Politics

[UPDATED] Government oil leak estimate still off

By Noah Kunin

[UPDATE] 9:48PM: While the conclusion of the post is still valid (consult the analysis here) we’ve uncovered a major caveat that makes any comparison to the Hurricane Katrina spill inappropriate in our opinion.

The Department of Interior’s commissioned reportlinked to below does not provide a breakdown between crude oil spilled vs. all petroleum products – that includes refined products. The BP spill is a crude oil spill.

While rightly or wrongly certain comparisons are being made between the government’s recovery effort during Hurricane Katrina to the current effort around the BP oil spill, it’s fairly clear that any comparisons between the spills shouldn’t be made.

[UPDATE] 6:38PM: Updates for clarity.

Are the government and British Petroleum (BP) distributing accurate information about how much oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico?

My review of the data, including data from the oil spills caused by Hurricane Katrina, indicates that there is a large discrepancy in the estimates being put out.

Here’s my logic. According to the most recent statements, the Deepwater Horizon wreckage is leaking around 5,000 barrels per day. That’s 210,000 gallons of oil per day. The disaster occurred on April 20th so presuming it started leaking at full flow immediately then only 1,680,000 million gallons of oil should be in the Gulf as of April 28th.

Hurricane Katrina provides an excellent comparison data point. We know that 741,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf from offshore drilling platforms.[PDF] That represents 42.5% of the government’s estimation of the BP oil spill as of April 28th.

Below is a satellite image of the oil slick in the Gulf after Hurricane Katrina.

Here is a great map from the US Coast Guard and The Response Group based on satellite imagery of the BP oil slick.

And here’s the comparison to scale. The position of the Hurricane Katrina slick has been superimposed upon the BP slick in order to more accurately compare size. Note that the black superimposition is the oil slick from the above Hurricane Katrina graphic. [UPDATE] 4:54PM: Cleaned up the comparison graphic to make it easier to compare the slicks.

You can clearly see that Hurricane Katrina slick is a fraction of the size of the BP oil slick. Remember, if the current spill estimates are to be believed, the Hurricane Katrina slick should be a full 42.5% of the BP oil slick. It’s not even close. Skytruth has been doing excellent reporting and has an even more robust analysis of the 5,000 barrels per day number here based on the work of Dr. Ian MacDonald at Florida State University.

To approach the scale of the BP oil slick it would take close to five times more oil is being released – around 25,000 barrels of oil per day.

It’s disconcerting that the 5,000 gallons per day number has circulated so heavily given the discrepancy . While I appreciate the difficulty in estimating the amount of oil being released this isn’t in the margin of error – it’s half an order of magnitude.

We need this data to be accurate. The country is about to make serious decisions about future development of off-shore oil resources. If we can’t compare the damage of a hurricane vs the self-inflicted damage of human error we can’t make rational decisions about the future of our country.

Looking ahead, here’s a solid animation from Al Jazeera (hat tip to GOOD) about possible solutions for the oil leak.

We’ve contacted NOAA to get their read on this issue and are awaiting their reply. On April 30th, in this Wall Street Journal article, a NOAA spokeswoman said they had taken data like this under review but the joint estimate from NOAA, BP and the US Coast Guard has not been altered.

The US House Energy and Commerce committee will be having a hearing tomorrow. Stay tuned to our blog for further updates and additional graphics.

Oil slick comparison graphic by Laurenellen McCann.

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on May 04, 2010 (boomark / email).