Restriction to the Gulf: The New Area 51

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alternet.org
Tara Lohan
4 Ways BP and Officials Are Working to Suppress the Outrageous Facts About the Gulf Disaster

From intimidating reporters to trying to enforce no-fly zones, there seems to be a concerted effort to block public access to information.

With BP's oil gusher in the gulf approaching two months, public anger is approaching the boiling point. When will the oil spilling into the gulf be stopped and what remediation can be done for the ecosystem and the local economy? Those of us who aren't at ground zero have to rely on what the media is reporting -- which is turning into an outrageous scandal of its own.

"Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials," wrote Jeremy W. Peters for the New York Times. "To some critics of the response effort by BP and the government, instances of news media being kept at bay are just another example of a broader problem of officials' filtering what images of the spill the public sees. Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of information that has emerged from BP and government sources. Three weeks passed, for instance, from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and the first images of oil gushing from an underwater pipe were released by BP."

So what's really going on? Is there is concerted effort to block information from reaching the public? Here are four examples that point to a widespread effort to suppress public access to information about an environmental disaster -- we may still not yet know exactly how bad this thing is, or how bad it's going to get.

1. Restricting Access

One of the most common complaints so far from journalists is that they are having problems getting the access they need to do their jobs -- like CBS, which reported its news team was threatened with arrest while attempting to get footage of an oil-soaked public beach. Weeks of similar complaints resulted in a memo issued by Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, claiming that the company is not interfering with press access.

The memo states: "Recent media reports have suggested that individuals involved in the cleanup operation have been prohibited from speaking to the media, and this is simply untrue. BP fully supports and defends all individuals' rights to share their personal thoughts and experiences with journalists if they so choose."

But when WDSU news anchor Scott Walker tried to interview cleanup workers on a public beach on Grand Isle, LA, private security guards tried to prevent him. The news agency reports: "He told the guards he intended to ask contracted cleanup crews about their efforts while workers were on their breaks. The guards told Walker he could not question the workers and was not allowed on the public beach."

And Walker hasn't been alone. The New York Times reported a similar incident on Grand Isle by media from the New York Daily News. "The contractor summoned a local sheriff, who then told the reporter, Matthew Lysiak, that news media had to fill out paperwork and then be escorted by a BP official to get access to the beach," the article said. "'For the police to tell me I needed to sign paperwork with BP to go to a public beach?' Mr. Lysiak said. 'It's just irrational.'"

And it's not just Grand Isle; many journalists have been stymied trying to get in the air to get a glimpse of the scope and damage of the disaster. Flight restriction over the water have prevented many from doing so. "Each time they fly in the area, they have to be granted permission from the F.A.A.," reported the New York Times.

Can't get into the air or interview subjects on the beach -- how about taking a boat ride? Well, that's pretty tough, too. Reporting for Earth Island Journal, Jason Marks writes that at Grande Isle, "The beaches are no-go zones even for homeowners with beachfront property, and the press can hit the sand only by going through a complicated credentialing process. The Coast Guard is arranging media tours by boat, but the waiting list is close to a week long. Charter boats are either hard to find (most of the captains are working for BP), or else relatively expensive ($300 for an afternoon on the water)."

Clearly this is problematic, if you're trying to let the public know what's going on. As Peters concedes, "Media access in disaster situations is always an issue. But the situation in the gulf is especially nettlesome because journalists have to depend on the government and BP to gain access to so much of the affected area."

And if you're BP or the U.S government, there's a really good chance you don't want people to know just how bad things really are.

2. Hiding Evidence

"It looks as if someone is destroying evidence at the scene of the crime," Keith Olbermann reported days ago. Marine biologist Dr. Riki Ott told Olbermann of reports from wildlife volunteers who are walking the beaches that oiled wildlife keeps disappearing in the night. "In my opinion there is a strong attempt, not only to minimize how much oil was spilling, but now to control the evidence of the damage," Ott told Olbermann.

In a recent article, she explained:

In Orange Beach, people told me BP wouldn't let them collect carcasses. Instead, the company was raking up carcasses of oiled seabirds. "The heads separate from the bodies," one upset resident told me. "There's no way those birds are going to be autopsied. BP is destroying evidence!"

