The BP Oil Capture's Fuzzy Math

BP plc’s (NYSE: BP) shares rallied on news that it captured 10,000 barrels of oil leaking from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon. It claims the amount could move as high as 20,000 barrels. BP’s math says that at 20,000 barrels, it will be diverting 80% of the crude which would otherwise spill into the Gulf.

More oil may have leaked, however, when BP cut a pipe to allow its new cap to be put into place. Scientists also think that leaking oil is now flowing from cracks in the seabed. There is no “fix” for seabed leaksNo one knows for sure how much oil is released each day and whether that amount will increase or decrease over the next few weeks and months. Experts in drilling like Boone Pickens say that even relief wells may not work. He compared the current spill to the Ixtoc I submersible platform one which began on June 3, 1979. It released, by most estimates, 30,000 barrels a day for nearly a year.  Unlike Deepwater Horizon it was in shallow water.

BP still insists that the leak is only about 25,000 barrels a day at most. The US government seems to agree with that estimate. Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, has often been quoted in the media insisting that 70,000 barrels per day is spilling from the pipe. His methodology may not be any better than other experts.

BP and the federal government are clever to insist that the capture project will stop most of the oil emanating from one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history from polluting the Gulf and the environment around it.  But, clever may not be enough. The Deepwater Horizon disaster may be in its early stages.

Douglas A. McIntyre