Over the last few weeks, scientists — including those on the government’s Flow Rate Technical Panel — have been unable to pinpoint how many gallons of oil are flooding the Gulf of Mexico.
Ira Leifer who is part of a 12-scientist panel guiding the Obama administration as it tries to get a handle on how much oil is flowing from the ruptured well 5,000 feet below the surface in the nation’s worst environmental disaster.
For several weeks BP estimated that about 1,000 barrels of oil a day were leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. Then that number started to rise as the days wore on. In the last several weeks, the official number has been raised to 40,000 barrels a day. But the estimate does have a higher range — of 100,000 barrels a day, which Dr. Leifer says is BP’s worst case scenario. And he sees no reason to doubt those numbers.
Unfortunately scientists do not have all the data they need to take good measurements. So far BP has supplied the technical panel with 45 minutes of video and a few other documents but not enough data to determine how much oil is really flowing.
“We do not know what was happening five minutes before. We do not know what was happening five minutes afterwards.” — Ira Leifer, UC Santa Barbara
Add to that the complication that this is not a standard well. Besides the pressure differentials at this great depth, this well consists of a pipe punched into a geologic formation, which means the flow rate can fluctuate over time.
This resevoir is massive. It could easily flow that kind of oil for the next 20 or 30 years if it was left to go unattended. — Ira Leifer
100,000 barrels of oil is the equivalent of 4.2 million gallons.
Dr. Leifer is quick to point out that there is no way to say for sure that is how much oil is dumping into the Gulf but that is because he and other scientists need more data.
Even as scientists been creating and revising flow rate estimates for weeks, a new undated BP internal document was released this week showing that the company placed its worst case scenario at 100,000 barrels of oil a day.
PBS has created a Leak Meter to monitor the flow of oil but it needs to start with the right data to be accurate (numbers below are gross estimate)
