New Government Estimates of Gulf Oil Spill Flow Rate Questioned

  Posted by Alexander Higgins - May 28, 2010 at 3:20 am - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog

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New Government Gulf Oil Spill Flow Rates Questioned

The quick version

The aerial team was forced to make an estimate from a small sample of the Gulf of Mexico using new untested technology that was most likely chosen to to deliberately produce a low estimate. This estimate was the one given to the media as the estimate.

The video analysis team was not provided with enough video with proper conditions needed to perform an accurate analysis. Their video had obstructed views, low lighting conditions and was from a very limited period of time.

The team that analyzed the flow rate using the flow measurement tool with only performed one measurement and their estimate of the main leak did not collect record the full amount of the flow. They estimated the measurement of the main leak and then used that estimate to estimate the amount from from the leak on the top of the Blowout preventer.

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This is a developing story broke here on this blog on May 28th, 2010. As a result there was no media coverage when first written. As this story develops I will post links to media accounts of this story which will be added at the end of this post.

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The Long Version

The US government established an official flow rate team to give an official government estimate of the amount of oil leaking in the Gulf oil spill.

That team gave an official estimate today of a flow rate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil per day leaking official making the Gulf oil spill the worst oil spill in US history, estimating the amount of oil leaked in the Gulf oil spill to be around 2 to 4 times the amount leaked in the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Reviewing the limited amount of information from those preliminary estimates raises many questions about the accuracy of those estimates.

The official Government Gulf oil spill flow rate report seems to raise more questions and just screams the government and BP purposely seemed to give the scientists who made the report limited and inadequate data to perform their analysis.

The flow rate technical team contained a team of scientists including Purdue’s Steve Wereley who testified before congress that the amount of oil leaking from the gulf oil spill was around 100,000 barrels per day.

The new estimates where based on three separate estimates.

Surface Area Analysis

The first method was performed by the Mass Balance team using NASA’s Airborne Visible InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) to perform surface area analysis of the oil slick.

Oddly enough the AVIRIS data still has not been released to the public, yet it was this teams range that has been given to the media as the new official estimate by the government.

The Mass Balance team developed a range of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of day based on USGS and NOAA analysis of that data, which we all know has been far under reported since the outset of this incident. For example, see the misinformation and lies reported by NOAA about the surface area of the oil spill here, here and here.

The release said in one of its many excuses as to why its data is incorrect, that it is “It is important to note that the FRTG also estimated that a similar volume of oil to the amount AVIRIS found on the surface has already been burned, skimmed or dispersed by responders or has evaporated naturally as of May 17th”.

Yes!! That is very important to note!

Why? Because it is inconceivable to state that amount of oil on the surface on the date of May 17th is equal to the amount that has been dispersed, burned, evaporated, or skimmed in the entire month prior.

Just one reason is that up to 50% of the oil may evaporate within the first 24 hour alone so it does not make sense to still have 50%, or an amount equal to what is on the surface, almost a month after the incident first occurred.

So evaporation alone not considering the other surface removal methods makes that calculation horribly incorrect.

Combine that with the fact that studies conducted, by the Government itself (the MMS to be exact), show that only 2% of the oil in a deepwater spill may actually make it to the surface whether the Government continues to lie about the knowledge of that study and the existences of the underwater oil plumess or not. More about that subject here, here, and here here.

That percentage, be it 2% or greater should be part of the equation before factoring for other surface calculation mitigatory factors that would remove oil from the surface such as burning, skimming, dispersants.

So the governments estimate at this point be as little as a mere 1% of the real amount, considering 2% made it the surface and a 50% evaporation of that 2%.

It is also worthy to note that independent scientists using satellite analysis put the surface number at 25,000 barrels per day as opposed to this report based off of an inaccurate sample of a small portion of the Gulf.

The independent numbers simply calculate a real number based on what is on the surface and its thickness and do now try lowering factor in dispersants, skimming and other such factors.

If the independent calculations did add in those factors it would only make their estimates higher.

We also then need to consider even less then 2% may actually be making it to the surface since BP is shooting massive amounts of toxic dispersants into the oil directly at the origin of the Gulf oil spill

So if as little as 2% would make it to the surface naturally we can only leave it to our imagination how little is making it to the surface because of the application of underwater dispersants.

