Scientists don't have the right instruments to measure spill or to study its impact, maps outdated

U.S. Was Not Ready For Major Oil Spill
Despite Mature Off-Shore Oil Operations, Gulf Crews Are Improvising With Chemicals, Protective Boom and Outdated Maps

By JEFFREY BALL, STEPHEN POWER and NEIL KING


Crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and washing ashore in Louisiana is exposing how ill-prepared the U.S. has been to respond to a major offshore oil spill.

In the fight to limit environmental damage from the month-old spill—which is on track to rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in size—BP PLC executives, government officials, and scientists are learning as they go, even though the industry has been drilling in the Gulf for decades and has 77 rigs operating there, according to ODS-Petrodata, a research firm.

The Environmental Protection Agency says it is still assessing the ecological effect of the 600,000 gallons of chemicals that BP has sprayed into the Gulf to break up the oil so far. As of Sunday, the agency and BP were locked in a standoff over whether to continue using the same chemical dispersant.

Some scientists researching the spill don't have the right instruments to measure the spill or to study its impact. Maps that federal officials are using to identify priority areas to protect from spreading oil are outdated. And the Coast Guard says the country lacks enough plastic piping, or "boom," to keep the incoming oil away from the coast.

"The national system did not contemplate you would have to do all that at once," Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen told a Senate committee last week, referring to laying boom across a coastline as big as the Gulf's.

more...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704904604575262703867624266.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

instruments

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8335514&mesg_id=8335514


"Size of Spill Underestimated, Scientists Say

But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.

The criticism escalated on Thursday, a day after the release of a video that showed a huge black plume of oil gushing from the broken well at a seemingly high rate. BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible.

The figure of 5,000 barrels a day was hastily produced by government scientists in Seattle. It appears to have been calculated using a method that is specifically not recommended for major oil spills.

Ian R. MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University who is an expert in the analysis of oil slicks, said ........ the leak could “easily be four or five times” the government estimate, he said.

“The government has a responsibility to get good numbers,” Dr. MacDonald said. “If it’s beyond their technical capability, the whole world is ready to help them.”

Scientists said that the size of the spill was directly related to the amount of damage it would do in the ocean and onshore, and that calculating it accurately was important for that reason.

BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing.

Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well.

Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who have routinely made such measurements, spoke extensively to BP last week, Mr. Bowen said. They were poised to fly to the gulf to conduct volume measurements.

But they were contacted late in the week and told not to come, at around the time BP decided to lower a large metal container to try to capture the leak. That maneuver failed. They have not been invited again.

snip

Dr. MacDonald and other scientists said the government agency that monitors the oceans, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had been slow to mount the research effort needed to analyze the leak and assess its effects. Sylvia Earle, a former chief scientist at NOAA and perhaps the country’s best-known oceanographer, said that she, too, was concerned by the pace of the scientific response.

But Jane Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator, said in an interview on Thursday: “Our response has been instantaneous and sustained. We would like to have more assets. We would like to be doing more. We are throwing everything at it that we physically can.”

The issue of how fast the well is leaking has been murky from the beginning. For several days after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, the government and BP claimed that the well on the ocean floor was leaking about 1,000 barrels a day.

A small organization called SkyTruth, which uses satellite images to monitor environmental problems, published an estimate on April 27 suggesting that the flow rate had to be at least 5,000 barrels a day, and probably several times that.
The following day, the government — over public objections from BP — raised its estimate to 5,000 barrels a day. A barrel is 42 gallons, so the estimate works out to 210,000 gallons per day.
BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil. "

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/14oil.html?hp

Idiot Boy gutted all of the environment-related agencies, like EPA. They didn't have the money to upgrade their instruments.

:eyes: