MOJO: Lawsuit filed seeks access to REAL OIL NUMBERS -- enough oil-spill 3-card Monte!

[nashville_brook]

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/09/watchdogs-file-suit-govt-spill-info

The Feds' Oil-Spill Number Games


Initial government estimates about the size of the Gulf oil spill were low—way, way low. The number the government repeated for four weeks, about 5,000 barrels per day, was about one-twelfth of the actual rate oil was seeping from the well. So what went wrong with the government's math? It's an awfully good question, one that watchdog groups want answered. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which represents whistleblower scientists at government agencies, announced Thursday that it is filing suit against the Obama administration to gain access to the paper trail on the government's early assessments. The group says government officials are "hiding the memos and e-mails behind official scientific assessments of the size of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."

At the height of the spill, 62,000 barrels of oil gushed from the hole daily, the federal government flow rate team concluded in August. That's a far cry from BP's first estimate—1,000 barrels—and from the government's first initial estimate of just 5,000 barrels per day. They later increased the official estimate to 12,000 to 19,000 at the end of May. Yet as I reported shortly after that range was released, the actual documentation that the US Geological Survey, a division of the Department of Interior, released a week later made it clear that even this rate was a low-end estimate. But Marcia McNutt, the director of the USGS and chair of the Flow Rate Technical Group, told reporters that this was the best estimate available at the time.

(snip)

PEER alleges that McNutt "omitted the fact that these were minimum estimates (deleting phrases such as 'at least' and 'range of lower bounds') and did not mention completed estimates that were much higher." The group also alleges that the government "withheld the actual technical report and instead released only a summary that wrote" and "directed that none of the Technical Group documents was subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and that group members should not disclose any materials."

(snip)

The continued lack of transparency about how much oil was spilled, where it went, and what the government knew about both those figures over the course of the disaster has alarmed a number of environmental advocates. "There is no scientifically, peer-reviewed data or studies on how much oil was spilled or how much oil is left," said Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. "We still have no idea. We're guessing."

[metapunditedgy]

1. I'd like to see the WH blogger who posted the "oil is recovered or dispersed" talking

point (which was first used by Rush Limbaugh)... I'd like to see that blogger (and the person responsible for the silly pie chart) questioned under oath.

[nashville_brook]

2. not a blogger... White House energy adviser Carol Browner

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/04/national/main6741897.shtml


U.S. Says 75% of Oil Gone, but Skeptics Remain
Government Reports Vast Majority Oil Has Either Been Captured, Burned or Has Broken Down; Critic Calls Upbeat Estimate "Spin"

August 4, 2010 - (CBS/AP)


Three-quarters of the oil from BP's massive spill has been cleaned up or broken down by natural forces, government scientists reported, though the upbeat claims were met with some skepticism.

White House energy adviser Carol Browner said that a new assessment found that about 75 percent of the oil had either been captured, burned off, evaporated or broken down in the Gulf of Mexico.

[metapunditedgy]

3. Ok, Browner can testify too. The blog post was by someone named

Heather Zichal, who is the "Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change".

I'm kind of surprised the post is still up:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/08/04/new-report-74-oil-bp-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-has-been-contained-or-mitigated