Author’s note: Less than a week ago I said this would be upped again. Looks like that may be the case.
Excerpt:
According to an undated internal BP document obtained by congressman Ed Markey (D-MA), the estimate of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico may need to be increased again – for the fifth time.
According to the Telegraph UK, the BP document released on Sunday showed that the company has estimated that oil could pour from its broken well in the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of 100,000 barrels (4.2 million gallons) per day, nearly double the current reckoning by the US government.
The estimate is consistent with a report in which CNN quotes the lead government official responding to the spill, the commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Thad Allen, as stating, “if we lost a total well head, it could be 100,000 barrels or more a day.”
The document is also consistent with an exploration plan and environmental impact analysis filed with the federal government in February 2009. According to the Houston Chronicle, BP said then that it had the capability to handle a “worst-case scenario” at the Deepwater Horizon site, which the document described as a leak of 162,000 barrels per day from an uncontrolled blowout – 6.8 million gallons each day.
What may be even more troubling is this report from the AP:
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill. That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating ‘dead zones’ where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives. ‘This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history,’ Kessler said.
Given the continual incremental increases of the oil leak as well as the failure to mention the amount of methane gas escaping in to the Gulf, it does suggest that at best, this is a result of utter incompetence or outright lies. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the American people have been willfully mislead by BP, the corporate media and the US government in order to gradually condition them to accept the enormity of this disaster.
It is also possible that the environmental damage will not be able to be reversed – at least in our lifetimes. Some of the oil may be able to be cleaned up, but it is impossible to clean up methane. No matter which sources one chooses to believe, the estimates of the enormity of the disaster in the Gulf have continually escalated since it began on April 20.
Read more, get links and video here: Orlando Independent Examiner – BP internal document suggests estimate of Gulf oil leak may be increased again