WASHINGTON — BP’s estimate that 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking daily from a well in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Obama administration hasn’t disputed, could save the company millions of dollars in damages when the financial impact of the spill is resolved in court, legal experts say.
A month after a surge of gas from the undersea well engulfed the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig in flames and triggered the massive leak that now threatens sea life, fisheries and tourist centers in five Gulf Coast states, neither BP nor the federal government has tried to measure at the source the amount of crude pouring into the water.
BP and the Obama administration have said they don’t want to take the measurements for fear of interfering with efforts to stop the leaks.
That decision, however, runs counter to BP’s regional plan for dealing with offshore leaks. “In the event of a significant release of oil,” the 583-page plan says on Page 2, “an accurate estimation of the spill’s total volume … is essential in providing preliminary data to plan and initiate cleanup operations.”
Legal experts said that not having a credible official estimate of the leak’s size provides another benefit for BP: The amount of oil spilled is certain to be key evidence in the court battles that are likely to result from the disaster. The size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, for example, was a significant factor that the jury considered when it assessed damages against Exxon.
“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,” said Lloyd Benton Miller, one of the lead plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Exxon Valdez spill litigation.
In congressional testimony Wednesday, an engineering professor from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said that based on videos released Tuesday he estimated that the well was spewing 95,000 barrels of oil, or 4 million gallons, a day into the gulf.
The Obama administration Thursday demanded that BP publicly release all information related to the disaster.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that water, sediment and marine-animal tissue samples that will be used in coming months to help track pollution levels resulting from the spill are being processed by a laboratory that is part of an oil-and-gas-services company in Texas that counts oil companies, including BP, among its biggest clients.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, since the readings will be used by the federal government and courts to establish liability claims against BP.
Additionally, The Times reported that local animal-rescue workers who have volunteered to help treat birds affected by the slick and to collect data that would also be used to help calculate penalties have been told by federal officials that the work must be done by a company hired by BP.
Patrick Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law School, noted that because of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which was passed after the Exxon Valdez spill, polluters must take more of a role in cleanups.
