For weeks many have wondered why BP wouldn't allow outsiders to view the uninterrupted underwater video feed of the busted well that's been pumping oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The well came loose after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig the company leased from Transocean.
Experts on oil spills have cited satellite images of the Gulf slick to charge that BP's estimates of the volume of oil spewing out of the well into the Gulf's waters have been much too low. And they've contended that the surest way to find a reliable estimate is to get an extended look at the well's flow via live video footage. It took a month, but yesterday the company gave in to the chorus of cries from the public and lawmakers and allowed a live feed of the well to be placed on a congressional website.
So what the heck took them so long?
Well, a McClatchy report out today by Marisa Taylor, Renee Schoof, and Erika Bolstad suggests that the lagging response likely grew out of the same concern that may also have led BP to cut corners in enforcing safety measures on the Deepwater rig: in short, money. Legal experts told the McClatchy team that a sounder, agreed-upon estimate of the spill's reach would jumpstart costly court cases against the company, attracting droves of new plaintiffs. In other words, the bigger the oil spill, the bigger the damage awards the culpable company will have to cough up.
"If they put off measuring, then it's going to be a battle of dueling experts after the fact trying to extrapolate how much spilled after it has all sunk or has been carried away," Lloyd Benton Miller, one of the main plaintiffs' lawyers in the Exxon Valdez case, told McClatchy. "The ability to measure how much oil was released will be impossible."
For their part, BP officials announced this afternoon that they plan to release new flow-rate estimates on Saturday — and they also claim that the company can stop the flow of oil entirely by next week.
Brett Michael Dykes is a national affairs writer for Yahoo! News.
No comments:
Post a Comment