Big Oil

Holy shit:

The latest video footage of the leaking Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico show that oil is escaping at the rate of 95,000 barrels — 4 million gallons — a day, nearly 20 times greater than the 5,000 barrel a day estimate BP and government scientists have been citing for nearly three weeks, an engineering professor told a congressional hearing Wednesday.

The figure of 5,000 barrels a day or 210,000 gallons that BP and the federal government have been using for weeks is based on satellite observations of the surface. But NASA's best satellite-based instruments can't see deep into the waters of the Gulf, where much of the oil from the gusher 5,000 feet below the surface seems to be floating.

Federal officials testified in hearings on Tuesday that they were putting together a crack team to get to the bottom of big the spill really is. That effort comes a month after the April 20 explosion that triggered the unprecedented oil spill in deep waters of the United States. Experts say knowing that amount is crucial for efforts to cap the broken wellhead and to monitor and clean up the oil.

..."The true extent of this spill remains a mystery," [Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who chaired the hearing] said. He said the BP had said that the flow rate was not relevant to the cleanup effort. "This faulty logic that BP is using is … raising concerns that they are hiding the full extent of the damage of this leak."

Raising concerns? Insert a caustic chuckle here. I just love how no one in public office is willing to call out a corporation on anything anymore, no matter how patently obvious the offense is. There is no question here. BP, like every other profit-driven corporation who prioritizes public relations management to keep its stockholders (or board, or owner, or whoever's reaping the profits) happy, is spinning like a record, baby, right round. Corporations are not altruists. They are plunderers. That is their nature. And it's absurd that the government continues to tiptoe around this shit.

And for all the lipservice to how BP's going to pay for the cleanup (yeah, right), the US is going to invest billions and billions of dollars dealing with this environmental catastrophe, money that could have (should have) been spent on green energy development.

What a clusterfuck.