Gulf oil spill: Coast Guard's early flow estimates are released

The day after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, the U.S. Coast Guard evaluated the "potential environmental threat" of a spill and concluded that, in addition to 700,000 gallons of diesel from the vessel, there was an "estimated potential of 8,000 barrels per day of crude oil, if the well were to completely blow out," according to Coast Guard documents.

Two days later, Coast Guard logs included a new estimate that a full blowout could result in a spill of 64,000 to 110,000 barrels per day. (A barrel equals 42 gallons.) That's far more than current estimates of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels daily.

The Coast Guard's early appraisals were not made public, however, as BP and the Obama administration pegged the initial spill at 1,000 barrels, and then revised it to 5,000 barrels daily.

The Coast Guard logs were released Thursday by a Republican congressman, a salvo in what promises to become a partisan Washington controversy over who-knew-what-when.

"These documents raise new questions about whether the White House was slow to respond to an incident that was quickly recognized by the Coast Guard as a potentially catastrophic threat to the environment," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "Americans have a right to be outraged by this spill, by top government officials caught off-guard, and by the facts the White House omitted in explaining what it knew and when it knew it."

According to the documents, officials learned a day after the explosion that the blowout preventer, a collection of valves designed to cut off the well in the event of an accident, was not functioning. According to the documents, it could not be manually repaired by remote underwater robots.

In addition to releasing the logs to the media, Issa passed them on to the Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group that publicized them on its website, posting the logs and a timeline comparing the White House estimates to the Coast Guard timeline.

(UPDATE: Nicholas Shapiro, a White House spokesman, responded by email to a request for comment on the documents released by Issa: According to the email, on April 22, the day the rig sank, the President was told by National Incident Commander Thad Allen "that as soon as he saw the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on fire, he knew oil was likely to start gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and Secretary (Ken) Salazar told the President this event could eclipse the amount of oil spilled during the Exxon Valdez.

The President made sure that the entire federal government was offering all assistance needed in the rescue effort as well as in mitigating and responding to the environmental impact and that this response was being treated as the number one priority.")

--Margot Roosevelt

Photo: A boat makes its way along the edge of the oil slick about a quarter of a mile from the eastern shore of the Chandeleur Islands, part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, La., on May 5. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Jon]

@M Sills, your #s are way off. Pressure at depth of well head (around 4925 feet underwater) is 0.43lbs/square inch/foot of depth, so around 2118 lbs/square inch, not 160. If it was 160, they could send down a guy in a diving suit. I get the visual of your idea, but the physics doesn't work out. Nice try though.

[Michael Sills]

What about the 10,000 to 100,000 barrels /day leaking into the gulf??

Hot Air Balloon Concept to Collect and Store Gushing Methane/Gas Mixture

The basic idea is to float a canopy, parachute-like material using ROVs over the gushing methane / oil discharge which is coming out at 1500 psi. The seawater over it exerts maybe 160psi at 1-mile depth so that is why we see the methane/oil gushing upwards. The square canopy would have a belt/drawstring inside the square perimeter. Much like a hot air balloon first fills with hot air on the ground the gushing gas mixture would begin to fill the square canopy over it. The canopy would also have two bladders to control its orientation and the drawstring (like a bag of marbles) would be tightened to stop the gas/oil mixture from flowing out the bottom of the “hot air balloon”. Once the “balloon” was filled to its maximum (e.g. no gas/oil is flowing out of the balloon at the bottom with the drawstring pulled as tight as it can be at the ocean floor) the air bladders would be inflated and used to cause the balloon to rise to the surface. Once the full balloon begins its rise a second canopy is floated over the gusher and the filling process started again. At some point in the balloon’s rise to the surface a second bladder at the bottom can be activated to rotate the balloon to have the drawstring end upwards towards the surface. Once at the surface the closed drawstring end could be further tighten and more floats added. The mixture inside is then captured for pumping to a treatment vessel of large tanker for further storage AND NOT ENDING UP ON SHORE. Since the full balloon at the bottom would take on a spherical shape I calculate that a “balloon with a 100m (300’) radius could hold approximately 2 million barrels (55gal) of the mixture. It is not clear how much of this mixture is methane and how much is oil but if we say it is 20% oil then one of these “balloons” can hold about 400,000 barrels of oil. The material will need to be flexible and oil resistant which should be no problem for our major fabric suppliers, Dupont, Tyvex etc.

As you can see this alternative does not risk fracturing the well head or casing and causing blowouts at different locations as do the cap and top kill alternative do.

[SmartestOne]

Obama's cronies, both in and out of Chicago (Gov. Blago, Rahm Emanuel, Al Gore, Pelosi's husband, Warren Buffet, Bill Ayers, George Soros), profitted from this disaster. This is a MUST-READ, bombshell expose.

http://www.blogster.com/joannemor/bombshell-expose-the-real-reason-the-oil-still-flows-into-the-gulf-of-mexico

[Bill Carson]

The Coast Guard and emergency response crews have extensive experience on oil spills such as the Bouchard B 120 oil spill in Buzzards Bay , Massachusetts on April 27, 2003 .
On April 27, 2003, eight years ago the Bouchard Barge B-120 hit an obstacle in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts creating a 12-foot rupture in its hull and discharging an estimated 100,000 gallons of No. 6 oil. The oil is known to have affected an estimated 90 miles of shoreline, killing 450 numerous bird species the day it happened

If you see oil follow these steps :

1 . If the oil is spilled in coastal waters or the ocean (including land based spills that are entering coastal waters via storm drains or streams), immediately call the National Response Center

2. For land based spills, (and for coastal spills after calling the National Response Center number above), call your fire department and report the spill.

3 . Call you states DEP emergency spill toll-free hotline . To report an environmental crime (e.g. intentional illegal dumping) call the state's Environmental Strike Force .

The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has determined that some PAHs may reasonably be expected to be carcinogens

[Eric Novinson]

That's bad, that means the higher estimates of 100,000 barrels a day aren't unrealistic after all. Heard the containment dome finally capped the spill now, although I'm skeptical since there were other claims that the spill was contained in the past.

[Ricardo Frustockl]

Enough is Enough
The Oil Companies have been shoving this down our throats since the inception of internal combustion engine and then they have been systematically suppressing alternative technology from the get go. The truth is so much more brutal then just the gulf "spilling" and a price per gallon justification. We have stood by and let this happen. God have mercy on our souls.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html

[Ricardo Frustockl]

Why are you not showing the big picture?

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html

The Oil Companies have been shoving this crap down our throats since the inception of internal combustion engine and then they have been systematically suppressing alternative technology from the get go. I have been studying this since I was old enough to read and the truth is so much more brutal then just the gulf "spilling" and a price per gallon justification. We have stood by and let this happen. God have mercy on our souls.

[mmmoil]

judging by the live video feed id say at least 1 barrel per second is leaking into the gulf. So maybe around 86,400 barrels a day. Could be more depending how much pressure is pushing up and the diameter of the pipe.

right now it looks like the cap they have been working on is leaking massive amounts of oil.

[bruce m]

They are hiding the amount of oil spilling and how big this really is

Site of them hiding the amount of oil .
http://www.protecttheocean.com/gulf-oil-spill-bp/
You will see a video that shows on their board they knew it was 64k to 110k barrels a day not 1 to 5 k
This link will show At the 9:!5 mark or so the board:
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/video_shows_federal_officials.html

[swf]

And BP hires a former Dick Cheney aide to run their new public relations campaign in the states? That'll help.