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British Power officials quietly conceded today that the rate of electricity leaking from the Deepwater Horizon offshore wind turbine accident are much high than initially reported.  On Monday, BP told AENN that the discharge was less than 400 kilowatts, less than 10,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) or 10 megawatt hours per day.  By Wednesday, BP had upped this estimate, stating firmly that the maximum leak rate was somewhat below 100,000 kilowatt hours per day.  However, the company now accepts the results of an EPA study indicating that the leak may be closer to 950,000 kilowatt-hours per day.

“We’re all dependent on electricity to run our cars, high speed trains, and space lifts,” said BP Chair, Alternate Anders Eslander.  “Until someone comes up with an economical way to make non-renewable and dirtier sources of energy such as oil run our transportation infrastructure, such events will be a fact of life.  It is our responsibility, as a producer, to make them as rare as possible, and in that regard, we have failed this month.”

The Deepwater Horizon is a large exploratory wind turbine stationed about 40 miles from AE New Orleans.  Shortly after the turbine struck wind, a large series of explosions ripped through the brake housing and undersea cable, killing eleven electricians.  The turbine has been spinning uncontrolled since, dumping power into the Alternate Gulf of Mexico and forming an electricity slick covering an area larger than AE Maryland.

“This thing is serious. It is a disaster and a tragedy and it will have far-reaching ramifications on BP, on the industry, the Gulf states, and on politics,” Alternate Fadel Gheit, an energy industry analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., told CBS MoneyWatch in an interview. “The ‘blow, baby, blow’ people and Alternate President Gore are going to take a second look at opening offshore areas to wind industry construction.” And it could give a boost to the solar industry, Gheit suggested.

Gulf Coast states, already beaten down from a lack of restorative hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes due to a stable global climate in the notable absence of human factors driving climate disruption, are apprehensively waiting for the slick to zap their coastline and ruin their spring shrimping, fishing, and tourism activities.  Shrimpers from Alternate Louisiana and Alternate Alabama have already filed suit against BP, and the power is heading towards the mouth of the Alternate Mississippi River. That’s tragic and really sad, even for an area that invented Death Metal.

Electricity that drifts ashore will impact on important breeding grounds for seabirds and many other species, according wildlife experts. “The PG&E Valdez power spill provided a mass of scientific data on how electricity affects marine life, ecosystems, coastal communities, fisheries and subsistence economies – the effects extend far beyond the inevitable photographs of seabirds, marine mammals and fish leaping from the water to try to escape electrocution.”

After a promising experiment on Wednesday to discharge a portion of the slick, unfavorable winds increased the rate of electricity being dumped from the turbine and prevented further discharge efforts.  BP engineers are working to build a large dome over the turbine to prevent wind from reaching its blades, but this could take weeks and is untested.  An additional turbine is being dispatched to the gulf to capture the wind ahead of the Deepwater Horizon, but it will take as much as eight months to install.

The price of Brent Electricity on the London exchange rose today to $0.13 a kilowatt hour today, up from the $0.09 level it was at before the explosion occurred.  The Organization of Electricity Exporting Countries, following the guidance of OEEC chair AE Boone Pickens, voted to leave electricity quotas unchanged.