From viewing the daily progressions of the oil slick on the surface it is also clear that a large percentage of the oil on the surface on a given day simply disappears from the surface each day so basing a surface analysis on just one days data is much more likely to misconstrue the results.

To get a more accurate analysis that percentage needs to be calculated for each day, then summed up and an average should be used for calculation.

It is also questionable as to why the 17th of May was chosen for the surface analysis when the RITT (Riser Insertion Tool Test), which is discussed below was taken almost a week later.

Finally, in regard to the surface analysis estimation and the method used the report indicates that only a small area of the Gulf can be measured by the AVIRIS plane in a single day.

That forced the analysis of the size of the surface slick to be based from a small sample of the Gulf of Mexico that can not possibly give an accurate representation of the full extent of the spill.

Even as Thad Allan himself has admitted, we are not dealing with a monolithic spill here and oil that does still remain on the surface is scattered in several regions making this much more like the Gulf of Mexico being polluted with dozens and dozens of oil spills.

I would not doubt the the team was purposely provide with a data set and forced to use this data source for surface analysis in a deliberate attempt to skew the results.

How else could this team come up with a far lower number then other independent scientific analysis while at the same time adding this estimate to compensate for factors such as evaporation, skimming, dispersants and burning?

The Plume Modeling Team

Before I even go into this method, I think it absolutely scathing that the Federal Government has re-branded the actual leak points as “PLUMES” to deliberately confuse the public and help hide the existence of the large massive cities of oil floating under the surface which the media has labeled plumes. Hence when someone hears or reads huge plumes have been found, they now think plume refers to leak itself and discount the report not realizing the plumes in the media refers to underwater cities of oil floating through the Gulf of Mexico.

Next we have the Plume modeling team which estimated the oil escaping from the kinks in the rise and at the end of the riser pipe using video observations of the oil leak and image analysis and calculate a range of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels of oi per day.

The report gives disclaimer for why these results are inaccurate citing a “limited window of data in time to choose from, getting good lighting and unobstructed views of the end of the riser, and estimating how much of that flow is oil, gas, hydrates, and water.”

Excuses for a botched estimate. Yes, excuses and here is why.

First off all, we have all been watching the Top Kill and the Coast Guard has reported that the top kill has stopped all Hydrocarbons, meaning that no oil, gas or hydrates was coming from the well only mud.

We also observe that flow rate of the leak has stayed the same during the top kill simply the color of the material leaking has changed.

That would tell us that the mud being shot into the well is creating enough pressure to hold the oil down and the amount of mud leaking now is equivalent to the amount of oil that is leaking now.

So just how much mud is being shot down there?

The amount of mud being shot into the BOP started of at 7000 gallons per minute which was gradually increased up to 65 barrels per minute.

So 65 barrels per minute was shooting out of the leaks we are watching on the
BP live video feed webcam of the Gulf oil spill

That’s 93,600 barrels per day of mud shooting out of those holes which is inline with Steve Wereley’s estimate and much, much higher than the 10,000 to 19,000 barrels per day official government estimate.

Being that there was really no observable difference between the amount of mud leaking and the amount of Hydrocarbons leaking we can only assume that that amount is an accurate representation of the true flow rate of the leaking oil.

It does not make sense that the amount of mud we see leaking is over 10 times greater than the amount of the oil.

Another myth put out there by the Federal government is also debunked here.

The Government claimed that the amount of oil leaking was much higher than it appeared because at these depths oil expands rapidly and the gas was also turning into hydrocarbons and expanding up to 10 times its size in volume, yet we observe the same behavior in the mud shooting and expanding in the same manner that the oil and gas where.

Riser Insertion Tube Tool Estimate

Finally we get to the RITT (Riser Insertion Tube Tool) which used a tool that was directly input the riser measure the amount of oil leaking and came up with a lower limit of 11,000 barrels per day.

But we once again find more excuses.

The Riser tool calculations made based on a claim that data was not capturing an estimated of 10% of the flow of oil.

For some unknown reason this measurement was taken only once and there is no verification on that 10% estimate, which could be possibly be 50% or 200% or more for all we know.

Why wasn’t the test done accurately?

Why wasn’t it repeated?

Then the reports seems to indicate that the amount of oil leaking from the kinks, I have counted 7 different leaks there so far, where not measure by this tool.