The body count of affected wildlife is crucial to prove the harm caused by the spill, and also serves as an invaluable tool to evaluate damages to public property -- the dolphins, sea turtles, whales, sea birds, fish, and more, that are owned by the American public. Disappeared body counts means disappeared damages -- and disappeared liability for BP. BP should not be collecting carcasses. The job should be given to NOAA, a federal agency, and volunteers, as was done during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

A BP contractor, fed up with attempts by the company to cover up the effects of the spill and deny media access, decided to give journalists his own tour of Queen Bess barrier island. Think Progress reports:

"There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don't want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It's important to me that people know the truth about what's going on here," the contractor said.

"The things I've seen: They just aren't right. All the life out here is just full of oil. I'm going to show you what BP never showed the President." [...]

"BP is going to say the deaths of these animals wasn't oil-related," the contractor added. "We know the truth. I hope these pictures get to the right people -- to someone who can do something."

3. Withholding Information

Things have gotten so bad that the group OpenTheGovernment.org sent a letter to President Obama that was signed by the Society of Professional Journalists and dozens of other organizations expressing their concern over the public's ability to access data related to the Gulf disaster. "Access to all monitoring data is crucial for scientists and the public to understand the extent of the problem, and plan for how to help the area recover and thrive," they wrote.

And there is ample reason to be concerned. Here's what they expressed:

Based on a brief clip of BP's feed that has been made available, independent scientists have assessed that the spill may differ from estimates larger than BP and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have calculated. Access to all monitoring data is crucial for resolving these conflicting estimates and improving public trust.

Monitoring data, including how much oil is spilling out of the leak, the effects of the oil on the surrounding area, what is being done to stop the leak, and the results of tests on the extent of workers' exposure are matters of great national interest and concern to the public. The livelihoods of families that are reliant on the Gulf Coast's fishing and tourism industries -- and others -- are at risk. Further, it is too early to tell what the final cost of the disaster will be to public health. Given that the leak is within US Exclusive Economic Zone waters (and therefore within US territory) and operated according to a lease granted by the US government, the US public should have the right to access to the video feed, both past and current, as well as other information about the oil spill and its impact.

BP did not release video feed of the leak for a month and did so only after pressure from the public and the government. But as Timothy B. Hurst reports last week, they basically gave us crap to look at. "It turns out that those grainy videos that were so hard to get from BP in the first place are nowhere near the best they have," he explains. "That's right, there is high resolution video of the oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead and only now, 50 days after the initial explosion, are we learning that such video even exists."

This of course has direct implication in figuring out how much oil is leaking and is the reason why estimates of the damage keep going up the more we are actually able to learn. More...

Scientists fear mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen

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winonadailynews.com

Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange _ and troubling _ phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.

The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.

"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

The nearly two-month-old oil spill has created an environmental catastrophe unparalleled in U.S. history as tens of millions of gallons of have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Scientists are seeing some unusual things as they try to understand the effects on thousands of species of marine life.

Day by day, scientists in boats tally up dead birds, sea turtles and other animals, but the toll is surprisingly small given the size of the disaster. The latest figures show that 783 birds, 353 turtles and 41 mammals have died _ numbers that pale in comparison to what happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989, when 250,000 birds and 2,800 otters are believed to have died. More...

BP - White House Attempt Cover-up Worst Oil Spill in Human History

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Tom Eley
The history of a cover-up
New evidence undermines latest BP-White House estimate of spill size
On Thursday, BP and Obama administration efforts to conceal the size of the Deepwater Horizon spill were delivered another blow when teams of scientists estimated that the rate of the oil spill as of early last week was between 30,000 and 50,000 barrels (1.2 million to 2.1 million gallons) per day, and possibly higher.

The figures are staggering. Fifty-three days after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 workers, somewhere between 63 million and 107 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the latest estimates. Between every five and nine days the spill equals the Exxon Valdez, which dumped about 11 million gallons into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989.

An Associated Press analysis notes that, even taking the low-end estimate, “if those 63 million gallons of oil were put in gallon milk jugs, they would line up side by side for nearly 5,500 miles.”

Some scientists, among them Ira Leifer of the government-sponsored Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG), believe that BP’s decision to cut the riser pipe in order to siphon off a portion of the oil may have actually made the spill far worse. The well could feasibly release as many as 10 million gallons per day, according to a worst-case scenario revealed in paperwork BP submitted for each of its two relief wells.

It appears the spill will continue at least until mid-August—a minimum of 60 more days—and will perhaps drag on into September. This is when relief wells drilled diagonally to intercept with and plug the Deepwater Horizon’s may be completed—although there is no certainty that these can succeed. If it has not done so already, the BP spill by then will have easily eclipsed the worst oil spill on record, the 140 million gallons the Ixtoc I rig dumped off of Mexico’s Gulf coast in 1979 and 1980. According to marine biologists, the environmental and human impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are already far worse than the Ixtoc I, which was mitigated by its location and favorable currents.

