Feds Publish Secret Oil Spill Calculator

The federal government has finally published the secret formulas on which it based its widely publicized claim that the spilled BP oil in the Gulf of Mexico was mostly "gone."

The administration team managing the oil spill declared in an August 4, 2010, PR blitz that most of the oil that had spewed into the Gulf was "gone." They said that conclusion had been peer reviewed — when in fact it had not. When asked for the data and formulas on which their conclusions were based, they said they could not release that information because it had not been peer reviewed.

Some five months later, they have released the technical information. Now that you have long since published your story about the disappearance of BP's oil from the Gulf, you may want to check the math that story was based on.

• "Oil Budget Calculator: Deepwater Horizon — Technical Documentation," The Federal Interagency Solutions Group, Oil Budget Calculator Science and Engineering Team, document dated November 2010 released in January 2011.