An Embattled BP Looks "Beyond Politics" to Mislead Public on Oil Spill Details

With BP's successful deployment of the much-hyped "LMRP" cap atop its damaged wellhead, chief operating officer Doug Suttles confidently told Reuters in an interview Friday that this latest containment effort could collect more than 90 percent of the oil leaking from the sheared-off riser piping.

Critics monitoring the oil spill dismiss such talk as little more than orchestrated show, arguing that the amount of crude still escaping into Gulf waters is much greater than what the UK-based oil & gas major has claimed. And the whole situation illustrates why numbers of Americans view public and company officials with growing mistrust.

Notwithstanding the Obama administration's recent, spirited efforts at improving transparency -- in particular, daily operational briefings and online access to spill data and recovery efforts -- an increasingly fractious debate between official (federal government and BP) and independent scientists on the real environmental and economic dimensions of the oil spill epitomizes the growing mistrust in the handling of the oil spill debacle:

• Government and BP consensus estimates put the oil leaking from a ruptured pipeline at BP's Macondo discovery well between 600,000 and 1.2 million gallons per day. These numbers are coming from the same folks who insisted until May 27 that a spill rate of 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) was a worst-case scenario.
• Ian MacDonald, a biological oceanographer at Florida State University, predicted in an April 30 Reuters interview that official estimates would prove too conservative, suggesting that the real flow rate from the undersea well was probably closer to 1.05 million gallons (25,000 barrels) per day. MacDonald recently nudged the spill rate upward, and now estimates the well is probably leaking 26,500 barrels to 30,000 barrels a day. (Other scientific teams studying the oil flow put the spillage somewhere between 19,000 barrels and 42,000 barrels daily.)

After high-profile, "top kill" shut-in failures -- in particular, the thrice-tried heavy mud injections and the 100-ton containment dome now parked on the seabed -- BP shifted from stem and plug-in efforts toward more immediate triage activities: the higher-volume oil collection (and gas burn) activities afforded by the June 3^rd installation of the lower marine riser package (LMRP) containment cap.

You've got to accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative And latch on to the affirmative....

~ songwriter Johnny Mercer

• On June 7, approximately 14,800 barrels of oil (621,600 gallons) flowed from the leaking well to the surface, collected, and transported to the nearby Discoverer Enterprise drillship. Additionally, 30.6 million cubic feet of natural gas was flared. The Enterprise's daily processing capacity is approximately 15,000 barrels of oil.

Admiral Allen warned on the conference call, however, that up to 20 percent beyond the estimated flow rate could be escaping capture through adhesion cracks in the damaged end of the riser piping.

"We remain concerned about the location of oil on the surface and under the sea," National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supervisor Jane Lubchenco said at Tuesday's daily briefing.

Those 15 spoken words belie the widening credibility gap between public and BP officials and the American citizenry:

• On May 6, NOAA called attention to its role in financing the work of a small research ship called the Pelican, owned by a university consortium in Louisiana. But when scientists aboard that vessel reported the discovery of large undersea plumes that appeared to be made of oil droplets, NOAA criticized the results as "premature and requiring further analysis," according to the NYT.

I believe that acting responsibly and being transparent are key to rebuilding trust in BP. Ultimately doing the right thing will prevail.

~ BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward (investor briefing, June 4)

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! ~ Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

On NBC's "The Today Show," Suttles said: "It may be down to how you define what a plume is...."

In a recent ABC News - Washington Post poll of 1,004 American adults randomly contacted by telephone (June 3 - June 6), the following observations were noted:

• 81 percent of surveyed Americans viewed BP's response to the spill as negative;
• 64 percent said the government should pursue criminal charges against BP and other companies involved in the spill; and,
• of registered Democrats polled, 56 percent rated the federal response negatively. Partisan politics notwithstanding, 74 percent and 81 percent of respective independents and Republicans rated the Obama administration's response as negative.

Even before it's even finished digging the first relief well, BP has gone on the offensive: looking "Beyond Politics" for a damaged brand. The company has hired Washington-based Purple Strategies -- a bipartisan, red and blue consulting firm -- to produce its new TV ads, featuring a contrite BP CEO Tony Hayward apologizing to American families, according to CNN News.

Unfortunately, the political strategists from both public and private corridors of power have overlooked the singular point: results. The longer it takes to get this leak under control, frustrated Americans will start demanding more than just rhetoric from Obama administration and BP officials.

Related:

• BP's Hayward Forgets CEO-in-Crisis Rule No. 1: Don't Lie
• Gulf Oil Spill: What's Behind BP CEO Hayward's New Plans and Promises
• BP's Gulf Oil Spill: The Odds of Fines, Jail Time and the "Death Penalty"
• BP Gulf Oil Spill: The Worst-Case Scenario Looms for the Company and the Region
• Gulf Oil Spill: It's Way Larger than We Thought -- and Than BP Admitted
• Gulf Oil Spill: BP's Looming Health Problem
• BP Oil Spill Probe Finds One Hot Mess -- or Seven Causes Behind the Gulf Disaster
• Now You Can See BP's Live Oil-Spill Feed -- and Watch the Company Squirm