Friday, August 27, 2010

Double Double Oil & Trouble

Bill Lehr, senior NOAA scientist concedes that 300% more oil than estimated still lies in the Gulf.
Meaning 90% of the oil is still unaccounted for.
This largely contradicts government allegations that state 75% of the oil has disappeared.
Research coming out of the University of Georgia estimates that nearly 80% still remains,
where as the University of South Florida (USF) believes a constellation of oil still resides in undersea canyons.

USF detected a 6-mile oil slick lying 2 miles below the oceans surface which NOAA confirmed.
This plume is separate from BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead but belongs to the same oil reserve and obviously is a direct result of the blowout.
The Government, USF, & NOAA all agreed there's presently plumes as far as 142 miles away from the original spill.
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
(which I believe to be most trustworthy)
also discovered a 22-mile long plume, 1.2-miles wide, 650 feet high, lying 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf.
Whether or not this is the same plume the USF team referred to is to be determined.

The company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig has accused BP of withholding critical spill data,
BP has endured much ridicule for their denial of the existence of underwater plumes and
to add insult to injury went on a spending spree to buy up all the Gulf scientists,
paying them $250 per hour for their silence.

NOAA has been accused of hoarding key data,
and likewise USF has accused the government of squelching their findings,
siting samples collected by the USF to prove there were additional plumes in the Gulf
were borrowed by NOAA, then subsequently "lost".

The magnitude of the size of the spill as a whole has been severely miscalculated.
BP estimated that 5,000 barrels a day were dumped into the Gulf,
but later amidst much banter admitted the estimate to be more like 60,000 barrels a day.
Which would be the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez oil spill every 4 days.
For the record, each barrel consists of 42 gallons.
Individuals surveying the live feeds BP produced equate the flow to be nearly 146 gallons a minute.
Siting a garden hose flows at about 10-gallons per minute.

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