re: For chicken littles...

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< previous post Gulf Oil Spill More Than 10X Greater Than Thought: Experts

7:02 pm May 13, 2010 comments (2) Recommend (3) By Frank James and Allison Richards

NPR has learned that much more oil, 70,000 barrels a day or more than ten times the official estimate, is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon pipe, based on scientific analysis of the video released Wednesday. That's the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days. The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that oil was gushing into the ocean at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day. But, again, NPR has been told that estimate is very low. We'll link in a bit to a segment on All Things Considered that explains more.

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The analysis was conducted by Steve Werely, an associate professor at Purdue University, using a technique called particle image velocimetry. Harris tells Michele Norris that the method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent. That means the flow could range between 56,000 barrels a day and 84,000 barrels a day.

Another analysis by Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated the rate of flow to be between 20,000 barrels a day and 100,000 barrels a day. Even the most conservative of those estimates is much higher than the Coast Guard has so far said. But the pipe is spewing both oil and gas and it's not clear in the BP video how much is oil and how much is gas. "BP has always said there is no way to measure the amount spilling from the pipe," Harris said.

But, he said, the uncertainty could be reduced if BP would share more information with the scientists.

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