The current “effort” to “contain” the oil spill has little to do with avoiding environmental damage, although BP certainly won’t mind selling off whatever oil they can pull up out of the contraption they have built. It does serve a different purpose, which is of a much higher priority for the company, which is a goal of permanently making it more difficult for outsiders to accurately estimate how much oil is flowing from the massively damaged well.
Plume Modeling Team
The second approach led by the Plume Modeling Team used video observations of the oil/gas mixture escaping from the kinks in the riser and at the end of the riser pipe alongside advanced image analysis to estimate fluid velocity and flow volume. Based on advanced image analysis and video observations the Plume Modeling Team has provided an initial lower bound estimate of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels of oil per day. They continue to work to provide an upper bound.
This team faced several methodological challenges, including having a limited window of data in time to choose from, getting good lighting and unobstructed views of the end of the riser, and estimating how much of that flow is oil, gas, hydrates, and water.
Starting on April 21 if not earlier, BP has had submersible craft with cameras at the wellhead 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Yet at no point during all of the idle time or down time (and there has been many, many days of idle and down time) will they point the cameras at an unobstructed, well lit view of the leaking oil, which would allow independent experts to get a very accurate estimate of how much oil is leaking. That’s never been a project on their list. No time has ever been set aside for it, and now that they’ve created massive clouds of oil with their new “cap,” the primary goal of all of their underwater work has been achieved, which is simply to delay for a few more days, one hour at a time if necessary, the moment at which an accurate estimate can be obtained.