Gulf Oil Spill Far Worse Than Officials, BP Admit, Says Independent Analyst
Close to 5,000 barrels of oil a day are pouring into the Gulf of Mexico following the destruction of an offshore oil platform last week, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Operator BP originally argued that the amount was far less (only 1,000 barrels or so), but today it concurred with the government's numbers.
Too bad they're both wrong, according to a group of independent analysts who are watching the spill via satellite and aerial data from their offices in West Virginia. They say the spill is far worse than either the company or the government has acknowledged so far.
Five thousand barrels a day is "a bare-bones limit," says John Amos, the president and founder of the nonprofit firm SkyTruth, which specializes in gathering and analyzing satellite and aerial data to promote environmental conservation.
Amos estimates that the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf is more like 20,000 barrels a day -- four times the Coast Guard estimate, and 20 times what BP originally claimed. That would add up to about 6 million gallons of oil so far. With oil still flowing, this spill threatens to be worse than the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez, which dumped 11 million gallons into Alaska's Prince William Sound -- one of the nation's worst environmental disasters. (NRDC is calling for a temporary halt to plans for new offshore drilling in light of the Gulf explosion. See update below on President Obama's response.)
Amos previously worked as a consulting geologist, "using satellite imagery as a global geologic tool," in his words, to locate natural resources for major oil and mining corporations. Now he assists advocacy organizations, government agencies, and academic researchers with data collection and analysis.
SkyTruth receives a bit of foundation funding, and it also partners with green groups in the United States and overseas on specific projects. Last year, when a Montara oil rig exploded in the Timor Sea off the northern coast of western Australia, SkyTruth tracked and documented the spill for a coalition of groups advocating for protected marine reserves in the area. That spill lasted for 10 weeks.
"On this Gulf spill, we're not officially partnered with anyone," Amos says. "We are doing what we think is the best thing we can do right now, hoping at some point groups will work with us to make it sustainable over the long haul." He's assisted by a technical volunteer and consultations with professional cohorts.
The Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans, exploded and caught fire on April 20 and sank a week ago today. There were 126 people on board; 11 are missing and likely dead. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency today because of the spreading oil slick -- which is expected to reach the state's coast late tonight -- and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called it a spill of "national significance."
SkyTruth has access to much of (but not all) the same data that the government and BP are using. It's publicly available from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the agency's Aqua satellite, as well as other sources, including aerial flights.
Based on a map released from a flyover on Wednesday and compared to "the last good satellite image that we got, from the afternoon of April 27," Amos believes that the slick covers about 2,300 square miles. Official estimates to date have put the slick at about 2,200 square miles.
So how did Amos calculate the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf?
"We saw a published statement by a BP executive that about 3 percent of the slick was about 100 microns thick, and that the rest was about one or two molecules thick," he says. "We took him at his word on the microns, but not on the rest," because to see an observable sheen of oil at sea, the petro-goo needs to be at least 1 micron thick, explains Amos.
"A molecule's thickness is measured in billionths of a meter. For a micron, we're talking millionths of a meter," he says. And over thousands of square miles of ocean surface, even millionths of a meter add up.
Using BP's estimate that 3 percent of the slick's area is 100 microns thick, with an area of 2,200-2,300 square miles, Amos calculated that this part of the spill contains about 4.5 million gallons of oil.
Allowing for the remaining 97 percent of the slick to be 1 micron thick (the minimum necessary for that visible shimmer), Amos estimates another 1.5 million gallons of oil.
Total: 6 million gallons of slick, give or take a couple hundred thousand, and more oil pouring into the ocean every day.
To make even a rough estimate, Amos used BP's higher-end figure of 100 microns. But the oil is actually much thicker in some parts of the visible spill, he says. Aerial imagery is showing "thick ropy strands of oil, oil that's much thicker than 1 micron," according to Amos. "That's floating froth of oil mixed with water and probably bacteria ... the sloppy thick end of an oil spill where it could be anywhere from a millimeter thick to centimeters thick."
Amos says he doesn't question the Coast Guard's sincerity -- just its data analysis. "They are swamped by the magnitude of this spill and their effort to control it, and stop it from doing worse damage," he says. "I don't blame them for not questioning the numbers they've been provided by others, or spending their precious resources just trying to come up with better number."
