The battle continues over the flow of information about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, with a new volley on Friday from BP.
The issue is underwater video of the spill and who gets to see it. Congressman Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, has been trying to get BP to provide a live video feed on the Web. This week he finally arranged to host the video at the Web site of his House committee on global warming. One problem with that approach was that the committee’s server has had trouble handling the traffic.
Aside from the millions of curious members of the public who might want to view a live feed of the gushing oil, scientists have been asking for it. On Wednesday, Mr. Markey organized a briefing (it would have been a hearing, but hearings have to be scheduled a week in advance) that featured several scientists pleading for more access.
...So BP agreed Friday to put live video on its own Web site, www.bp.com. Of course, it emphasized that it had been providing a live feed to government entities for two weeks, including the Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, which are part of the joint recovery effort.
Yet the recovery team has said over most of the last month that about 5,000 barrels a day are leaking, while independent scientists, including some of those who spoke on Wednesday, suggest that the number is 12 to 20 times higher.
BP critiqued those estimates, too. It said that if they were based on the original diameter of the pipe, 19.5 inches, they were probably wrong because the pipe had been narrowed by accident damage. What is more, the pipe has a drill pipe trapped inside it, further constricting the flow. And half of
And Mr. Markey wants an empty boast that it is on his committee's website!
