Earth Equity News

Scientists Tussle Over Gulf Oil Tally. By John Collins Rudolf, NYTimes, August 17, 2010. "When the Obama administration released scientific findings in early August estimating that roughly three-quarters of the oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico had been captured, burned, dispersed, evaporated, degraded or dissolved in the water, a number of independent scientists cried foul, describing the report as premature and suggesting that it was portraying the ecological impact of the spill in an unduly rosy light... A team of Georgia researchers has codified that dissent, using the government's own data to craft a report estimating that as much as 79% of the oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon well in fact remains at large in the Gulf of Mexico, where it still poses a threat to the marine ecosystem... [These] The estimates... are difficult to contrast with those in the federal report as they do not take into account the roughly 800,000 barrels of oil captured by BP directly at the wellhead. And the Georgia report, unlike the federal analysis, was not subject to peer review."