April Video Indicates U.S. Government Aware of Much Greater Volume of Gulf Gusher; Evidence Raises Suspicion of Cover-Up

Some of the truth has been hiding in plain sight since May Day, at AL.com. Visit the government at work, specifically the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce (NOAA) meeting in "Warroom 1." They are intently collecting data on what is apparently the 22nd, 23rd, or 24th of April. They are scientists for an United States government which refused massive clean-up help from foreign sources. then, and refuses such help now -- an U.S. government which seems to have lied to us, all this time. Note the following:

At the 3 minute mark in the video and at 3m:17s, see what one member of this NOAA meeting has scrawled in his notebook: "53 to 110 K [brrel?]."

At 6 minutes 35 seconds, the man on the phone says, "I've heard two different estimates on, some'n, far as uh, between sixty-five and a hundred thousand barrels a day."

Then, see what is written, back at the War Room's white board (frozen in time, below). Those are numbers much, much higher than the story they have given the public, then or now: 64,000 to 110,000 barrels per day.

Last Wednesday evening, June 9th, I interviewed Mark Proegler, Director of Climate Energy Policy for BP plc, working for Deepwater Horizon Unified Command. He recounted to me that the early, officially released estimate of the rate of the leak was 5,000 barrels per day. Then, he said, the U.S. government put together two technical groups to assess the flow and they performed numerous tests. Their two results, according to the government, were between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels per day from one group and between 12,000 to 25,000 barrels per day from the other. At the time of this article's release, the latest official estimate by the government I have found was issued on June 10th: from 20,000 to 40,000 barrels per day.

Compare these early numbers with the evidence discussed here: 65,000 to 100,000 barrels per day on the telephone call, 64,000 to 110,000 barrels per day on the whiteboard, and 53,000 to 110,000, in the notebook. Look for anything written around those numbers in the video. Do you see words such as "could eventually become?" I do not. The white board prefaces its numbers with terse immediacy: "estim." Further, by that point, they had noted a "twelve mile long slick of emulsified oil," visible by aircraft.

The only part of this May 1st report by Ben Raines which seems at odds with observable facts is its title, in its use of the words, "potential for." No, these appear to be concurrent estimates of the actual oil being blasted out of that orifice in April, not analyses of potentials.

Video Shows Federal Officials Knew Quickly of Potential for Massive Oil Flow in Gulf Spill
by Ben Raines, Birmingham Press-Register, 5/1/2010


A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration video, shot as officials coordinated response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, shows that federal officials almost immediately worried that the oil well could leak up to 110,000 barrels per day, or 4.6 million gallons.

The video appears on a federal Web site.

It was filmed in Seattle, at NOAA's Western Regional Center, as scientists and federal officials in Seattle, Houston and New Orleans engaged in telephone conferences, according to a companion document on the Web site.

View full size (NOAA video still)Federal officials discuss the Gulf of Mexico oil spill soon after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig. The image is a still frame from a NOAA Web site video depicting the meeting at the agency's Western Regional Center in Seattle.

The video appears to have been edited, and it was shot by a person carrying a camera from room to room.

In it, officials are discussing the search for survivors of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. There is a hand-drawn map of the spill dated April 22. At one point, the video freezes on a sign next to a door that reads, "War Room."

In one scene, officials say that the estimate for the leak in a worst-case scenario is between 65,000 and 100,000 barrels per day. A dry erase board on the wall reads "Estim: 64,000 to 110,000 bbls/day. CNN reported 300,000 gal/day."

The high end of the estimate, 110,000 barrels, is about 4.6 million gallons. At that spill rate, 32 million gallons of oil would enter the Gulf every week. By comparison, the entire Exxon Valdez spill was about 11 million gallons.

Officials estimate current flow from the damaged well at 210,000 gallons a day.

It is unclear from the video what events would have to transpire to raise the flow rate higher.

A confidential NOAA report, dated April 28 and circulated among federal agencies, makes similar projections regarding spill size in a worst-case situation.

View full size (NOAA video still)A hand-drawn map of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill dated April 22, 2010, is seen in this image from a video downloaded from the NOAA Web site. The video shows federal officials discussing the oil spill soon after the Deepwater Horizon exploded.

It describes newly discovered leaks in the tangle of riser pipe, attributing them to ongoing erosion of the pipe. The riser pipe, in this case about 5,000 feet long, connects the wellhead on the sea floor to the drilling rig on the surface.

"If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked," reads the report.

On Thursday, the day after the NOAA report was circulated, BP officials said they were worried about "erosion" of the piping.

Sand is an integral part of the formations that hold oil under the Gulf. The raw crude rising from the bottom of a well carries sand and other abrasive materials. In effect, the oil is sandblasting the piping as it rushes through with tremendous force, according to petroleum engineers.

"I think we need to be prepared for it to be the spill of the decade," Debbie Payton of NOAA, the meeting's coordinator, says during the NOAA video.

NOAA did not immediately respond to the Press-Register's request for comment on the video.

• EARLIER REPORT: Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher
  

View full size (NOAA video still)A still image from a video downloaded from the NOAA Web site shows a dry erase board with figures depicting the potential oil flow. Oil has been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico since the offshore drilling rig exploded and sank. Eleven oil rig workers are missing and presumed to be dead.

Related topics [I.O.: in AL.com]: Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Gulf oil spill, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, oil spill

You can read this at it's original site, published May 1st, at AL.com:

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/video_shows_federal_officials.html

Does anyone reading this believe that BP is the problem in allowing this crisis to become more "significant," the word Rahm Emanuel used in his famous quote, "You never want a significant crisis to go to waste?" Is this administration allowing this disaster to worsen, in order to push for Cap and Trade law and a Climate Change Treaty? Are they actually fostering this horrific calamity, to build the coffers of investors in the Chicago Climate Exchange, while further transferring America's wealth to foreign nations and instituting global government over the sovereign United States of America (as reported here)? Is this effectively a false-flag attack upon this nation, blamed on an oil-rich "capitalist" corporation?

Follow the money, the means, and the ends, and see if you find extortion and globalist Marxofascism. As guest contributor, CJ affirmed last week, we need an honest and comprehensive investigation of this -- a criminal, RICO investigation which must include members of the United States Government. - AW

photos, NOAA
This is an update of an original I.O. entry on 6/15/2010