Washington (Platts)--4Dec2012/527 pm EST/2227 GMT

Future offshore drilling permits should be conditioned on a company having mechanisms in place to accurately and rapidly determine well flow in the case of a blowout, a report from top US government scientists concludes.

The report, a collection of 15 articles, was published Monday in the new issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Determining the rate at which oil was gushing from BP's Macondo well in the days and weeks following the April 2010 blowout was one of the biggest challenges facing government scientists and a key area to be resolved going forward.

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The recommendation for better flow rate monitoring, as well as the need for new research on the impact of dispersants on the environment, was contained in a series of articles written by officials involved in the BP blowout response, including Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The issue of flow rates was not only a key issue in determining how to cap the Macondo well, but became the focus of a criminal investigation into the spill. The US Justice Department on November 15 charged a BP employee with lying to Congress by lowballing the flow rate when he had evidence to show that oil was leaking at a much faster and voluminous rate.

The collection of articles written by government scientists, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, concludes that determining the flow rate was difficult for everyone because of the multiple points of oil leakage and the lack of any agreed-on procedures.

"The lack of reasonable flow rates early on was problematic from the perspectives of both communication and response, but the lack was caused by real uncertainty rather than any attempt to hide information or underestimate numbers" one report states.

FLOW RATES AND THE FAILED 'TOP KILL' EFFORT

Determining flow rate quickly was key to determining the best method to plug the well. Attempts to force heavy drilling mud and various rubber items, including golf balls, down the well -- the so-called "top kill" -- was unsuccessful because more hydrocarbons were flowing at a faster rate up the well than estimated.

The failure of such early fixes, and the inability to determine accurately where the spilled oil was going and how best to collect, disperse or burn it, caused a lack of public confidence in BP's early relief efforts, one paper states. But the cooperation of the company was essential to understanding the dynamics of the blowout and how best to respond, the report concludes.

"Some political leaders had suggested that the government take over responsibility for stopping the oil spill after the failure of the Top Kill," the report states. "Given BP's skill at executing exceptionally difficult and complex operations in extreme environments, it would have been a mistake to remove BP from the response effort."

The 15 articles published together, including several that had been previously published online, are an attempt, scientists said, to evaluate the accuracy of information given to the public during the crisis.

"While the federal family was well versed in oil response and remediation, and we brought many resources to bear, the scale and complexity of Deepwater Horizon taxed our organizations in unprecedented ways," Lubchenco said in a statement. "We learned much during this extraordinary disaster and we hope the lessons learned will be implemented before and used during any future events."

--Gary Gentile, gary_gentile@platts.com
--Edited by Robert DiNardo, robert_dinardo@platts.com

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