President Obama rationalizes not prosecuting his Bush predecessors because he wants to look forward not back. Who knew that he meant “back” to the future as well? The Obama administration has get-out-of-jail-free cards for Goldman Sachs et al, and they’re already fouling the evidence that could be used against BP. It serves BP’s interest to pretend their Gulf spill is spewing only five thousand barrels a day. Now even the government is pretending everyone is too busy with the cleanup to measure exactly. It can’t be for want of a lesser-decimal soundbite, experts have the blowout pinned at a similar-syllable’d four million gallons per day.

The government and BP’s incuriosity ignores current estimates that the flow of crude oil escaping the well is between 76,000 and 104,000 barrels, 95,000 being the mean which yields a figure of 1/3 of the Exxon Valdez disaster PER DAY.

Of course as the spill grows to round Florida and reach Cuba and the Atlantic coast, the White House is prepared to forecast that the flow has gotten worse. So far chemical dispersants are diluting the muck that is the public’s only measure of the catastrophe.

The Miami Herald quotes Houston engineer and blogger Bob Cavnar who suggests that industry approximations which the media has been parroting are simply bullshit:

“I’m sitting here looking at it right now, and it ain’t 5,000 barrels a day, I’ll guarantee it … In Houston, there’s about 125,000, 150,000 engineers. And all the engineers can calculate what the flow is.”