Instead it seems that they where calculated again, as an estimated percentage of the “estimate” of what was coming from the main riser leak and “factored” into the total number of barrels per day leaking.

What are the amount coming our of each leak in the riser?

If your are going to give an accurate estimate then you need to measure the leak rate from each hole.

The report also stated that the RITT was only used to calculate a lower limit of what was leaking.

Why did they not also calcuate an upper limit as they did with the other two methods?

The report also says the lower bound estimate of the total oil flow is at least 11,000 barrels of oil per day, depending on whether the flow through the kink is primarily gas or oil.

Why did they choose not to use other methods to make a determination of mixture of gas or oil?

In fact it makes no sense that that even put a number on the amount of oil leaking from the kink in the riser if they don’t know if it is primarily gas or oil.

We are not talking about an “estimate” given off a few percent of difference but an estimate given and not even know what the primary substance coming from the leak is.

Also how can it be explained that 100,000 barrels of mud are leaking from the Top kill and yet this tool gives only an estimate of 11,000 barrels?

And we find not a even single report in the media asking Steve Werely or the dozens of other scientists who have stepped forward with estimates of up to 100,000 barrels per day of their opinion on this report.

Nor is there has their been any reports of questions to those scientists of how in the world their estimates could be so far off, especially off by an order of a magnitude.

The new reports not only contradict Steve Wereley’s reports, it also contradict reports by Professor Chang of UCB and Professor Crone of Columbia who each gave estimates of 100,000 barrels per day just from the single leak in the main riser, again not counting for the 7 plus leaks above the BOP .

Let’s consider Steve Wereley’s testimony before congress.

How are the new estimates, which puts the leak rate of the main leak at 8,000 barrels per day so far off from Steve Wereley’s estimate of up to 84,000 barrels per day for just the main riser leak?

How are the new government estimates for the entire leak so much smaller than the estimate given by Steve Wereley for just one the leaking hole in the riser, a hole that is only 1.2 inches in diameter and was estimated to be leaking 25,000 barrels per day?

So why are the new estimates so off?

The new report explains it all. The scientists on this team where given limited, dodgy information to work off with.

The surface analysis team claims it was given only a small portion of the spill as a sample and was forced to calculate the size of the entire oil slick based off of that data.

The plume modeling team says if faced several methodological challenges “including having a limited window of data in time to choose from, getting good lighting and unobstructed views of the end of the riser, and estimating how much of that flow is oil, gas, hydrates, and water.”

Why did BP provide only a limited window of data in time? This live feed has been going for days.

Why poor lighting? On the live video feed I have seen plenty of shots with very good lighting?

Why didn’t the government make BP give the scientists the lighting they needed?

Why were the scientists provided with obstructed views?

BP has 12 to 16 ROVS with cameras down there and they couldn’t get the scientists the footage they needed?

Estimates of the mixture of gas, oil, hydrates and water could easily be attained by other methods such as radio spectography or Imaging multibeam sonar as suggested by Dr. Richard Camilli of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in congressional testimony.

In Steve’s testimony to congress he stated that long videos would also help assess the oil to gas ratio, yet this report states’ the scientists where given only “a limited window of data in time”. Why?

This is absolutely absurd.

New Government Estimates provide more questions than answers

Just why was the mass balance team which did the Aerial analysis was limited to only a small portion of the Gulf of Mexico?

To get an picture of just how limited of an area their data was based on consider the flights performed by 4 AVIRIS planes observed from May 6 To May 15th.

From the NASA Assets for the Gulf Oil Spill Response white paper.

So that is the flights for 4 planes over an almost two week period then what is covered by one plane on a single day?

And why where the scientists provided with data from only a single plane when NOAA has NASA running flights on at least 4 different planes?

The report also gives the excuse that “this is the first time it has been used to measure the volume of an oil spill.”

NOAA also uses information from these flights to create trajectory maps.

But from the Flight plans above you can see the flights are conveniently skipping over certain areas of the Gulf allowing it to under report the size of the oil spill.

It also conveniently skips over over the Gulf loop current where NOAA still will not acknowledge the oil spill has entered even though a newly released BP confidential oil spill situation map and satellite images both confirmed the oil spill has entered.