From the Coast Guard's perspective, Amos say, "It's just a heck of a lot of oil."
The Coast Guard has not responded to requests for comment.
As for how BP arrived at its initial, much lower estimate of 1,000 barrels per day, Amos says: "I hope it was based on some real thoughtful analysis. But I haven't seen any justification."
UPDATE 4/30/2010: In response to calls from NRDC and others for a halt to drilling expansion in light of the latest disaster, the White House said today that no new offshore oil drilling will take place until a full investigation into the Deepwater Horizon explosion is completed.
Image: Gulf oil spill, captured on April 25 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/MODIS Rapid Response Team
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April 30, 2010 Whistleblower: BP Risks More Massive Catastrophes in Gulf By Jason Leopold Reprinted from Truthout
The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at the person's request because the whistleblower still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008. Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. It was then that the whistleblower, who was hired to oversee the company's databases that housed documents related to its Atlantis project, discovered that the drilling platform had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving the platform vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began last week following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig. BP's own internal communications show that company officials were made aware of the issue and feared that the document shortfalls related to Atlantis "could lead to catastrophic operator error" and must be addressed. Indeed, according to an August 15, 2008, email sent to BP officials by Barry Duff, a member of BP's Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Atlantis Subsea Team, the Piping and Instrument Diagrams (P&IDs) for the Atlantis subsea components "are not complete." P&IDs documents form the foundation of a hazards analysis BP is required to undertake as part of its Safety and Environmental Management Program related to its offshore drilling operations. P&IDs drawings provide the schematic details of the project's piping and process flows, valves and safety critical instrumentation. "The risk in turning over drawings that are not complete are: 1) The Operator will assume the drawings are accurate and up to date," the email said. "This could lead to catastrophic Operator errors due to their assuming the drawing is correct," said Duff's email to BP officials Bill Naseman and William Broman. "Turning over incomplete drawings to the Operator for their use is a fundamental violation of basic Document control, [internal standards] and Process Safety Regulations." BP did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story. Despite the claims that BP did not maintain proper documentation related to Atlantis, federal regulators continued to authorize an expansion of the drilling project. Last May, Mike Sawyer, an engineer with Apex Safety Consultants, was asked by the whistleblower's attorney to evaluate BP's document database the whistleblower worked on that dealt with the subsea components. The whistleblower made a copy of the database and took it with him upon his termination from the company. Sawyer looked into the whistleblower's allegations regarding BP's document shortfall related to Atlantis and concluded that of the 2,108 P&IDs BP maintained that dealt specifically with the subsea components of its Atlantis production project, 85 percent did not receive engineer approval. Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis' subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one that occurred after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon last week. In a report Sawyer prepared after his review, he said BP's "widespread pattern of unapproved design, testing and inspection documentation on the Atlantis subsea project creates a risk of a catastrophic incident threatening the [Gulf of Mexico] deep-water environment and the safety of platform workers." Moreover, "the extent of documentation discrepancies creates a substantial risk that a catastrophic event could occur at any time." "The absence of a complete set of final, up-to-date, 'as built' engineering documents, including appropriate engineering approval, introduces substantial risk of large scale damage to the deep water [Gulf of Mexico] environment and harm to workers, primarily because analyses and inspections based on unverified design documents cannot accurately assess risk or suitability for service," Sawyer's report said. He added, "there is no valid engineering justification for these violations and short cuts." Sawyer explained that the documents in question - welding records, inspections and safety shutdown logic materials - are "extremely critical to the safe operation of the platform and its subsea components." He said the safety shutdown logic drawings on Atlantis, a complex computerized system that, during emergencies, is supposed to send a signal to automatically shut down the flow of oil, were listed as "requiring update." "BP's recklessness in regards to the Atlantis project is a clear example of how the company has a pattern of failing to comply with minimum industry standards for worker and environmental safety," Sawyer said. The oil spill blanketing roughly 4,000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed eleven workers, was exacerbated, preliminary reports suggest, by the failure of a blowout preventer to shut off the flow of oil on the drilling rig and the lack of a backup safety measure, known as a remote control acoustic shut off switch, to operate the blowout preventer. Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent a letter Thursday to BP Chairman and President Lamar McKay seeking documents related to inspections on Deepwater Horizon conducted this year and BP's policy on using acoustic shut off switches in the Gulf of Mexico. The circumstances behind the spill are now the subject of a federal investigation. Profits Before Safety Whether it's the multiple oil spills that emanated from BP's Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope or the March 2005 explosion at the company's Texas refinery that killed 15 employees and injured 170 people, BP hasconsistently put profits ahead of safety. On October 25, 2007, BP pled guilty to a criminal violation of the Clean Water Act and paid a $20 million fine related to two separate oil spills that occurred in the North Slope in March and August of 2006, the result of a severely corroded pipeline and a safety valve failure. BP formally entered a guilty plea in federal court on November 29, 2007. US District Court Judge Ralph Beistline sentenced BP to three years probation and said oil spills were a "serious crime" that could have been prevented if BP had spent more time and funds investing in pipeline upgrades and a "little less emphasis on profit." Also on October 25, 2007, BP paid a $50 million fine and pleaded guilty to a felony in the refinery explosion. An investigation into the incident concluded that a warning system was not working and that BP sidestepped its own internal regulations for operating the tower. Moreover, BP has a prior felony conviction for improperly disposing of hazardous waste. The incident involving Deepwater Horizon, now the subject of a federal investigation, may end up being the latest example of BP's safety practices run amuck. The issues related to the repeated spills in Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere were revealed by more than 100 whistleblowers who, since as far back as 1999, said the company failed to take seriously their warnings about shoddy safety practices and instead retaliated against whistleblowers who registered complaints with their superiors. In September 2006, days before BP executives were scheduled to testify before Congress about an oil spill from a ruptured pipeline that forced the company to shutdown its Prudhoe Bay operations, BP announced that it had tapped former federal Judge Stanley Sporkin to serve as an ombudsman and take complaints from employees about the company's operations. That's who the whistleblower complained to via email about issues related to BP's Atlantis operations in March 2009 a month after his contract was abruptly terminated for reasons he believes were directly related to his complaints to management about BP's failure to obtain the engineering documents on Atlantis and the fact that he "stood up for a female employee who was being discriminated against and harassed." The whistleblower alleged that the $2 million price tag was the primary reason BP did not follow through with a plan formulated months earlier to secure the documents. "We prepared a plan to remedy this situation but it met much resistance and complaints from the above lead engineers on the project," the whistleblower wrote in the March 4, 2009, email to Pasha Eatedali in BP's ombudsman's office. Federal Intervention Additionally, he hired an attorney and contacted the inspector general for the Department of the Interior and the agency's Minerals Management Service (MMS), which regulates offshore drilling practices, and told officials there that BP lacked the required engineer-certified documents related to the major components of the Atlantis subsea gas and oil operation. In 2007, MMS had approved the construction of an additional well and another drilling center on Atlantis. But the whistleblower alleged in his March 4, 2009, email to Eatedali in BP's Office of the Ombudsman that documents related to this project needed to ensure operational safety were missing and that amounted to a violation of federal law as well as a breach of BP's Atlantis Project Execution Plan. The ombudsman's office agreed to investigate. MMS, acting on the whistleblower's complaints, contacted BP on June 30, 2009, seeking specific engineering related documents. BP complied with the request three weeks later. On July 9, 2009, MMS requested that BP turn over certification documents for its Subsurface Safety Valves and Surface Controlled Subsea Safety Valves for all operational wells in the Atlantis field. MMS officials flew out to the platform on the same day and secured the documents, according to an internal letter written by Karen Westall, the managing attorney on BP's Gulf of Mexico Legal Team. But according to the public advocacy group Food & Water Watch, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit, which became involved in the case last July, BP did not turn over a complete set of materials to MMS. "BP only turned over 'as-built' drawings for [Atlantis'] topsides and hull, despite the fact that the whistleblower's allegations have always been about whether BP maintains complete and accurate engineer approved documents for it subsea components," Food & Water Watch said in a 19-page letter it sent to William Hauser, MMS's Chief, Regulations and Standards Branch. During two visits to the Atlantis drilling platform last August and September, MMS inspectors reviewed BP's blowout preventer records. Food & Water Watch said they believe MMS inspectors reviewed the test records and failed to look into the whistleblower's charges that engineering documents were missing. The blowout preventer, however, is an issue at the center of the Deepwater Horizon spill. An MMS spokesperson did not return calls for comment. Last October, Food & Water Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for expedited processing, seeking documents from MMS that indicate BP "has in its possession a complete and accurate set of 'as built' drawings ... for its entire Atlantis Project, including the subsea sector." "As-built" means lead engineers on a specific project have to make sure updated technical documents match the "as-built" condition