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Washington, DC — Top Obama officials manipulated scientific analyses of independent experts to seriously lowball the amount of oil leaking from the BP Deepwater Horizon, according to a scientific integrity complaint filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
Documents obtained by PEER through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit indicate White House pressure to present low-range estimates as best estimates. In fact, numbers presented to the public were less than half the true flow rate.
On May 19, 2010, one month after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, the White House announced creation of a group of experts from academia, industry and government to generate an accurate and independent estimate of the oil leak rate. This group was called the Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG).
Using new scientific integrity rules, PEER today filed a complaint charging that the leader of one of the FRTG Teams, Dr. William Lehr of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), manipulated the scientific results of the FRTG experts throughout the entire crisis to significantly understate the spill rate. Lehr is also the author of the now infamous “Oil Budget Calculator” and a report concluding 75% of the oil was gone from the Gulf by August 2010.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577150910025591788.html?KEYWORDS=GAUTAM+NAIK
Given the enormity of the spill, many scientists predicted that a significant amount of the resulting chemical pollutants would likely persist in the region's waterways for years.
According to a new federally funded study published Monday by the National Academy of Sciences, those scientists were wrong. By the end of September 2010, the vast underwater plume of methane, plus other gases, had all but disappeared. By the end of October, a significant amount of the underwater offshore oil—a complex substance made from thousands of compounds—had vanished as well.
It is now clear why BP could not tell the truth about the 3 leaks coming from 3 wells and multiple blowholes spewing out oil in the first 3 weeks of the disaster. Even the "3 leaks" were equated to 3 leaks on a single riser carrying a single drill-pipe 5 1/2 inch diameter.
BP intended to reduce the "spewing wells and blowholes" into just one gushing hole. If Well A drilled to only 5,000ft could spill 50,000 barrels/day then what about well B and well BE (3rd well) which were drilled to 13,100 ft and 18,360 ft respectively. Then what about the reports of other craters spewing oil as far as 7 miles from the Macondo wells.
By all accounts, it is the National Academy of Sciences that is way off mark. Not the independent scientists who are predicting a much worse scenario.
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#1 - Fri Jan 27, 2012 8:52 PM ESTYou're in Easy Mode. If you prefer, you can use XHTML Mode instead. |
