WH Takes on Response to BP (NYSE:BP) Oil Spill Report by Oil Spill Commission

The pot was stirred up Wednesday when an extremely critical report on how the Obama administration responded to the BP (NYSE:BP) oil spill was released by the Oil Spill Commission studying the matter.

Several of the more damning conclusions concerned the amount of oil left in the ocean, obstructing the release of worst case scenarios concerning the spill, and too much optimism from the White House, which may have resulted in being detrimental to the response effort by slowing down the speed and size of the operation.

Possibly the most odd of the charges were in reference to the "vast majority" of the oil from the spill having left the ocean.

Even though that may have been communicated poorly by Carole Browner, the further clarification from NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco took care of it.

She said, “The vast majority of the oil from the BP oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed much of which is in the process of being degraded. A significant amount of this is the direct result of the robust federal response efforts.”

That remains the official line of the White House, and further testing and investigation hasn't disproved those assertions. As a matter of fact it's some of the so-called independent scientists who have been made to look foolish by saying some gigantic oil plume was roaming the Gulf, when in fact it can't be found by anyone searching for it, and was asserted two months after the fact, making it look like some type of agenda was behind the concept.

The worst case scenario charge that the White House or Office of Management and Budget, was attempting to hinder that from being revealed to the public, was rejected, as they said the modeling used by the NOAA in the worst-case scenario didn't include the impact of oil being collected, skimmed or burned, thus skewing the potential outcomes that would have been presented.

Also recalled was the media appearance of Thad Allen and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar saying the worst-case scenario could reach as high as 100,000 barrels a day released into the Gulf waters.

The overly optimistic charge is a strange one to me as well. How do you measure that? It almost sounds like a radical environmentalist was on the commission that was angry that the spill happened in the first place.

The report even says, that it was “not clear that this misplaced optimism affected any individual response effort.” Why even bring it up then?

Finally, the White House said the report was a draft that hadn't been signed off on by members of the Oil Spill Commission members or chairmen, suggesting why it seems somewhat sloppy in its conclusions.

Now the problem is if a revised version of the report is released that differs a lot from the "draft," most won't believe it, and will believe pressure from the White House altered the findings.