By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times
A tiny nonprofit group with one paid staffer in a one-room office in a small West Virginia town has been causing U.S. officials and oil company executives to backtrack and revise their estimates of the size and flow of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
SkyTruth first analyzed satellite and radar data on the spill shortly after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank after a fire April 22. It challenged initial estimates that 1,000 barrels of oil were gushing daily from the wellhead nearly a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. Federal officials and BP quickly revised the estimated daily rate to 5,000 barrels....continued.....
SkyTruth first analyzed satellite and radar data on the spill shortly after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank after a fire April 22. It challenged initial estimates that 1,000 barrels of oil were gushing daily from the wellhead nearly a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. Federal officials and BP quickly revised the estimated daily rate to 5,000 barrels....continued.....
