Blowout (well drilling)

SIMMONS: ...when you look at the riser [on the live BP video], you realize that you're looking at a twenty-one-and-a-half inch circumference riser, and there looks like somewhere between a six and seven inch rip on the top. So the stuff coming out -- it looks like a lot, but I actually saw a white fish go through it and come out white. So I said, this isn't the same as this brown, gooey, orange stuff that they found in the plume seven miles away. And I still believe that what happened is that the riser blew off the wellhead, and it's hooked onto the rig; so you've got a mile of oil inside that that's pretty light concentrate. So that's what they're actually trying to get out. So it's not sure that -- luckily they placed the top kill correctly. But now they have to see if it will take mud. It probably will take mud. But then they shouldn't delude themselves that they've stopped the spill; they should now go and say, 'Let's figure out what the plume was all about,' because if THAT'S the hole, and the casing blew out, we have an enormous problem.

RATIGAN: ...so you're saying that the video we're all now looking at right now is not the only leak, is that what you're saying?

SIMMONS: That's a tiny leak, and what the scientists are saying watching this stain spread -- it's now bigger, I gather, than Maryland and Delaware, and several hundred feet thick, and it's gooey stuff -- that's NOT coming out of there; they think that it's flowing at 120,000 barrels a day. It would almost have to be that big to flow that wide.

RATIGAN: And where do you believe the second outlet is relative to what we're seeing on the video, Matt?

SIMMONS: What the research vessel found a week ago Sunday [referring to news reports of May 16, 2010] was this giant plume about six miles away, and then this huge layer of goo on the ocean floor... that's almost certain- I mean, maybe it's a natural fracture -- I think that's where the wellhead is.