of equipment before its used. MMS denied the FOIA request. "MMS does not agree with your assessment of the potential for imminent danger to individuals or the environment, for which you premise your argument [for expedited response]. After a thorough review of these allegations, the MMS, with concurrence of the Solicitor's Office, concludes your claims are not supported by the facts or the law," the agency said in its October 30, 2009, response letter. In response, MMS said that although some of its regulatory requirements governing offshore oil and gas operations do require "as built" drawings, they need not be complete or accurate and, furthermore, are irrelevant to a hazard analysis BP was required to complete. Unsatisfied with MMS's response, Food & Water Watch contacted Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), a member of the Committee on Natural Resources and chairman of the subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, about the issues revolving around BP's Atlantis operations and provided his office with details of its own investigation into the matter. "Unsubstantiated" Claims On January 15, Westall, the BP attorney, wrote a letter to Deborah Lanzone, the staff director with the House Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals, and addressed the allegations leveled by Food & Water Watch as well as indirect claims the whistleblower made. Westall said BP "reviewed the allegations" related to "non-compliant documentation of the Atlantis project ... and found them to be unsubstantiated." But Westall's response directly contradicts the findings of Billie Pirner Garde, BP's deputy ombudsman, who wrote in an April 13 email to the whistleblower that his claims that BP failed to maintain proper documentation related to Atlantis "were substantiated" and "addressed by a BP Management of Change document." Garde did not say when that change occurred. But he added that the whistleblower's complaints weren't "unique" and had been raised by other employees "before you worked there, while you were there and after you left." Westall noted in her letter that "all eight BP-operated Gulf of Mexico production facilities" received safety awards from MMS in 2009. "Maintenance and general housekeeping were rated outstanding and personnel were most cooperative in assisting in the inspection activities," MMS said about BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling facilities. "Platform records were readily available for review and maintained to reflect current conditions." Westall maintained that the whistleblower as well as Food & Water Watch had it all wrong. Their charges about missing documents has nothing to do with Atlantis' operational safety. Rather, Westall seemed to characterize their complaints as a clerical issue. "The Atlantis project is a complex project with multiple phases," Westall said in her letter to Lanzone. "The [August 15, 2008] e-mail [written by Barry Duff, a member of the Atlantis subsea team] which was provided to you to support [Food & Water Watch's] allegations relates to the status of efforts to utilize a particular document management system to house and maintain the Atlantis documents. The document database includes engineering drawings for future phases, as well as components or systems which may have been modified, replaced, or not used." But Representative Grijalva was not swayed by Westall's denials. He continued to press the issue with MMS, and in February, he and 18 other lawmakers signed a letter calling on MMS to probe whether BP "is operating its Atlantis offshore oil platform ... without professionally approved safety documents." Grijalva said MMS has not "done enough so far to ensure worker and environmental safety at the site, in part because it has interpreted the relevant laws too loosely." "[C]ommunications between MMS and congressional staff have suggested that while the company by law must maintain 'as-built' documents, there is no requirement that such documents be complete or accurate," the letter said. "This statement, if an accurate interpretation of MMS authorities, raises serious concerns" and requires "a thorough review at the agency level, the legal level and the corporate level. The world's largest oil rig cannot continue to operate without safety documentation. The situation is unacceptable and deserves immediate scrutiny. "We also request that MMS describe how a regulation that requires offshore operators to maintain certain engineering documents, but does not require that those documents be complete or accurate, is appropriately protective of human health and the environment." On March 26, MMS launched a formal investigation and is expected to file a report detailing its findings next month. Zach Corrigan, a senior attorney with Food & Water Watch, said in an interview Thursday that he hopes MMS "will perform a real investigation" and if the agency fails to do so, Congress should immediately hold oversight hearings "and ensure that the explosion and mishap of the Horizon platform is not replicated." "MMS didn't act on this for nearly a year," Corrigan said. "They seemed to think it wasn't a regulatory or an important safety issue. Atlantis is a real vulnerability." Author's Bio: Jason Leopold is Deputy Managing Editor of Truthout.org and the founding editor of the online investigative news magazine The Public Record, http://www.pubrecord.org. He is the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie," a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. He is also a two-time winner of the Project Censored award, most recently, in 2007, for an investigative story related to Halliburton's work in Iran. He was recently named the recipient of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Thomas Jefferson Award for a series of stories he wrote that exposed how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been pressured to accept fundamentalist Christianity.