The worst oil spill in human history has been, since its first days, the subject of a cover-up carried out by BP and the White House. The Obama administration and the oil giant have repeatedly been forced to increase their estimates in the face of scientific criticism, even as they collude to deny scientists and engineers access to the spill site. But each new official estimate, it has been revealed, was only the latest lie.

The effort to obscure the spill’s dimensions—based on profit calculations for BP and the Obama administration’s desire to promote deep-sea oil drilling—has, from the beginning, made it impossible to determine the best way to respond to the spill. The distance the spill can travel—and the level of the toxicity it can maintain—are based largely on its volume.

When the explosion took place on the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, there was a very high likelihood that the rig would collapse, in which case the riser connecting it to the ocean floor one mile below would crumple and burst. This is in fact what happened. But neither BP nor the Obama administration took practical steps to prepare for that eventuality.

On April 23, even after the rig collapsed, BP insisted there was no spill. This was seconded by Coast Guard officer Mary Landry, who for weeks functioned as spokesman for BP. Oil visible on the surface, BP and the Coast Guard claimed, was fuel from the collapsed rig.

At the time, BP hoped that the failed blowout preventer could be activated by robots to cut off the flow. This proved impossible.In these first four days after the explosion, the attempts of BP and the Obama administration to dismiss the possibility of a spill cost the Gulf Coast dearly. Some experts say that if booms could have been used to encircle what was then a very small spill area, a much larger disaster could have been averted. No such steps were taken.

It was not until a large spill, many miles in diameter, became visible on the ocean’s surface on April 24 that BP admitted there was a spill beyond the fuel that had been aboard the rig. By then the spill was so large booms could not be used to contain it. Presenting no evidence, BP next claimed that a maximum of 1,000 barrels (42,000 gallons) per day were spilling into the Gulf—a large spill, to be sure, but nothing in comparison to the Exxon Valdez. The claim could not be verified because BP—backed by the Obama administration—refused to allow independent scientific analysis, and refused even to release images of the pipe.

Nonetheless, scientists soon refuted BP’s claims. Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University, analyzed only the surface spill to estimate that 9 million gallons of heavy crude had been spilled by April 28, a clip of about 30,000 barrels (1.3 million gallons) per day. SkyTruth, a non-profit environmental analysis firm, put the figure at 12.2 million gallons by May 2, about the same rate. These rates, if they held, would mean that upwards of 60 million gallons would now be spilled—similar to the low-end FRTG released on June 10.

Criticism from these and other scientists finally forced the White House to acknowledge the spill was larger than BP claimed. On April 28, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), estimated that the spill could be at most 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons). The statistic came under immediate and sharp criticism from scientists who noted it was based on a methodology not at all applicable to the BP spill. The 5,000 barrel figure was nonetheless seized on by the media—and after several more days of sticking to the 1,000 barrel claim—by BP as well. Particularly dishonest was the New York Times. The Times had earlier penned an editorial demanding that Obama not relinquish his expansion of deep-sea drilling. On May 4, the newspaper published an absurdly-reasoned “news analysis” (“Gulf Oil Spill Is Bad, but How Bad?”) that attempted to raise doubts over whether the spill was a significant event at all. (See, “New York Times minimizes Gulf oil spill”).

BP reportedly has had 12 video cameras providing live footage of the spill from the ocean floor since soon after the explosion, but for weeks it refused to allow the public—and possibly even the Obama administration—the right to view this footage. After mounting criticism, BP on May 12 released a brief, pre-recorded clip of one of what was reported to be three leaks in the collapsed riser pipe.

A journalist from National Public Radio (NPR) took the footage to three experts for separate types of scientific analysis. The results were shocking. Timothy Crone, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, put the spill rate at 50,000 barrels (2.1 million gallons) per day. University of California astrophysics professor Eugene Chaing put it in a range of 20,000 to 100,000 barrels daily. Steven Wereley of Purdue University used particle image velocimetry to establish a spill rate of 70,000 barrels per day—which he soon increased to 95,000 barrels—with a margin of error of 20 percent.

In the face of this evidence, the Obama administration and BP steadfastly clung to the official rate of 5,000 barrels per day, repeatedly claiming that there was no way to know how much oil was gushing forth on the ocean floor, and that in any case, knowledge of the dimensions of the spill would not impact the response.

