BP gusher spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil.. more than worst case scenario..

[DCBob]

from Wash Post..

The blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico gushed even more oil than the worst case scenario envisioned, a whopping total of 4.9 million barrels, or 205.8 million gallons, according to a new analysis by government scientists charged with estimating the flow rate. BP's Macondo well spewed 62,000 barrels of oil a day initially, and as the reservoir gradually depleted itself the flow eased to 53,000 barrels a day until the well was finally capped and sealed on July 15, according to scientists in the Flow Rate Technical Group, supervised by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The new numbers, released by the government Monday night, once again nudge upward the scale of the disaster. If correct -- the government allows for a margin of error of 10 percent -- the flow rate would make this spill significantly larger than the Ixtoc I blowout of 1979, which polluted the southern Gulf of Mexico with 138 million gallons over the coursre of 10 months. That had been the record for the largest unintentional oil spill in the planet's history, surpassed only by the intentional spills of the Persian Gulf War.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/02/AR2010080204695.html?hpid=topnews

wow.

updated for highlighting..

[JuniperLea]

1. Just think how much of the sea floor is covered by this right now...

:cry:

[DCBob]

2. It does make you wonder where all this oil has gone..

there are few reports of any beaches or coastlines affected.

[Gman]

3. It's dissolved in the water from the dispersant

that was used. It's there.

[DCBob]

4. Yeah, that's probably correct..

still its hard to imagine how it could have dispersed that much oil.

[JuniperLea]

8. I don't believe that...

It's still there... it is still heavier than water... I'm quite sure it's covering the seafloor.

[DCBob]

10. I have not heard any reports of that..

seems that would be easy to observe if true.

[JuniperLea]

13. We haven't been told the truth since day one...

There's far more oil involved than we were told, for example. There are conflicting reports about the dispersants as well. I don't trust anything to do with this disaster.

[DCBob]

14. Well, you have every right to be suspicious.

its a very troubling situation and we have been lied to many times already.

[DCBob]

17. maybe you dont believe this but...

from yahoo news..

Some of the oil has sunk into the sediments on the ocean floor. Researchers say that’s where the spill could do the most damage. But according to a report in Wednesday’s New York Times, federal scientists have determined the oil is primarily sitting in the water column and not on the sea floor.

erhaps the most important cause of the oil’s disappearance, some researchers suspect, is that the oil has been devoured by microbes. The lesson from past spills is that the lion’s share of the cleanup work is done by nature in the form of oil-eating bacteria and fungi. The microbes break down the hydrocarbons in oil to use as fuel to grow and reproduce. A bit of oil in the water is like a feeding frenzy, causing microbial populations to grow exponentially.

Typically, there are enough microbes in the ocean to consume half of any oil spilled in a month or two, says Howarth. Such microbes have been found in every ocean of the world sampled, from the Arctic to Antarctica. But there are reasons to think that the process may occur more quickly in the Gulf than in other oceans.

Microbes grow faster in the warmer water of the Gulf than they do in, say, the cool waters off Alaska, where the Exxon Valdez spill occurred. Moreover, the Gulf is hardly pristine. Even before humans started drilling for oil in the Gulf — and spilling lots of it — oil naturally seeped into the water. As a result, the Gulf evolved a rich collection of petroleum-loving microbes, ready to pounce on any new spill. The microbes are clever and tough, observes Samantha Joye, microbial geochemist at the University of Georgia. Joye has shown that oxygen levels in parts of the Gulf contaminated with oil have dropped. Since microbes need oxygen to eat the petroleum, that’s evidence that the microbes are hard at work.

The controversial dispersant used to break up the oil as it gushed from the deep-sea well may have helped the microbes do their work. Microbes can more easily consume small drops of oil than big ones. And there is evidence the microbes like to munch on the dispersant as well.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_excl/ynews_excl_sc3270

[JuniperLea]

19. I believe this first bit...

"Some of the oil has sunk into the sediments on the ocean floor. Researchers say that’s where the spill could do the most damage."

