As Oil Spreads, Docs Show BP Downplayed Risk

(May 1) -- As oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, smearing the U.S. coast and its fragile wetlands, documents have been uncovered that show British Petroleum once downplayed the likelihood of a catastrophic accident on its offshore rig that now threatens to become America's worst-ever oil spill.

Another day of rough seas kept crews away from the slick today. Overnight on Friday, crews dumped 3,000 gallons of sub-surface dispersant at a rate of nine gallons per minute. According to a Coast Guard statement, officials were still evaluating its success.

The Coast Guard said today crews have so far recovered 1,006,656 gallons of an oil-water mix, but that at least 1.6 million gallons of oil have spilled since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers. The White House said President Barack Obama will survey the disaster firsthand on Sunday.

BP's chief executive Tony Haywood is flying over the Louisiana coast today, to see the damage from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig. It's believed to be billowing 210,000 gallons of oil underwater each day -- and one expert says that figure could even be higher.

At that rate, the spill would exceed the volume of Alaska's 1989 Exxon Valdez spill by the third week of June, making it the worst U.S. oil spill in history.

"We've, so far, mounted the largest response effort ever done in the world," BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told CNN. "We've utilized every technology available, we've applied every resource request. ... We welcome every new idea and every offer of support."

But in a 2009 document outlining its plans for the oil well, BP said repeatedly that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities."

In a 52-page plan filed with the federal Minerals Management Service, BP concedes that any possible spill would impact beaches, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas. But it argued that "due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected."

The document is public information and was excerpted by The Associated Press and The New York Times.

BP's predictions turned out to be wrong, and the habitats of hundreds of species of migrating birds, nesting pelicans, river otters and mink along the Gulf coast are in jeopardy after the first thin strands of greasy oil began washing up on American shores early Friday.

The Coast Guard has boats out monitoring movement of the more than 130-mile wide oil slick, and about 180,000 feet of protective barriers have been floated atop the water to try to stop it from spreading.

Two dozen lawsuits have already been filed against BP, including action by shrimpers and fishermen who fear the spill could bankrupt their businesses, and by families of some of the 11 oil rig workers killed.

The U.S. government has also come under fire for its response to the spill, with right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh calling it "Obama's Katrina." He's referring to criticism of George W. Bush after his administration was seen as slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which hit the same stretch of the U.S. Gulf coast.

Obama is heading to the Louisiana coast this weekend. But it took the White House until Thursday -- nine days after this oil spill began -- to declare it "a leak of national significance."

The same day, Obama pledged "every single available resource" – including possibly the U.S. military – to help plug the leak. He also dispatched SWAT inspection teams to other oil rigs in the area and sent three top administration officials to oversee the response.

On Friday, the White House also banned all new offshore drilling projects until the spill is thoroughly investigated.

But the Obama administration has sought to place responsibility for the spill's cause and cleanup on BP.

"It is clear that after several unsuccessful attempts to secure the source of the leak, it is time for BP to supplement their current mobilization as the slick of oil moves toward shore," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday in comments carried by several news agencies.

And a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, Geoffrey Morrell, issued a statement saying the U.S. government will hold BP accountable for any military costs associated with the oil spill. So far, that covers the Louisiana National Guard's deployment to help clean up coastal areas as the oil comes ashore.

The Coast Guard estimates that 1.6 million gallons of oil have already oozed out of the damaged oil well, and the figure is growing. But the AP is quoting an outside expert as saying the real number could be more than five times that.

Ian R. MacDonald, an oceanography professor at Florida State University, said estimates from both Coast Guard charts and satellite images indicate that 8 million to 9 million gallons had spilled by April 28.

"I hope I'm wrong. I hope there's less oil out there than that. But that's what I get when I apply the numbers," he said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also distributed a warning Friday quoting one of its experts as saying that even though the current estimate is that 5,000 barrels of oil are flowing into the Gulf each day, the figure could grow to "an order of magnitude higher than that."

The NOAA document was first obtained by The Press-Register newspaper in Mobile, Ala. An agency spokesman told The New York Times that it's simply a possibility raised by a staff member, not an official prediction.