Skip to Content

DOE Releases Raw Data on Oil Spill

A new webpage provides numbers on how much oil is being recovered, and schematics of the technology involved.

There’s little good information about how much oil is leaking in the Gulf or how well the “top hat” that was designed to capture some of it is working (or whether, indeed, it’s making things worse).

But some numbers have been trickling in, and now Energy Secretary Steven Chu is making the data publicly available at a new webpage. The data includes the amount of oil and gas and methanol recovered from an insertion tube last month and now from the top hat system. It also includes drawings of the ruptured well and the technology being used to capture some of the leak. The Department of Energy says more data is on the way.

The information is being made available so that outside experts can analyze it. “We want to make sure that independent scientists, engineers and other experts have every opportunity to review this information and make their own conclusions,” Chu said, according to a press release.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.

ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.

New large language models will transform many jobs. Whether they will lead to widespread prosperity or not is up to us.

Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death

Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.

GPT-4 is bigger and better than ChatGPT—but OpenAI won’t say why

We got a first look at the much-anticipated big new language model from OpenAI. But this time how it works is even more deeply under wraps.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.