We actually know that the Gulf oil spill has now been carried by the Loop Current as far south as the Florida Keys so there is no way that the samples provided to scientists could be accurate.

Why wasn’t the NASA Infared Imaging at least used in combination with other techniques such as ASTER, MODIS, MISR or the plethora of NASA assets that can be used for monitoring the Gulf oil spill in calculating the surface area of the slick?

Furthermore why aren’t these technologies being used in NOAA’s daily trajectory maps?

Why does NOAA continue to base its maps off of unproven technologies that it can selectively take bits of data from?

Instead NOAA simply choose to create trajectory maps based off of the limited AVIRIS data and day after day continues to releases 72 hour trajectory forecasts which fail to encompass even the oil spill that can be seen with plain site satellite images.

It also is inconceivable that NASA could use the AVIRIS technology to discover water on the moon, which is the size of the entire United States, but can provide only a limited portion of data about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to these scientists.

The report, which gives more excuses for why the estimates are wrong than why they may be correct, concludes with a disclaimer that these calculations are “preliminary estimates provided by the FRTG are based on new methodologies being employed to understand a highly dynamic and complex situation. As the FRTG collects more data and improves their scientific modeling in the coming days and weeks ahead, they will continue to refine and update their range of oil flow rate estimates, as appropriate.”

That is followed by what seems to be a cry for the scientific community to review that data and report the discrepancies.

It also promises that a website will be established so the available data is reported to the public in a timely fashion.

Well where is the website? I already have my doubts about the data and haven’t even seen it yet.

Independent Scientist Playing PR for the Federal Government?

In the news release of this hackery of a report Dr. McNutt, who is in charge of the technical analysis team, played major PR for the Government.

In making the announcement Dr. McNutt emphasized that the Feds have responded in full force since day one as if this were a worse case scenario and also stated the that the Government response has been not contained by flow rate estimates.

Playing PR immediately destroys credibility.

The scientist in charge should be giving objective and unbiased information about this report not spreading government propaganda.

Why is an independent scientist playing PR for the government?

But playing PR with an absolute lie is even worse.

Similarly, President Obama’s claim that this was top priority from day one and the government has responded as if this where a worse case scenario from day one is also a lie.

Why the mainstream media, even Fox news, hasn’t called him out on this I don’t know, but I have a feeling they may now.

Do we not remember on the second day the Coast Guard reported that their was no oil leaking at all?

If there was no oil leaking at all, why would the Government be responding in full force?

If there was no oil leaking why would the Government treat this as a worse case scenario?

It would be much simpler and believable for the Obama administration to say that they where slow to act because they did not know the severity of the situation because BP had been so negligent in grossly under estimating the size and the extent of the amount of oil leaking from the Gulf oil spill.

Instead the Government keeps playing this game of charades where bloggers and scientists continue to keep calling them out on every misstep that take.

Make no mistake about it, the Government has been full involved in covering this up from day one.

Accusations of cover up are not coming from just me, but from all over the scientific community and they know more about what is going on here than just about anyone.

Some reports claim that it wasn’t until after satellite images showed the spill was visible from outer space that Government finally admitted that there was oil leaking in the first place.

In any case the government seems content to continue with there cover up of the Gulf oil spill, I guess not realizing that wt now live in an information world where their misinformation will be exposed.

I think Thad Allen let the cat out of the bag in his media conference today as to why the Government is covering it up.

See the public is under the impression that BP is liable for the claims.

But Thad Allen told the media that getting accurate flow rate measurements was important because that amount sets a limit on the number of claims that be filed with the federal government for federal government assistance.

By lowballing the number not only does it decrease BP’s liability but it also decreases the Federal Government’s liability.

An event of this proportion is surely going to lead to a massive amount of claims unlike that of anything ever seen.

It’s sickening that government will only allow a certain number of claims based on a certain number of barrels spilled.

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Media Coverage Of This Story After It Was First Reported Here on 5/28/2010

1. Amount of Leaking Oil May Still Exceed Federal Estimates, Scientists Say from PBS on 5/28/2010 says:
   

   The amount of oil that has been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico for more than a month may be significantly higher than the preliminary estimate released Thursday by a federal panel, some scientists on the panel told the PBS NewsHour Friday.

