McClatchey:
WASHINGTON — The latest video footage of the leaking Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico show that oil is escaping at the rate of 95,000 barrels — 4 million gallons — a day, nearly 20 times greater than the 5,000 barrel a day estimate BP and government scientists have been citing for nearly three weeks, an engineering professor told a congressional hearing Wednesday.
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Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, earlier this month made simple calculations from a video BP released on May 12 and came up with a flow of 70,000 barrels a day, NPR reported last week. Werely on Wednesday told a House Commerce and Energy Committee subcommittee that his calculations of two leaks that show up on videos BP released on Tuesday showed 70,000 barrels from one leak and 25,000 from the other.
To put that in perspective, 95,000 barrels per day is roughly equivalent to an Exxon Valdez size spill every three days. If the oil has been gushing at that rate since the leak began, we're looking at a spill that's already nearly ten times larger than the Exxon Valdez -- and it's still growing.
Wereley says his estimate could be off by as much as 20% in either direction. He told the committee that to establish a more precise calculation of the flow rate from the leaking wells he would need access to ongoing footage from the leaking wells, something which BP has repeatedly refused to provide.
Today, however, under extreme pressure from Congress, BP finally relented.
Hours after hearing a demand from a congressional chairman, BP announced the oil company would provide a live broadcast of the oil spill from a government website.
“This may be BP’s footage, but it’s America’s ocean," Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman who made the demand, said in a statement. "Now anyone will be able to see the real-time effects the BP spill is having on our ocean."
The chairman of a congressional subcommittee called on BP to release live video feeds of the oil gushing from a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Earlier Wednesday, Markey demanded the broadcast so independent scientists could more accurately calculate the flow rate. He questioned why such data wasn't readily being made public.
Markey says the livestream will be available on his committee website as early as tonight.
