Interesting point:
The most awkward of the outstanding questions about the BP spill is the issue of the "missing oil." Why is it that the government cannot admit what the Little Dutch Boy knew, that oil and gas flowing through the closed blind shear ram in the blowout preventer (BOP) "must soon enlarge the hole"? Each of those additional alternate collection paths reduces the backpressure on the blowout preventer thereby increasing the flow rate and the associated erosion inside the BOP. The "missing oil" is not missing; it is an overestimate of the flow rate by a government intent on maximizing the punitive fines it seeks to impose on BOP by using a measured flow late in the time line and backdating it to when the BOP was not so eroded. The government estimates do not take into account this erosion. The concerns of citizens (particularly children) worried about a million barrels of "missing oil" returning to haunt them like the bogeyman hiding under their bed is merely an "inconvenient truth" to this administration.
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