Washington’s Blog has an excellent summary of the main facts and potential outcomes of BP’s oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico which is well worth reading.
The introduction to whet your appetite :
The Gulf oil spill is much worse than originally believed.
As the Christian Science Monitor writes:
It’s now likely that the actual amount of the oil spill dwarfs the Coast Guard’s figure of 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day.
Independent scientists estimate that the renegade wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf could be spewing up to 25,000 barrels a day. If chokeholds on the riser pipe break down further, up to 50,000 barrels a day could be released, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo obtained by the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register.
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.
Indeed, an environmental document filed by the company running the oil drilling rig – BP – estimates the maximum as 162,000 barrels a day:
In an exploration plan and environmental impact analysis filed with the federal government in February 2009, BP said 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.
The post has some very informative graphics on the details of the spill itself and what they are trying to get it stopped – recommended reading.
the oil spill in Mexico would surely be one of the greatest environmental disasters for this year.`’.