'Academic' Scientists Forced to Reveal Private E-Mails in BP Trial

By Bruce Thompson

With billions of dollars at stake, BP is using every legal weapon at its disposal in federal court in New Orleans. The central question is: how much oil actually entered the Gulf of Mexico between the time the Deepwater Horizon Well blew out on April 20, 2010 and its final capping on July 15? With fines of $1,100 per barrel for simple negligence and $4,300 per barrel for gross negligence, the federal government has a strong financial interest in maximizing the estimate of the amount of oil spilled. As part of the BP oil spill trial preliminaries now being heard in federal court in New Orleans, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) researchers Christopher Reddy and Richard Camilli have been ordered by the court to surrender private e-mails regarding internal debates regarding the validity of their estimates of the flow rate from the BP Deepwater Horizon Macondo 252 well. They were so offended at being forced to document their work that they wrote an op-ed for the June 3 edition of the Boston Globe protesting this.... (Read Full Article)