   

   On Thursday, U.S. Geological Survey director Marcia McNutt announced that the Flow Rate Technical Group — a panel of scientists from government and academia — had determined that the overall best initial estimate for the rate of flow from the leak was between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels of oil per day.

   But at least two experts on the panel say that those numbers actually represent what they consider the lower boundary range of the possible amount of oil.

   The 12,000-to-19,000-barrel estimate was based on individual estimates from three different methods: one that used satellite images to study the amount of oil on the surface of the water, one that analyzed video of the underwater oil “plume,” and one that analyzed the amount of oil collected by the Riser Insertion Tube Tool (RITT) that BP installed last week to capture some of the escaping oil.

   But it was impossible for members of the team that analyzed the oil plume video to estimate the upper boundary of the oil spilled, according to the Ira Leifer, a researcher at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Steven Wereley, a researcher at Purdue University.

   Wereley and Leifer were both members of that team, and Leifer participated in the satellite image analysis as well. Both researchers say that the seven minutes of video that BP provided to the plume team was not sufficient to estimate the upper boundary of the amount of oil — only to give a lower-end estimate.

   “What everyone on the panel agreed was that due to the low-quality data BP provided to us, it would be irresponsible and unscientific to estimate an upper bound to the emission,” said Leifer. “So what we presented in the [plume team] report is a range of expert opinions on what the lower bound is.”

   Wereley said he was surprised to see the estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels and was “disappointed” with the way that the press release was phrased.

   “I was really confused when I read the press release yesterday,” he said. “I had to read it several times.”

   An official from Department of the Interior agreed that the plume analysis did not set an upper limit on the amount of oil spilled, but said that the estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day was based on the area of overlap between the three different methods of estimating the flow.

   But Leifer said that he thought combining the analyses this way was comparing apples to oranges.

   Meanwhile, all of the panel members emphasized that the results presented Thursday are preliminary.

   “As the FRTG collects more data and improves their scientific modeling in the coming days and weeks ahead, they will continue to refine and update their range of oil flow estimate rates,” the Department of the Interior said in a press release Thursday.

   And Wereley said that BP had provided more video as of Thursday, which the panel will begin to analyze soon in an attempt to define an upper limit for the spill.

   Updated 8:55 a.m., Saturday, May 29

   Interior Department spokeswoman Julie Rodriguez said in a written statement:

   
   The FRTG was assembled on the principle that, given the complexity of estimating a flow rate at 5000 feet below the surface of the water, many different scientists and approaches should be brought together to try to find best estimates at this point in time. As Dr. McNutt made clear yesterday, there are and will continue to be, differing estimates and conclusions within the group. Differences among the estimates of each team within the group, and of individual scientists within the FRTG represent a healthy and important part of the process that will continue to help us get closer to more and more accurate estimates.
   

2. Gulf Oil Spill: Latest Federal Government Estimate Still Understates Oil Flow from Huffington Post on 06/03/2010 says:
   

   Last week’s much-ballyhooed new federal estimate of how much oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico — 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, or two to four times as much as the original estimate — remains a low-ball figure.

   The numbers released by the government last week and quickly adopted by the mass media actually represent the lower range of “lower bounds” generated by using conservative assumptions and flawed measures, according to documents released on Thursday.

   The newly-released summary of the report from the Department of Interior’s “Flow Rate Technical Group” doesn’t disclose the higher bounds, however, declaring that a reliable upper figure was incalculable due to — get this — “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.”

   (It was Bush-era Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who first coined those terms in February 2002 when asked for evidence of a direct link between alleged Iraq weapons of mass destruction and terrorist organizations.)

   For more than a month after the well blew out, BP and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had been estimating the flow at 5,000 barrels, or about 210,000 gallons, a day. NOAA based its number on the amount of oil visible on the surface of the Gulf — and stuck to that, even after marine scientists pointed out that due to the depth of the leak and the use of dispersants, a high proportion of the oil was staying beneath the surface.

   Media reports continued to use that figure even after a video clip of the spewing pipe exposed it as a farce. Finally on May 27, the Interior Department issued a press release, describing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels as a “preliminary best estimate” of the flow.

   Two members of the team did tell PBS the next day that the 12,000 to 19,000 figure was just the range of the “lower bound.” Yet the figure was widely accepted as the entire range of possibilities.

