At the time of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I was interning in Washington D.C. with the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Once word of the leaking oil got out, government reports put estimates of the spill at 1,000 barrels per day, then 5,000 bl/day a few days later—a number repeated in the media ad nauseum.1 On the other side, BP steadfastly maintained that their greatest priority was stopping the leak rather than measuring it, trying to shift the focus away from the numbers that shocked and saddened the Nation?2
Congressional Hearings
Representative Edward Markey, chair of the Congressional Subcommittee on Energy and Environment (SEE), argued that accurate flow rate numbers would allow BP and the U.S. Coast Guard to combat the leak as effectively possible.3 Thus, the SEE held a briefing in May: Sizing up the BP Oil Spill: Science and Engineering Measuring Methods. The goal of this briefing was, as it sounds, to shed some light on the potential magnitude of the environmental disaster occurring in the Gulf of Mexico. What distinguished this briefing from the previous Inquiry into the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Coast Oil Spill hearing was its witness list…
The first hearing inquiring into the oil spill called for Presidents, CEOs, and Chief Officers from BP, Transocean, Halliburton, and Cameron to testify as witnesses.4 Not surprisingly, during their testimony, little attention was given to what the level of damage was and how much oil was actually leaking. The testimony instead focused on what BP et al. were doing to stop the leak as quickly as possible and protect the environment (we all know how that turned out). Increased transparency from these organizations would have better prepared the government, the people, and the cleanup crews for one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. What I heard was more along the lines of: ‘trust us, we are working as hard as we can, and it does not matter how big the spill is.’
In search of actual facts, Representative Markey then held a briefing with third party professors and scientists, including the Director of the Earth Science Division of NASA, to estimate the severity of the spill.5 I attended both the hearing and the briefing and found the briefing far more informative… While it is not particularly surprising that the SEE would rather hear facts on the oil spill from third party specialists instead of those who caused the problem, it is still disheartening that the U.S. government cannot trust corporations involved to give an accurate representation of a real time crisis they controled. BP supplied the federal government with leak estimates, which ultimately turned out to be off by more than an order of magnitude, and the media plastered those estimates everywhere they could until third party scientists said otherwise. The point being, we should be skeptical (to say the least) of estimates provided by the company that ultimately pays for all damages inflicted, and should look to unbiased scientific estimates as early as possible. For those of you who didn’t see or read about the briefing, I will present you with some highlights of the expert witnesses “sizing up the BP oil spill.”6
I was particularly intrigued by Steve Wereley, an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. He gave a very straightforward, but highly effective demonstration of how to estimate the spill’s flow rate using image analysis.7 Professor Wereley “wrote the book” on optical flow measurement, and while having no prior experience with the petroleum industry, his use of image analysis techniques to diagnose the severity of the spill made perfect sense. On May 13, 2010, Michael Harris of NPR informed Wereley of BP’s video footage documenting the oil releasing into the ocean.8 Wereley proceeded to analyze this footage and presented his findings to the ECC one week later. He explained that the technique he utilized, Particle Image Velocimetry, had a 25 year history, thousands of practitioners worldwide, and could obtain accuracy as high as +/- 1%.
Professor Wereley really grabbed my attention when he posted a slide containing all of his formulas. The slide is a bit intimidating for a non-scientist, but once explained, his techniques were surprisingly simple to follow and very logical. Professor Wereley did note that he needed longer and higher resolution video—which BP would not supply him with—to give a more accurate estimate and to properly account for possible gasses that were escaping through the leak as well. Representative Markey announced that he sent a letter to BP requesting they make a live video stream of the spill, running 24/7, available to the United States public.
At a time when BP was still standing by their estimates of 5,000 bl/day, this briefing opened my eyes to real science and evidence estimating the leak between 50,000-100,000 bl/day.9 Fortunately, the media caught word of this science and gradually boosted their published estimates. An oceanographer at Florida State University, Ian MacDonald, who specializes in the analysis of oil slicks, used satellite imagery to estimate the spill at 25,000 bl/day. He said, “the government has a responsibility to get good numbers… If it’s beyond their technical capability, the whole world is ready to help them.”10 I feel this is an extremely relevant point, and if BP senior vice presidents such as Kent Wells say things like, “There’s just no way to measure it,” that is even more reason to rely on outside aid for accurate estimates.
Professor Wereley’s mid-May estimates put the spill between 56,000-84,000 bl/day, and that was relying on a short grainy video clip that BP supplied 3 weeks after the spill began. An article from the Washington Post showed that government officials gradually increased their estimates every week or so, from 5,000 bl/day to 12,000, then 19,000, and in June to 20,000-40,000, which was a time when BP only had the capacity to capture 18,000 bl/day.11 In early June, BP also said they would be able to handle up to 80,000 barrels of leaking oil per day by the middle of July—but was BP still withholding information from the public about just how much oil was gushing?12
I am not preaching exact science here, but if the government had listened to scientific estimates from experts in their fields early on and demanded that BP provided scientists access to the best data available, then perhaps everyone would have known the magnitude of the situation sooner and could have responded appropriately. I will close with a quote from Rep. Markey which I feel sums up the situation concisely: “Right from the beginning, BP was either lying or grossly incompetent.”13 Unfortunately, that does not spare the U.S. government from criticism, as they may have placed too much faith in BP from the beginning.
For a great Greeniacs article on the BP oil spill and its repercussions, check out: Recent Oil Spills
