[QUOTE=ActivePatriot;32299]
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[li]Worst case has gone from 1,000 to 5,000 to 25,000 to 50,000 to 60,000 and now maybe to 100,000 barrels a day. Is it a honest effort to contain the leak bringing the Deepwater Enterprise ship to “contain” this when it has a processing capacity of 15,000 barrels a day?[/li][li]Knowing the above three, is it not possible to calculate fairly accurately the rate of flow?[/li][/ul]
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I’m sure this is the best effort that the can put forward right now. It’s not it BP’s interest to allow more oil to escape, as this will cause more damage to the environment and therefore more costs with cleanup and litigation. From what I can tell the 100,000 bbl/day was a worst case scenario if the pipe broke clean off at the BOP, not what’s happening with the current situation.
As far as using those figures to calculate a rate of discharge it’s more complicated than that. The pressure in the pipe can’t be accurately determined due to the fact that there’s kinks in the pipe. As the fluid flows thrue the kinks there’s a drop in pressure. The only way to accurately determine the pressure at any one length of pipe would be to drill a hole in the pipe and stick a gauge in the hole, this would be a bit counter productive though.