   One of the methods the team used to arrive at its numbers was based on an estimate of the oil detected on the ocean surface. The new report states that: “The team then corrected the value for oil evaporated, skimmed, burned, and dispersed up to that day and divided by time to produce an average rate.”

   But there is nothing remotely like agreement in the scientific community about how much of the oil remains beneath the surface. Some scientists think the vast majority remains suspended in the water column. By contrast, NOAA’s director has a hard time acknowledging there is any at all.

   How the flow-rate team “corrected” for something they didn’t know about remains a secret. Overall, however, even including the amount of oil evaporated, skimmed or burned, the team’s lower bound for the flow amounted to less than double the amount visible on the surface.

   And the new document acknowledges that further scientific investigation could push its estimates higher, due to “unknown processes that remove oil naturally from the system” as well as “unknown unknowns.”

   Another estimation method involved calculating the size of the plume based on video from the sea floor. It had a whole different set of challenges, including a limited window of data (seven minutes!), poor quality footage, an untested methodology and a series of assumptions that may or may not have been correct.

   The scientists pursuing that method also found their guesswork limited by “the effect of the unknown unknowns” which “made it more difficult to produce a reliable upper bound on the flow rate.”

   So the actual flow could be much, much greater than any of the numbers the government will discuss — but we don’t even know by what factor.

   One congressional investigator, irate over the assertion that the group corrected for “unknown unknowns,” shot back in an email to the Department of the Interior: “I’ve never heard of this before in math. Help me understand your thinking.”

   Even at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels — or about 500,000 to 800,000 gallons — a day, the BP disaster, now in its 45th day, long ago eclipsed the 250,000 barrels spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

   There’s a very good reason one party to all this would want to low-ball flow estimates. As Mother Jones environmental reporter Kate Sheppard recently noted: “The base fine for a spill is $1,100 a barrel, but it can go as high as $4,300 a barrel if a federal court determines that the spill was the result of gross negligence by the responsible party.”

   Should it come to that, at 12,000 barrels a day for 45 days — at the base fine amount — that would amount to $594 million; at 19,000 barrels, that would amount to about $940 million; at, say, 50,000 barrels, that would amount to about $2.5 billion. (And all those numbers would quadruple in case of gross negligence.)

   Even for BP, that’s real money. The company earned $4.4 billion in profits in 2009.

   Marcia McNutt, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey and author of the group’s report, last week defended the lack of an upper bound. She blamed variations in the gas and oil outflow.

   She did hold out the hope that additional video supplied by BP could result in a higher bound estimate at some point in the future, but none has been forthcoming so far.

   Meanwhile, a computer modeling study released Thursday suggests that some of that oil might soon extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast.

   The National Center for Atmospheric Research, a National Science Foundation program in Colorado, has animated computer simulations showing how, once oil gets caught in the Gulf of Mexico’s fast-moving Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida’s Atlantic coast within weeks. It could then move north as far as Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream, before turning east.

   WATCH THE PROJECTION:

   *************************

   Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail, bookmark his page; subscribe to RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get e-mail alerts when he writes.

3. How The Oil Leak Estimates Got Low-Balled from CBS News on 06/04/2010 says :
   

   Just last week, the Interior Department released a range of 12-to-19,000 barrels a day — up to four times what the government and BP had claimed. That’s 504,000 to 798,000 gallons each day. That’s bad enough. But it turns out that’s not exactly what the scientists conducting the analysis found.

   Sources tell CBS News that 12-19,000 barrels a day is actually the minimum believed to be leaking from the well based on the most “conservative assumptions.” The upper end of the range, a maximum, hasn’t yet been released. But those facts were lost somewhere in the translation between the scientists and the Interior Department press release.

   Here’s how the scientific team studying the plume leaking from the well phrased their estimate: “Plume Modeling: at least 12,000 to 25,000 barrels per day (range of lower bounds)”

   But when the facts were written up for the Interior Department press release for the public, the words “at least” and “range of lower bounds” were not included. Nor was there mention that the upper bounds had yet to be agreed upon, and that they could be “significantly larger.” In short, the press release made it sound like 19,000 barrels a day was the largest amount that scientists decided could be gushing from the well.

   “The lower and upper boundaries are in the range of 12,000 and 19,000 barrels per day,” said the press release.

