Gulf Oil Spill: Vast Majority Of Pollution Could Lurk Below Surface For Months Or Years
"...BP on Thursday finally abandoned its 5,000 barrel (or 210,000 gallons) a day estimate, after finding that a tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend and capturing only a fraction of the spill was itself capturing 5,000 barrels a day -- along with 15 million cubic feet of natural gas."
"...The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, amazingly enough, appears to be sticking to its own 5,000 barrel a day estimate, which was initially based on the size of the oil slick. But if only a tiny fraction of the spill is actually visible on the surface, then that estimate is obviously very badly off.
McClatchy Newspapers reported Thursday night that BP's low-ball estimate, "which the Obama administration hasn't disputed, could save the company millions of dollars in damages when the financial impact of the spill is resolved in court, legal experts say."
Eric Adams, an environmental engineer at MIT, wrote the final report on the study in 2004.
The controlled release was just over half as deep as the Deepwater Horizon spill, and was, relatively speaking, tiny. Yet the lessons were clear, Adams told HuffPost.
"Not very much of it was recovered at the surface," Adams said. "It's probable that a lot of it did ultimately get to the surface, it just got to the surface so far away it was never accounted for."
As a result, Adams said, "I think you should be prepared for more oil to surface over time."
Adams said he was surprised that federal officials weren't more prepared to deal with a deep-sea leak and its consequences, given how much was known ahead of time. Officials should have been aware that oil released so far below the surface would quickly spread out and become unrecoverable unless they did something about it.
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