4 Most Glaring Errors Cited by Obama's Oil Spill Panel

(Oct. 7) -- Scientists describe the official response to BP's Gulf of Mexico oil disaster as a giant science experiment carried out in real time since it was the first in U.S. history involving a deep-water oil rig.

Yet the preliminary assessment released this week by the Oil Spill Commission, which was appointed by President Barack Obama back in May, does not look kindly upon the makeshift efforts of government officials or the U.S. Coast Guard. In response, the Obama administration defended itself for having "significantly mitigated the impact of the spill" by using all available resources.

But a close look at the papers shows a comedy of errors at nearly every step of the way, beginning with the Coast Guard, which initially tracked the spill using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet before realizing the complexity of the endeavor required a more high-powered method.

Here's a look at what happens when large science experiments go live:

Failure to anticipate
Neither the Environmental Protection Agency nor the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had "adequately planned" for the possibility that massive volumes of dispersants could be required to break up the oil. The EPA had not considered the possibility that dispersants would be used beneath the surface. The NOAA, meanwhile, had not evaluated the effects of large-scale use of dispersants on marine life.

Lacking adequate planning, officials were forced to quickly make "difficult choices with insufficient information about the critical trade-offs ... for the use of dispersants."

Still, despite the speed the response demanded, the EPA waited until late June before dispatching a senior official to the Unified Command headquarters in Louisiana to monitor the daily decision making on use of the dispersants.

Fuzzy math
The initial government estimate of 1,000 barrels a day appears to have been based on a figure supplied by BP, "without supporting documentation."

In the spill's second week, when the estimate rose to 5,000 barrels a day, the calculation appears to have come from "an unsolicited, one-page document" e-mailed to the Coast Guard from an NOAA scientist. There is no indication that the scientist had expertise "in estimating deep-sea flow velocity from video data or that he used an established or peer-reviewed methodology when doing so." The scientist made clear his figure was a "rough estimate," but put it forward to "warn" officials that the flow rate was four times greater than originally figured.

Withholding information
A behind-the-scenes tussle between the NOAA and the White House Office of Management and Budget added to the confusion over the numbers. The NOAA wanted to release its worst-case scenario estimating the oil spill flow rates. But OMB squelched the request. "The lack of information may have contributed to public skepticism about whether the government appreciated the size of the Deepwater Horizon spill and was truly bringing all of its resources to bear."

Pointless infighting
Dubbed the "Boom Wars," disputes between federal and local officials over the use of boom to hold oil back from the shoreline became a "serious distraction" and slowed the response to the spill.

Aside from quarreling with the Coast Guard and BP, local officials competed with each other to obtain boom. Each state wanted its entire shoreline boomed, and each state wanted "as much or more boom than the next state." In the end, boom was distributed in response to "political imperatives, not operational ones."

For example, once local parishes in Louisiana had boom, they didn't want to give it up. On July 22, as the Coast Guard began removing boom in preparation for Hurricane Bonnie, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser threatened "to slash the tires of trucks" carrying away the boom. Nungesser later explained the threat "was only a joke."

A sick one, it seems, so nobody's laughing -- not then, not now.

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