   BP and government officials then repeated the range in interviews.

   “Well, the current estimates by the government are between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels a day,” said the BP’s Robert Dudley on Sunday’s “Face the Nation”. White House Adviser Carol Browner agreed that estimates were at “the 12,000 to 19,000.”

   Many involved in the effort were unhappy with what they considered incorrect reporting and interpretation of the scientific work. The estimates matter greatly because BP could have to pay fines of up to $4,300 per barrel for each barrel spilled. They may also be required to pay royalties to the U.S. for the lost oil. The range means differences of millions of gallons and billions of dollars.

4. Thad Allen: Oil Spill Fight Will Last Into Fall from CBS News on 06/06/2010 says:
   

   The Coast Guard admiral also addressed the controversy over how much oil has come out of the well on a daily basis, sticking by estimates from 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day despite reports by CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson which question those figures. …

   Allen said he does not believe the government is lowballing the estimates.

   “I put together what’s called a flow rate technical group, got some scientists and… experts. It was headed by Marcia McNutt, who is head of the US Geological Survey,” he said. “They developed two models. One range was 12 to 19,000 barrels a day, the other one was 12 to 25,000 barrels a day. Based on analyzing the video and everything else, that is the official government estimate and the range. That will be verified and validated once we get into full production with the containment cap.”

   However, Allen does add that these are “estimates until we get actual empirical data.”

   He also emphatically said that he’s not been limited by what to say by the other government officials.

   “Anybody that knows me…. knows that is absolutely not the case,” Allen said. “I will say what I want. I will say the facts as best I know them. I’m given no guidance. I’m the national incident commander, and that’s my responsibility.”

   Later on the show, Attkisson addressed Allen’s comments in light of her reporting on the subject.

   “If he’s saying that 12,000 to 19,000, or 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day is the range, the estimate of oil coming out of there as figured by the independent scientists that he hired to do this or that he’s tasked, that’s incorrect,” she said.

   “I have the actual report which shows the plume modeling team said at least 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day are coming out of there. And that is the lower bound. They have yet to release the upper bound, which sources tell me will be significantly higher,” she addded. “That has not yet been released by the government. But the government has been treating the low bound as if it’s the entire range.”

   Attkisson also explained why the differences in the amount of leaking oil matter to both the government and BP.

   “It makes a huge difference to perhaps how the competency of the government looks. But from a financial standpoint for BP, it’s the difference between millions of gallons and billions of dollars in fines because they will be fined, ultimately, based on some government estimate by how many barrels that they released, as much as $4,300 per barrel.”

   Attkisson notes that the low end estimates could mean $2 billion for BP over the last 40 days, but even slightly higher estimates would push that to $4 billion.

   “And that’s just for the beginning of this. So you can see how important those estimates are,” she said.

5. Rate of Oil Leak, Still Not Clear, Puts Doubt on BP from the NYTimes on 06/08/2010 says:
   

   On Monday, BP said a cap was capturing 11,000 barrels of oil a day from the well. The official government estimate of the flow rate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, which means the new device should be capturing the bulk of the oil.

   But is it? With no consensus among experts on how much oil is pouring from the wellhead, it is difficult — if not impossible — to assess the containment cap’s effectiveness…

   The immense undersea gusher of oil and gas, seen on live video feed, looks as big as it did last week, before the company sliced through the pipe known as a riser to install its new collection device….

   The success of the containment device has cast new doubts on the official estimates of the flow rate, developed by a government-appointed team called the Flow Rate Technical Group…

   Yet the scientists who produced that new range emphasized its uncertainty when they presented it. In fact, a subgroup that analyzed the plume emerging at the wellhead could offer no upper bound for its flow estimate, and could come up with only a rough idea of the lower bound, which it pegged at 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day…

   Some scientists involved in the Flow Rate Technical Group say that they would like to produce a better estimate, but that they are frustrated by what they view as stonewalling on BP’s part, including tardiness in producing high-resolution video that could be subjected to computer analysis, as well as the company’s reluctance to permit a direct measurement of the flow rate. They said the installation of the new device and the rising flow of oil to the surface had only reinforced their conviction that they did not have enough information.

   “It’s apparent that BP is playing games with us, presumably under the advice of their legal team,” Dr. Leifer said…

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