15 ExxonValdezes — Why BP is working to hide the spill truth

It looks like BP's Gulf oil spill may be gushing out as much oil every four days as the Exxon Valdez spilled off the coast of Alaska.

Well, I guess if your credibility is just this side, or just the other side, of Exxon's, and is built on publish relations shinola apparent lying, you've got good temptations to continue more of the same, as now seems clear.

The level of apparent cover-up? Pretty bad.

Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.

But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.

The criticism escalated on Thursday, a day after the release of a video that showed a huge black plume of oil gushing from the broken well at a seemingly high rate. BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible.

Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, were originally asked by BP to conduct flow rate measurements of undersea vents then BP changed its mind. And it won't say why.

Probably, though, because it's trying to hide this ... the same reason it won't let independent researchers see its underwater video:

BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil.

OK, BP says it could be two months before it gets the "bleeding" stopped. That is 15 consecutive four-day ExxonValdez spill equivalents, if the worst predictions are true.

The Guardian has further independent commentary on the likely size of the spill.

That said, is it fair to call the Obama Administration "slow" on this?

Hell, yes. Given BP's past safety record, from Prudhoe Bay to Houston, over the past decade, notably under the leadership of current CEO Tony Hayward, it should have been skeptical of BP's claims about the size of the problem from the moment it happened.

And, given BushCo-era shenanigans, it should have been reforming the Minerals Management Service before the blowout. Obama himself could have included that as part of his offshore drilling proposal.

It's been helping oil drillers deliberately avoid getting environmental impact permits from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“You simply are not allowed to conclude that the drilling will have an impact,” said one scientist who has worked for the minerals agency for more than a decade. “If you find the risks of a spill are high or you conclude that a certain species will be affected, your report gets disappeared in a desk drawer and they find another scientist to redo it or they rewrite it for you.”

AND ... Our Beloved Neoliberal Leader Obama's proposed reform of the Minerals Management Service apparently won't touch this NOAA work-around.

(That's despite his promise today to get tough with the oil and gas drilling industry, claiming it was time to move beyond finger pointing. The "cozy relationship" he mentioned? Isn't that, too, part and parcel of neoliberalism?)

So, Obamiacs, quit defending him on environmental issues, or his response to this tragic, but quite avoidable, catastrophe.

Meanwhile, speaking of environmental issues, weather forecasters expect an above-average year for Atlantic hurricanes.

What might a few big storms do to that oil?

Update, May 15: Meanwhile, another government entity, the EPA, readily signed off on BP's never-before done, never-before tested, use of deep sea dispersents.

Oxygen waters on the seafloor around the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe have already fallen by 30 percent and will fall more.

Meanwhile, there are oil and gas plumes from just below the surface to 4,000 feet deep.

Researchers Vernon Asper and Arne Dierks said in Web posts that the plumes were "perhaps due to the deep injection of dispersants which BP has stated that they are conducting."

In other words, the dispersants may be contributing to the oil-caused deoxygenation.

That's why BP's "backup" plan to use dispersants in deepwater for the first time, without testing, is so criminal.

The decision (to allow this) by the Environmental Protection Agency angered state officials and fishermen, who complained that regulators ignored their concerns about the effects on the environment and fish.

"The EPA is conducting a giant experiment with our most productive fisheries by approving the use of these powerful chemicals on a massive, unprecedented scale," John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, said in a news release.

BP. Blatantly Polluting. And, the technocratic neoliberalocity is cooperating.