BP denies coverup as oil keeps spilling

VENICE, La. – BP Plc on Friday fended off accusations that it had not fully disclosed the size of a month-old seabed leak billowing brown crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in a spreading environmental disaster.

The London-based energy giant, facing growing U.S. government and public anger and allegations of a coverup, said its engineers were working with U.S. government scientists to determine the real size of the leak, even as they struggled to contain the still-gushing spill with uncertain solutions.

A month after the well blowout and rig explosion that unleashed the catastrophic spill, sheets of rust-colored heavy oil are starting to clog fragile marshlands on the fringes of the Mississippi Delta, damaging fishing grounds and wildlife.

Several scientists say the spill is much bigger than BP had previously announced and probably has eclipsed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. They fear parts of the massive fragmented surface slick will be sucked toward the Florida Keys and Cuba by ocean currents.

"I understand the frustration," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles on CBS’s "The Early Show." "I know people want more information . . . I can tell you we’re supplying information. We’re trying to give the data as quick as we can."

Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Ed Markey accused BP of mismanaging the spill and lying about its size. He said in comments to CNN "they should not be trusted."

"It’s obvious they are trying to limit information to protect their economic liability," said Markey, chair of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

BP denied any coverup and said some third-party estimates of the leak were inaccurate.

In a sign of the Obama administration’s mounting anger and frustration, senior U.S. official have demanded BP share more data on the spill with them, accusing the company of falling short in keeping the government and public informed.

BP said it was working with a newly created Flow Rate Technical Team to try to specify the exact amount of oil leaking from its ruptured Macondo well. It also posted live webcam video (on http://www.bp.com) that shows a brown plume of oil and gas billowing from the ocean floor.

Suttles said BP had spent almost $700 million on the spill response.

BP shares were down more than 3 per cent in London trading. The company has lost about $30 billion in value since the rig explosion, which killed 11 workers, sparked the disaster.

HOPING "TOP KILL" WORKS

The company said on Thursday it was siphoning 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 litres) per day of oil from the larger of two seabed leaks, from 3,000 barrels a day previously. But some scientists say the leak could be as high as 70,000 barrels (2.9 million gallons/11 million liters) per day or more.

Suttles said BP had "thrown absolutely everything" at trying to contain the leak and was working on attempting a "top kill" – pumping heavy fluids, and then cement, into the gushing well to try to shut off its flow.

"I think the best case scenario is actually either late Sunday or early Monday as this top kill procedure works and the flow stops . . . I think worst case is it takes us until the relief well gets down which is probably early August," he said.

BP is drilling a relief well to try to plug the leak.

"Until then we’ll try every technique available to us to get this flow stopped," Suttles said.

On the Louisiana coast, fishermen counted the cost to their livelihoods from the encroaching oil.

"Our primary worst fears are upon us," George Barisich, president of the United Commercial Fishermen’s Association, said. "This is going to keep killing stuff and it will make whole areas incapable of supporting marine life."

BP has promised to pay legitimate damages claims and faces billions of dollars in expected cleanup and damages costs.

Suttles said he hoped the environment would not be too badly hit. "I’m not an expert but I do know there have been larger spills in the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico has survived," he told CBS. "It’s a large body of water, it’s a warm body of water, it has natural oil seeps which the environment deals with."

The worst spill in North America came from a 1979 blowout that spewed up to 3 million barrels into Mexico’s Campeche Bay.

In a letter on Thursday to BP CEO Tony Hayward, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said that despite claims by BP that it was striving to keep the public and the government informed, "those efforts, to date, have fallen short in both their scope and effectiveness."

BP is scrambling on other fronts as well after the EPA ordered it to identify safer dispersants by Friday that can be used to contain the spill.