As I recall, there was some talk about these microbes early on, and it was shot down by some scientists who said that kind of action takes a very long time. I really wish I'd kept some of that early stuff... this is very distressing... I'm quite sure most of what we are reading is lies. It has been so since day one. Another clue comes from the gusher in China... they let all their oil float... where they could more easily capture it... and they don't give a hoot about the environment either.

Very distressing.

[DCBob]

21. I dont think we wanted this oil to float... that would have been a much bigger catastrophe..

the beaches would have ruined and wetlands destroyed and countless animals killed.

[JuniperLea]

23. I wasn't suggesting that...

But the oil went somewhere... and I just don't believe liars who move goal posts and change stories. But you can see in the pictures from China the sheer magnitude of oil... and that spill isn't as big as "ours."

[DCBob]

24. yeah, I hear you.. the whole thing is mind boggling and disturbing..

anyway, I have to go. ciao.

[anarch]

5. I'm pretty sure that's what the Corexit is supposed to do

Sort of like, instead of cleaning up a spill/sewage leak/what-have-you in your house, just sweeping it under a convenient rug.

There's an amazing amount of oil under the surface, and we probably won't ever get a really clear idea of the effects of this for several hundred years.

[DCBob]

7. yep. but I guess the alternative wasnt good either..

oiled beaches and destroyed wetlands.

[Statistical]

36. "several hundred years."

Really.

Oil is pretty volatile stuff. It will be broken down within a decade much less serveral hundred years.

Take a look at Chernobyl. Nature has already begun to reclaim that entire city and it has been "merely" a couple decades.

I think your timeline is off by a couple magnitudes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

The Gulf recovered from this spill in a matter of years not centuries.

The Gulf has a couple things going for it:
1) it is a large body of water unlike the small sound in Alaska
2) the water is much water thus more hospitable for rapidly reproducing microbes.
3) oil has been naturally leaking into Gulf for hundreds of thousands of years. Thus microbes have evolved to efficiently break down the oil.

[Gman]

39. In several hundred years there will be no trace of this spill

it will have disappeared a few hundred years before. See the yahoo news link above about the microbes.

[anarch]

40. OK fine Gman and Statistical, point taken. But I'll bet both you guys,

nobody at this point has a real clear idea what putting all that dispersant in the water is gonna wind up doing. I read that EPA thing the other day, saying that everything is all cool, so I see the way the wind is blowing and all. But let's make a bet: in 200 years, I bet there will still be some kind of impact from this spill discernable in the environment and/or some of the animals that live in it and are part of the food chain and all. I'll bet you $20.

I'll meet you guys at the Liberty Bell in August of 2210 and we'll settle up. I'll be wearing a red hat so you'll know it's me.

[JuniperLea]

6. The dispersants did a "good" job of keeping this disaster unseen...

But it did go somewhere.

When this disaster hit, I remember saying for days and days... "we aren't being told the full extent of this gusher... we aren't being told how much oil is going into the Gulf" and now I've been saying for months, "The dispersants are causing ALL OF THAT OIL to sink to the sea floor" and I'm quite sure that's where it is. In a thin layer... covering the sea floor... choking out all life on the sea floor to be exact. In a thin enough layer, that much oil can cover a lot of surface area. Why aren't we being shown picture? Why aren't we hearing discussion on where the oil is?

Capping this ridiculous well is the least of our worries.

[DCBob]

9. it will be important to continue to monitor this since there is no doubt a tremendous amout of oil..

still lurking somewhere.

[Barack2theFuture]

11. And they're pretending it's all okay now.

This will make Times Beach look like a spilled beer.

[DCBob]

12. Who's pretending?

[Barack2theFuture]

15. BP and much of the corporate media

"Where's the oil?"

[DCBob]

16. No doubt they are saying "where the oil" because its not visible on the surface and beaches.

But no one is saying this crisis is over. In fact the well could blow again tomorrow when they attempt the static kill.

[Barack2theFuture]

22. 'no one'?

hmmm.

[DCBob]

26. no one in the media, BP or the govt.. afaik.

many are saying the worst case scenario has not happened which is correct but I have not heard anyone say this is all over with. If they said that then they are mistaken.