These were both lies. In fact, there were a number of means for calculating the spill rate. BP was aware of at least one of these, since it had recruited two scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts to oversee the implementation of a sonar device for measuring the spill rate. Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, who have performed many similar measurements, “were poised to fly to the gulf to conduct volume measurements,” the Times reported on May 14. “But they were contacted [just before their departure] and told not to come, at around the time BP decided to lower a large metal container to try to capture the leak. That maneuver failed. They have not been invited again.”

Scientific criticism, mounting popular anger, and the enormous spread of the spill finally forced NOAA to authorize the FRTG study. On May 27, the Obama administration revealed that the group had established a range of the spill of between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels per day. This too was a lie. In fact, the 12,000 to 19,000 figure represented the range of absolute minimum figures of the various scientists involved. They had not yet come up with a high-end range. Finally, yesterday, on June 10, the scientists on the FRTG released a new range for the rate of the spill of between 30,000 barrels, low-end, and 50,000 barrels.

This data, however, is based on the leak before the riser cut. Leifer told the New York Times on Tuesday that the spill was emitting “way more than it did before [the cut]. I don’t mean by 20 percent. I mean multiple factors.” For his part, Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu—who, as a University of California researcher received a huge grant from BP—insisted that cutting the riser pipe did not significantly increase the rate of flow. He also told Reuters that he felt confident that the moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling could soon be lifted.

Dead Zones: Oil seen from surface a fraction of oil spilled in the Gulf

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Gulf oil spill: real disaster might be lurking beneath the surface
Mark Sappenfield/CSM
From the first moments that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank last month, it has been apparent that the blooming Gulf oil spill has been an oil disaster unlike any other. But the full truth of that statement is perhaps only now beginning to become apparent.

The oil that can be seen from the surface is apparently just a fraction of the oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, according to an assessment the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology. Significant amounts of oil are spreading at various levels throughout the water column, says the report, which was posted online a week ago but first published by The New York Times Saturday.

The research, combined with other emerging data, could fundamentally alter researchers’ understanding of the oil spill. It suggests that vastly more oil than previously reported could be spilling from the wellhead and the attached riser pipe that now lies crumpled on the seafloor like a kinked and leaking garden hose.

Moreover, it suggests that serious environmental degradation could take place in the open ocean, creating massive “dead zones” where no creature can live because of the lack of oxygen in the water. The spread of oil at all levels of the Gulf also could become a concern for shore communities in hurricanes, which stir up the water column as they come ashore.

Scientists looking at video of the leak, suggest that as many as 3.4 million gallons of oil could be leaking into the Gulf every day – 16 times more than the current 210,000-gallon-a-day estimate, according to the Times.

The depth of the problem

The fact that the spill could possibly be so radically misunderstood nearly a month after it began speaks to the unique nature of this spill. In particular, it’s depth – 5,000 feet below the ocean surface – makes it both unprecedented and difficult to study.

For experts, “most of their experience is with shallow-water spills that quickly bleed black goo onto beaches that are cleaned up relatively quickly,” says the Los Angeles Times.

That is clearly not what has happened in the Gulf, where shorelines have, so far, emerged relatively unscathed.

The nature of the oil in the Gulf oil spill could be relevant – it is of a lighter grade than that in the Exxon Valdez spill, for example.

More relevant could be the dispersant that BP is applying to the oil at the source. BP officials have hailed the process as a success, noting diminishing oil at the surface. But the dispersant breaks the oil into smaller drops, which might instead be spreading throughout the water column, instead of rising to the surface.

It is not clear what this would mean environmentally, though past research indicates that oil can be trapped in the seabed for decades after oil on the surface is cleaned away.

Complicating projections

It would, however, make predictions for the spill far more complex.

"We have no idea where the oil that isn't reaching the surface is going," James Cowan Jr., an oceanography professor at Louisiana State University, to the Los Angeles Times. "It could go everywhere.

The Gulf currents operate differently at different levels, making the exact location and spread of the oil at different depths hugely important to predictions of where it might end up. Indeed, the system so complex that in time, oil could be taken anywhere from the Mexican Coast to Florida’s Palm Beach, research suggests.

BP has so far rejected any efforts toward pinpointing the exact amount of oil entering the Gulf, saying that effort would detract from other containment efforts, such as the current effort to stopper one of the leaks with a siphon. But getting a more accurate sense of how much oil in leaking could be vital to trying to account for all of it, scientists say.

