So, just how much damage has BP done to the Gulf?
After Gulf Coast oil spill, scientists envision devastation for region
The urgent question along the polluted Gulf of Mexico: How bad will this get?
No one knows, but with each day that the leaking oil well a mile below the surface remains uncapped, scientists and energy industry observers are imagining outcomes that range from bad to worse to worst, with some forecasting a calamity of historic proportions. Executives from oil giant BP and other energy companies, meanwhile, shared their own worst-case scenario in a Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers, saying that if they fail to close the well, the spill could increase from an estimated 5,000 barrels a day to 40,000 barrels or possibly even 60,000 barrels.
Few people have a more apocalyptic view than Matt Simmons, retired chairman of the energy investment banking firm Simmons & Company International and a 41-year veteran of the industry. Simmons, who will speak at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston this week, has been famous in recent years for warning that the industry is running out of oil. Now he sees a disaster on an epic scale as the pressurized subterranean reservoir known as the Macondo field, tapped for the first time by Deepwater Horizon, continues to vent into the gulf.
“It really is a catastrophe,” Simmons said. “I don’t think they’re going to be able to put the leak out until the reservoir depletes. It’s just too technically challenging.”
He said BP’s cleanup costs could ruin the company.
“They’re going to have to clean up the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. </em>
At the very least.
And whenever you discuss or think of this issue, frame it for what it is: What BP did. This wasn’t an accident, or an act of god. This is what a corporation did.
