BP’s oil spill grows ever more ominous
By MarketWatch SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — BP’s annus horribilus just got a little more horrible. So did the Gulf’s. Three weeks ago, a handful of scientists watching grainy video shot at 5,000 feet beneath the sea suggested that BP’s ruptured wellhead was disgorging up to 25,000 barrels of crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico, and maybe more. They were largely dismissed by the oil industry as cranks. BP Managing Director Robert Dudley, speaking on the PBS NewsHour, called those early independent estimates “alarming because I think they raise the specter of devastation all across the Gulf, all the way over to Florida.” Today, a federally-coordinated group of scientists also concluded those early alarmists were wrong. The actual volume is at least 35,000 barrels a day, and could even be as much as 60,000 barrels a day, way more than those cranks warned about. This revision roughly doubles the preliminary flow rate estimate from the same group of scientists less than a week ago. And it was conveniently released just a couple of hours before President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak to the nation about the spill, its consequences, and how it could — or should — shape national energy policy. Read the latest on the spill. It also comes at the end of a day that saw BP forced to temporarily halt its oil containment operations at the stricken well after lightning struck the derrick on the drillship gathering the oil, starting a small fire. It’s as if the gods have conspired to show us mere mortals the scope of this classic tragedy. …
