Media Still Ignorant or just Obtuse?
From the Miami Herald
WASHINGTON
Previous estimate on oil flow doubled
McClatchy News Service
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration on Thursday doubled its minimum estimate of how much crude oil was gushing from the Deepwater Horizon oil well, saying a panel of scientists had concluded that 20,000 to 50,000 barrels, or as much as 2.1 million gallons, were pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day before BP sheared the well's riser pipe on June 3.
That action, which BP engineers undertook to fit a ``top hat'' containment dome over the well, almost certainly increased the flow, and Dr. Marcia McNutt, the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, said an estimate of the flow since June 3 would be available in a few days. ``Our scientific analysis is still a work in progress,'' McNutt said.
The announcement that tens of thousands more barrels of oil than previously estimated have been spewing into the Gulf for weeks added to a growing sense that neither the federal government nor BP correctly assessed the size of the unfolding disaster or marshaled enough resources to meet it.
Separately Thursday, BP and the Coast Guard acknowledged that their hopes of removing 28,000 barrels of crude from the water daily beginning perhaps next week depend on a largely untested plan to burn more than a third of that oil.
That action, which BP engineers undertook to fit a ``top hat'' containment dome over the well, almost certainly increased the flow, and Dr. Marcia McNutt, the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, said an estimate of the flow since June 3 would be available in a few days. ``Our scientific analysis is still a work in progress,'' McNutt said.
The announcement that tens of thousands more barrels of oil than previously estimated have been spewing into the Gulf for weeks added to a growing sense that neither the federal government nor BP correctly assessed the size of the unfolding disaster or marshaled enough resources to meet it.
Separately Thursday, BP and the Coast Guard acknowledged that their hopes of removing 28,000 barrels of crude from the water daily beginning perhaps next week depend on a largely untested plan to burn more than a third of that oil.
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