[piratefish08]

18. Holy shit! Lemme do the math..... carry the 2, um.. divided by 17.7, plus 57%, comes to......

BP pays zero dollars in damages and has the most profitable year on record due to enormous disaster write-offs.

[DCBob]

20. If they use this estimate the fine is going to be enormous..

This is a very very big number.. bigger than the worst case scenario.

[dipsydoodle]

29. Almost right

The correct answer is that whatever the fine, if imposed in less than 4 years , would reduce input to the escrow a/c by an equal amount. Same applies to any punitive damages claimed under other issues.

[midnight armadillo]

25. Here's the math

maximum civil fine is $1100 per barrel, but if negligence is found and proven it can go as high as $4300 per barrel. Range at 4.9 million barrels: $5.4 to $21 billion.

Remember how BP was so cagey about the amount of oil gushing? Remember how the scientists from WHOI were not allowed to bring their instruments that could directly measure the flow rate to the Gulf? Expect this to be a major subject for the forthcoming litigation. And in any case once BP gets it to the Supreme Court Roberts et. al. will probably reduce the penalty to $100 or so.

[Scurrilous]

27. Wow is right. n/t

[dipsydoodle]

28. Some interesting posts here

completely oblivious to the fact that oil is less dense than water which means.........

[KharmaTrain]

30. Not To Mention The Volume Of Water...

I'm sure there are still plumes of oil floating in pockets around the gulf...but nowhere in the mass as we saw when the oilcano was spewing at full spurt. Given the size of the Gulf, 5 million barrels is a literal "drop in the ocean"...especially if it has dispearsed into the currents leading into the Atlantic.

That doesn't say there isn't damage being done...there appears to be plenty of oil still stuck along the shorelines and its long term affects are still to be determined. This also doesn't let BP off the hook or to pretend that all is well and happy...lives have been destroyed, criminal conduct has occured and the full extent of the damage to the ecosystems won't be known for years.

[dipsydoodle]

32. Must be something to do with

temperature and pressure that keeps some of the oil beneath the surface. Whatever reaches the top degrades quite fast anyway especially once broken down by dispersant. I'm also not sure what causes oil to form tar which does of course sink only to be worn down in time with friction.

Early reports were that it would reach the Atlantic but I'm sure later ones dispute that. The problem is that its easy to search and find bad news but not necessarlily better news.

[KharmaTrain]

33. I'm Not Sure It's Good News As Much As No News...

Unlike the Alaska spill that happened in cold waters, this one occured in summer and I'm sure the surface temps were 90 degrees or more that surely has the affect on helping dissapate oil on the surface.

What we're not hearing about is what they're finding as far as the effects on wildlife...the effects of the oil and dispersants being consumed by all variety of flora and fauna and the status of the shorelines where many birds and other creatures use for both safe haven and apawning grounds. While we may not be seeing the oil, it's still had an effect on the ecosystem...that's what I'm interested in learning about.


Cheers...

[dipsydoodle]

34. Hopefully

any form of life that has been affected either by consumption or absorption of any combination of oil and/or dispersant will recover as it passes through their system - only time will tell. I'm not aware of any of the components of the dispersant being cumulative toxins , like lead for example, so fingers crossed.

Yes - not worse news at least.

:hi:

[MyNameGoesHere]

31. Ever notice how America is near the top in world statistics

in almost every bad or evil category? Tell me about this American exceptionalism again?

[blindpig]

35. Will BP make full compensation?

Not if they are 'good' capitalists they won't. To do so would be neglect of 'due diligence'.

Capitalism is very bad for life, kill it.

[dipsydoodle]

37. They had promised to cover all reasonable costs

In this situation I think they may have used reasonable in its legal context. They also may have an aggerate figure in mind albeit very high. If so then you'd find that any single high penalties such as punitive damages could result in the figure being subtracted from other costs such as the escrow fund.

If we take the subject of the OP and associated fines then who would benefit from such fines ? Probably those spending money on the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. :sarcasm:

[blindpig]

38. Did you say 'legal' or weasel?

Is there a difference?:)

Of course compensation and ecological restoration get priority, don't care how they do it but it must come out of BP's hide. I have great doubts that is will be done given Capital's grip on government.