmm, they seem comfy with US agencies. Red flag. Major Red Flag. They seem to know they can expect what from those agencies?

Don't want any loose cannon scientists. Like the ones they don't own and can't be sure they can control?

The fact that the US agencies involve don't just laugh at BP and call in the independent scientists is another BIG red flag to me.

If our government doesn't tell BP to 'STFU, oh, and up against the wall motherfuckers', then I fear it is not just BP that doesn't want the full extent revealed.

[WillyT]

22. Exactly !!!

How good are the congressional investigations going to be without independent scientific verification???

For this crisis... we need to know EVERYTHING!!!

:shrug:

:hi:

[greencharlie]

31. onsite, but doing WHAT?

WHO is operating the DSV's at the leak site?

[lonestarnot]

6. From the moment they were willing to cut her open, they were ambivalent about her death. Get those

fuckers out of there!

[malaise]

7. Could a corporation on land prevent the firemen, police or

FBI from accessing property? Who owns the fucking Gulf of Mexico - not BP.

[glitch]

12. Excellent point.

In fact the entire world has a right to trust what is going on down there. After all the lies right now there is NONE.

[suffragette]

20. +1000

Exactly.

[drm604]

9. Send in the Coast Guard, with arms if necessary, to take over the situation now.

Enough of this bullshit.

[glitch]

13. +infinity. nt

[Ruby the Liberal]

11. Um, they LEASED the right to drill, they didn't BUY the property

Screw BP. Send a boat out there and measure. Gather up these globs infused with chemical X and bring them back to the lab and find out what in the hell is happening down there.

[berni_mccoy]

28. That's true. But they own the instruments the scientists want to use.

[G_j]

14. screw that

where is "angry" Obama on this?

[Aviation Pro]

15. That's it....

...

MR. PRESIDENT, SEIZE THEIR FUCKING ASSETS, RUN THEIR FUCKING OFFICERS TO THE GROUND, SNATCH THEM, INTERROGATE THEM AND LOCK THEM UP WITHOUT TRIAL AT GITMO. NEVER LET THEM SEE THEIR FAMILIES OR THE LIGHT OF DAY AGAIN. A CLARION CALL NEEDS TO BE SOUNDED TO ALL CORPORATIONS THAT YOUR WORTHLESS MONEY IS NO MATCH FOR THE RIGHTEOUS.

OH, AND SOAK THAT BAG OF FUCK'S, CHENEY, HEAD IN OIL

[ladjf]

16. I don't get it. BP doesn't own the ocean bottom. nt

[drm604]

17. This is bullshit.

My guess is that BP wants to make sure that it is never known how much oil was released. They want to stop it (or at least slow it down) and then disperse it with chemicals (which will only hide the problem, not eliminate it).

[tavalon]

29. Damn good guess, I think

Of course, it has plausible deniability and in a court of law, that is music to BP lawyers ears.

[lostnfound]

18. "Not relevant to the response effort" is utter bullshit.

If scientists and engineers don't know how much is there, they can't figure out what is adequate in terms of equipment for cleanup..not that cleanup is really going to happen.
BP doesn't want a number because it will cost them in penalties, per barrel.

[drm604]

21. That's exactly right.

This is very likely coming from their lawyers. It has nothing to do with "response effort". It's all about "cover your ass effort".

[damntexdem]

19. Hmm, knowing more about the problem, the VOLUME of the problem, isn't relevant to response.

Well, if what BP says is true, then it's obvious that their response is not targeted on stopping the oil flow. The Feds should:
1) raid BP offices;
2) confiscate all BP property;
3) take over response; and
4) go to nation's that have dealt more-responsibly with deep-water oil drilling to seek experts to advise on the response.

[Webster Green]

32. Obama should have done that three weeks ago.

:wtf:

[Quantess]

23. Monday AM kick

[eShirl]

24. how about the phrase "eminent domain"

considering it's in US waters (I think?)

[Hubert Flottz]

25. The most amazing thing to me about scuba diving.

You go to the lake for years and fish and swim, but until you dive down to the bottom and spend some time, you have no real idea what you've been failing to see all those years. A totally different world waiting underwater, combined with the freedom of weightlessness and made even more exciting by the tinge of danger. I hate to think of what the oil sludge is doing to that world beneath the Gulf. The wading and fine fishing on the Florida flats, probably gone for a generation, maybe forever.

The crime against nature of the millennium.

[Cetacea]

26. K & R nt

[blindpig]

27. Youse guys hates bidness

BP is just doing business, you see, attending to their bottom line, as the officers are chartered to do. Corrupting government officials and regulators is just part of doing business too.

Kill Capitalism.

[blindpig]

30. kick

'cause I don't want to be the 'threadkiller'.

[Karmadillo]

33. Why is the White House deferring to BP? This is outrageous.

nt