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Halliburton May Be Culprit In Oil Rig Explosion
This story has been updated
Giant oil-services provider Halliburton may be a primary suspect in the investigation into the oil rig explosion that has devastated the Gulf Coast, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Though the investigation into the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its early stages, drilling experts agree that blame probably lies with flaws in the "cementing" process -- that is, plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig. Halliburton was in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon.
"The initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement," said Robert MacKenzie, managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets and a former cementing engineer in the oil industry.
The problem could have been a faulty cement plug at the bottom of the well, he said. Another possibility would be that cement between the pipe and well walls didn't harden properly and allowed gas to pass through it.
The possibility of Halliburton's culpability was first reported Monday by HuffPost's Marcus Baram.
According to a lawsuit filed in federal court by Natalie Roshto, whose husband Shane, a deck floor hand, was thrown overboard by the force of the explosion and whose body has not yet been located, Halliburton is culpable for its actions prior to the incident.
The suit claims that the company "prior to the explosion, was engaged in cementing operations of the well and well cap and, upon information and belief, improperly and negligently performed these duties, which was a cause of the explosion."
And Congressman Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a tough letter on Friday to Halliburton, asking for an explanation of its work on the rig, according to a spokesperson for the committee.
Last year, Halliburton was also implicated for its cementing work prior to a massive blowout off the coast of Australia, where a rig caught on fire and spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons into the sea for ten weeks.
In that incident, workers apparently failed to properly pump cement into the well, according to Elmer Danenberger, former head of regulatory affairs for the U.S. Minerals Management Service, who testified to an Australian commission probing that accident.
"The problem with the cementing job was one of the root causes in the Australian blowout," Danenberger told Huffington Post, adding that the rig crew didn't pick up on indications of an influx of fluids coming back in after they cemented the casing. "The crew didn't pick up on them and didn't take action."
Halliburton declined to return a detailed request for comment from Huffington Post.
The company did issue a press release responding to reports about its work on the rig:
As one of several service providers on the rig, Halliburton can confirm the following:
-- Halliburton performed a variety of services on the rig, including cementing, and had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the accident. Halliburton's employees returned to shore safely, due, in part, to the brave rescue efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard and other organizations.-- Halliburton had completed the cementing of the final production casing string in accordance with the well design approximately 20 hours prior to the incident. The cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar applications.
-- In accordance with accepted industry practice approved by our customers, tests demonstrating the integrity of the production casing string were completed.
-- At the time of the incident, well operations had not yet reached the point requiring the placement of the final cement plug which would enable the planned temporary abandonment of the well, consistent with normal oilfield practice.
-- We are assisting with planning and engineering support for a wide range of options designed to secure the well, including a potential relief well.
Halliburton continues to assist in efforts to identify the factors that may have lead up to the disaster, but it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues.
Halliburton originated oilfield cementing and leads the world in effective, efficient delivery of zonal isolation and engineering for the life of the well, conducting thousands of successful well cementing jobs each year. The company views safety as critical to its success and is committed to continuously improve performance.
If you missed the opening of Ars Poetica, featuring the photographs of 
May 15, 3-5 pm
Huffington Post First Posted: 04-30-10 10:43 AM | Updated: 04-30-10 03:59 PM