Amid increasing anger over a huge oil slick hitting U.S. shores, BP officials Friday denied botching the month-long clean-up and deliberately hiding the true extent of the spill.
With a thick sludge now washing up in the Mississippi delta threatening disaster for a wealth of animal and plant life, the U.S. administration has set the British energy giant tight deadlines to come clean about their operation.
Just how much oil is gushing from a pipe ruptured when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank a month ago has been a contentious issue, with BP initially putting the figure at 5,000 barrels — or 210,000 gallons — a day.
“That was not just BP’s estimate. That was the estimate of the in-flight command, including NOAA and the Coast Guard. That’s the best estimate we have,” BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles said Friday.
But the company says it is now siphoning 5,000 barrels a day from the leak by a mile-long (1,600 meter) insertion tube device, and live webcam television pictures show more oil continuing to spew into the Gulf from the ruptured well, meaning the figure must be higher.
Reuters reported Friday from Houston that BP said the amount of crude oil it siphoned from the leak fell to 2,200 barrels (92,400 gallons) in the 24-hour period ending at midnight Thursday.
“The flow changes, it’s not constant,” Reuters quoted BP spokesman John Curry as saying Friday.
Even at the lowest estimates, more than six million gallons of crude have flowed into the water since the disaster. And independent experts have warned the flow could be at least 10 times higher than the current estimates.
Suttles sought to quell the growing anger among the U.S. administration, residents and lawmakers that not enough is being done, with the spill flowing unchecked since April 20 just 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast.
“We’ve thrown everything at that,” he said on ABC television, saying the company had so far spent some $700 million on the clean-up.
“We’ve mounted the largest response ever done in the world. We put 20,000 people at this.”
He confirmed BP had met a late Thursday deadline set by the U.S. administration to answer concerns over the chemical dispersant used to break up the oil slick on the surface, but had failed to find a less toxic alternative.
“Right now, we cannot identify another product that is available that is better than the Corexit product,” he said, stressing the dispersant they were using was on a list approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
U.S. officials have insisted that BP provide a wealth of technical information to the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to help them fight the slick.
And Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson are demanding daily public updates on the leak.
“The public and the United States government are entitled to nothing less than complete transparency,” they told the oil firm in a letter.
Democratic congressman Ed Markey voiced the frustrations of many, saying: “We’re beginning to understand that we cannot trust BP. People do not trust the experts any longer. BP has lost all credibility.”
With thick patches of oil tarring coastal Louisiana marshes, a haven for migratory birds and rare wildlife that will be virtually impossible to clean up, local leaders have started to despair.
“Twenty-four miles (nearly 39 kilometers) of Plaquemines Parish is destroyed. Everything in it is dead,” Billy Nungesser, head of the parish in southern Louisiana, told MSNBC Thursday.
“There is no life in that marsh. You won’t clean it up,” he said, adding the slick was “destroying our marsh, inch by inch,” and would keep on coming ashore for weeks and months.
The neighboring states of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, including famous coral reefs,could be next as the slick is swept along by a powerful ocean conveyor belt known as the Loop Current.
An increasingly desperate BP says a “top kill” operation to try to cap the leak for good, by filling the well with heavy drilling fluids and then sealing it with cement, could begin as early as Sunday.
Suttles said Friday he understood people’s concerns.
“I share that frustration. I understand the anger. But I can tell you, I don’t know of anything absolutely anything we could be doing that we’re not doing,” he said.