Oil's Well That Doesn't End Well For This Oil Well, Part 12

Yesterday I said that Obama and the Democrats absolutely had to get out front of the real rate of spillage from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Then came NPR's report yesterday afternoon that the real rate could be not 5,000 barrels a day, but 70,000 or more, meaning a new Exxon Valdez level disaster every four days.

Today, Congress is doing what the President has been reluctant to, and is forcing Obama's hand.

Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said he will send a letter to BP and ask for more details from federal agencies about the methods they are using to analyze the oil leak. Markey, who chairs a congressional subcommittee on energy and the environment, said miscalculating the spill's volume may be hampering efforts to stop it.

"I am concerned that an underestimation of the oil spill's flow may be impeding the ability to solve the leak and handle the management of the disaster," he said in a statement Thursday. "If you don't understand the scope of the problem, the capacity to find the answer is severely compromised."

BP officials have said 5,000 barrels per day of crude, or 210,000 gallons, have been leaking for the past three weeks.

But a researcher at Purdue University has predicted that about 70,000 barrels of oil per day are gushing into the Gulf after analyzing videos of the spill.

Associate professor Steve Wereley said he arrived at that number after spending two hours Thursday analyzing video of a spill using a technique called particle image velocimetry. He said there is a 20 percent margin of error, which means between 56,000 and 84,000 barrels could be leaking daily.

"You can't say with precision, but you can see there's definitely more coming out of that pipe than people thought. It's definitely not 5,000 barrels a day," Wereley said.

No, it's not.  It's an order of magnitude worse, minimum. Markey's laid out all the reasons why the real rate of flow must be known.  Professor Wereley's analysis is what triggered the NPR report, and now Rep. Markey is taking action.  Three weeks times 70,000 barrels times 42 gallons in a barrel equals a staggering 61,740,000 gallons if Wereley is correct...more than five times worse than Exxon Valdez.

Now imagine eight Exxon Valdez oil tankers wrecking in the Gulf every month for the next three months and you're finally, finally getting how horrendous this is going to be.  Obama owes Markey a case of booze and some cigars, because he just saved his Presidency.  If this isn't hung on BP's neck, it will be hung on Obama's.