NPR: Gulf oil spill more than 10X greater than thought

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desdemonadespair.net

By Frank James and Allison Richards
May 13, 2010, 7:02 pm

NPR has learned that much more oil, 70,000 barrels a day or more than ten times the official estimate, is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon pipe, based on scientific analysis of the video released Wednesday.

That's the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days.

The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that oil was gushing into the ocean at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day. But, again, NPR has been told that estimate is very low.

By Richard Harris
May 13, 2010

The volume of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig may be at least 10 times higher than previously estimated, NPR has learned.

The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that oil was gushing from a broken pipe on the Gulf floor at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day.

But sophisticated scientific analysis of sea floor video made available Wednesday by the oil company BP shows that the true figure is closer to 70,000 barrels a day, NPR's Richard Harris reports.

That means the oil spilling into the Gulf has already far exceeded the equivalent of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil.

The analysis was conducted by Steve Werely, an associate professor at Purdue University, using a technique called particle image velocimetry. Harris tells Michele Norris that the method is accurate to about 20 percent. That means the flow could range between 56,000 barrels a day and 84,000 barrels a day.

Another analysis by Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California Berkeley, calculated the rate of flow to be between 20,000 barrels a day and 100,000 barrels a day — both higher than the Coast Guard's estimate.

But the pipe is spewing both oil and gas and the BP does not make it clear how much is oil and how much gas.

"BP has always said there is no way to measure the amount spilling from the pipe," Harris said.

But, he said, the uncertainty could be reduced if BP would share more information with the scientists.

Oceanography professor: oil spill already greater than Exxon Valdez

washingtonpost.com
No one is sure how much oil is leaking. The Coast Guard initially said there was no leak, then said there was a leak of 1,000 barrels a day, then upped the estimate to 5,000 barrels. Adm. Thad W. Allen, the leader of the federal response and commandant of the Coast Guard, has cautioned against putting too much credence in any estimate.

Ian MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, has calculated the amount of oil based on satellite imagery and established models of oil dispersion and believes that the quantity is already greater than that dumped in Alaska by the Exxon Valdez in 1989. He estimated last week that 9 million gallons of oil are already in the water, compared with 10.8 million gallons in the Valdez disaster.

But he acknowledged that the real amount could be different. In any case, he said, the comparison to the Valdez spill is misguided, because the coastal gulf is far more economically significant than the sparsely populated coast of Alaska. More...

Oil blob triples in size - Florida braces for economic and environmental catastrophe

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Miami Herald
Florida environmental and emergency managers acknowledged Saturday that the state can't protect every stretch of coastline threatened by an uncontrolled undersea gusher spewing a massive oil slick that has spread across the Gulf of Mexico faster than expected.

Gov. Charlie Crist, who traveled to the Panhandle to inspect preparations, warned the state could be facing an economic and environmental catastrophe.

``It's simply unbelievable, the magnitude of this,'' said Crist of a looming mess that has more than tripled in size since he surveyed it earlier in the week and is now larger than Miami-Dade and Broward counties. ``It's not a spill, it's a continuous ooze.''

President Barack Obama planned a Sunday visit to the Gulf Coast, where the first shimmering traces were already building into black clumps clinging to marsh grass in the biologically rich Louisiana Delta and darker and far more damaging slop loomed just offshore. Mississippi, Alabama and Florida all were bracing for a nightmare cleanup from the sunken drilling rig that has belched the biggest U.S. spill since the Exxon Valdez and may soon, if not already, exceed that notorious 1989 accident.

With crews struggling to contain the sloshing oil as booms failed in rough seas and chemical dispersants and burning oil showed promising but still-limited success, the Coast Guard and British Petroleum were scrambling to find some way to cap a blown-out well a daunting mile beneath the surface.

``The first thing is to stop this thing at the source,'' said Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, tapped Saturday by the Obama administration to take charge of containment forces. ``To continue to fight this thing on the surface and shore is not the way to do it.''

MINIMIZING DAMAGE

Florida environmental chief Michael Sole, traveling with the governor, echoed that view, saying the state's strategy would focus on minimizing damage to coastal marshes, estuaries, seagrass beds and habitats for endangered species.

``You can't boom an entire state,'' Sole said, ``and as you can see with the rough waters, the oil can easily go over or under it.''

In Bay County, one of six western Panhandle counties Crist declared under a state of emergency, there will be nothing arrayed along the famed sugary sands of Panama City Beach.

`It's not a prevention effort because you can't keep it from making landfall on the beaches,'' said Mark Bowen, director of Bay's Emergency Management Center. ``It's a clean-up effort.''

