A recent article in the Huffington Post reveals that in the days and weeks following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP may have misled the US Federal Government about the true extent of the leak from the Macondo well.
Since the disaster, a catalogue of failure has been documented concerning the days leading up to the disaster and what followed.
In October 2010 National Geographic Magazine published a revealing account of the disaster. The following month Horizon broadcast 'Deepwater Disaster - The Untold Story' on BBC 2. Following that a Channel 5 account 'Oil Disaster The Rig That Blew UP' was broadcast, which can be viewed here on youtube.
Initially after the disaster happened BP worked out that the well was releasing just 1,000 barrels a day, an estimate it provided to the Coast Guard shortly after the leak was found. But the leak rate was far higher than BP portrayed to the Coast Guard - more than 50,000 barrels per day from the moment the rig went down until the well was capped 87 days later. As Huffpost accounts 'What is clear is that BP failed, throughout the event, to produce an accurate estimate of the size of the leak to the federal government or the public. Also readily apparent is the company's strong vested interest in downplaying the size of the spill: federal pollution laws stipulate fines as high as $4,300 for every barrel of oil unlawfully discharged into U.S. waters.
'Documents and interviews indicate that BP, using reservoir data, computer modeling and imagery of the leaking pipe, may have had the ability to calculate a far more accurate estimate of the well's flow rate early on in the spill than it provided to the government. The company either never fully ran those calculations or their results were not disclosed to federal responders'.
In June 2010, a federal criminal probe was announced, which would investigate the disaster. This will involve a grand jury.
The article concludes with this comment; 'Admiral Mary Landry, who as the initial federal on-scene coordinator transmitted BP’s inaccurate first leak estimate to the public, said that it's up to the DOJ [Department of justice] to determine whether BP deliberately provided the government with unreliable information. "I am confident that justice will be served," she said.
But she said that as the lead federal responder on previous, far smaller spills, she had seen companies mislead the government about the scale of an oil or chemical release and pay the price in criminal court'.
If BP thought that the presidential commission on the oil spill that took place in January 2011, was damning - that will be nothing compared with the forthcoming trial. It will be a 'Big Pill' to swallow!
Follow the Greenpeace accounts of the disaster.
The spill isn't over
In recent weeks there have been sightings of an oil sheen in the vicinity of the Macondo well. This has been confirmed by the US Coast Guard. It's the first time that a conclusive link has been made to residual oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Scientific opinion suggests that trapped oil might be escaping from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which is still sitting on the seafloor.
Other possibilities include heavy oil deposited on the seafloor slowly being degraded by bacteria and releasing lighter components, a natural seep, or, in a worst case scenario, a leak in the 5,000 foot long cement plug used to seal the well. The latter seems unlikely. Below is a photo of the oil sheen:
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