The top priority in Bay was to keep oil out of St. Andrews Bay, a fragile system ringed with shallow marshes, he said. Crews planned to employ booms, but Bowen also had requested that BP supply an oil-skimming vessel stationed at the mouth of the bay.

Bowen said he was hoping favorable winds that had pushed the slick from its closest point of 89 miles back to 127 miles on Saturday would continue.

``There's still a chance that the worst might not come,'' he said.

The official forecast track from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration kept the oil off the Panhandle for at least 72 hours, but Allen warned winds were shifting and state emergency managers considered the weather merely a postponement, not a reprieve. They predicted some impacts by Wednesday. It could affect South Florida if the oil gets swept imto the Gulf's powerful Loop Current, which could steer it into the Florida Keys and then north up the East Coast.

RIPPLE EFFECTS

Some business owners in Panama City Beach were already feeling the ripple effects.

Bob and Nelly Elia, owners of Sunny Sands Motel on Panama City Beach, said two families had canceled stays.

``They're calling now, already, wondering what's going to happen and talking about refunds and all that stuff,'' Bob Elia said. ``The timing couldn't be worse because the season is one month away.''

At the Russell-Fields Pier, which extends 1,500 feet into the Gulf in Panama City, Sheila Sawyer of Dothan, Ala., came toting a fishing rod and a lot of anger.

``We knew we had to come,'' said Sawyer. ``This might be our last chance for awhile.''

In Pass Christian, Miss., 61-year-old Jimmy Rowell, a third-generation shrimp and oyster fisherman, told The Associated Press, ``It's over for us. If this oil comes ashore, it's just over for us. Nobody wants no oily shrimp.''

With estimates escalating of how much oil was flowing from the severed well of the Deepwater Horizon, there were growing concerns over the speed of the response by both BP and the federal government and the inability of an industry that has long boasted of its sophisticated technology and safety record to simply turn off a well.

One huge question -- and a major complication for emergency managers -- is just how much oil has escaped since the floating rig exploded on April 20, leaving 11 workers missing and presumed dead. The Coast Guard's estimate shot from 1,000 barrels a day initially to 5,000 barrels or about 210,000 gallons.

Environmentals have scoffed at those estimates as low-balls. Some scientists tracking the spill agree it has grown larger -- and potentially much more catastrophic -- than containment crews predicted.

SATELLITE IMAGES

Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing, said satellite and radar imagery shows the spill swelling from about 1,000 square miles to 3,500 in two days. Florida State University oceanographer Ian MacDonald, used satellite images and photos to estimate the spill at eight million to nine million gallons of oil -- as of Thursday.

By comparison, the Exxon Valdez poured 11 million gallons of light crude into pristine Alaskan water. The Coast Guard's official estimate since the April 20 explosion of Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was 1.6 million gallons.

MacDonald said he wasn't trying to play gotcha with the government's effort but simply answer a basic question: How much oil is out there already?

``This unfortunate emergency is going to test our level of preparedness,'' he said. ``The days and weeks to come will determine that. Right now, we have some catching up to do.''

Allen said it was impossible to precisely determine how much oil has fouled the Gulf but called it critical to cap the continuing flow. A permanent fix, a relief well that BP plans to soon begin drilling, could take three months to complete.

``The continued leakage of anything for that period of time is going to cause an extraordinary amount of problems.'' he said.

ROBOTS DEPLOYED

In one new test Allen called promising, BP began pumping dispersants deep underwater, which blend with the oil and sink it. An array of other measures were being considered to keep the oil from washing ashore, including increasing water flows down five rivers feeding Mobile Bay to keep the slick at bay.

BP's efforts to trigger shutoff valves with deep-diving robots have failed so far, but the company is rushing to complete an underwater dome designed to capture the oil and pump it to the surface, an approach that has worked in shallower water.

Other options include crimping the metal wellhead to reduce flow, or cutting it off and slipping a new blow-out preventer over it. Allen cautioned that crushing 5,000-foot depths added significant challenges to any repair plans and said he had asked the Department of Defense to lend help and technology for deep-sea repair. Military planes already are being used to drop chemical dispersants.

Allen and John Brennan, assistant to the president for Homeland Security, defended the Obama administration's efforts in a conference call with reporters, saying the Coast Guard and BP had ramped up efforts as the scope of the crisis became clear, shifting from fighting the rig fire and searching for missing workers to containing a fast ballooning slick.

``As the president has observed this volatile situation,'' Brennan said, ``he has directed that no effort be spared.''