A remotely operated undersea vehicle works on the leaking riser pipe at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico in this video image taken from a BP live video feed June 3, 2010.
(BP/Reuters)

BP COO Doug Suttles Says Company is More Focused on Battling Oil Than Counting What's Leaking

A day after government scientists confirmed the existence of undersea plumes of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, a top BP official said the concentration of oil found amounted to "good news."

"We're putting lots and lots of effort out there to see where the oil is, but I can say right now -- and I'm really pleased about that -- it's good news in that we haven't found any large concentrations of oil below the surface," BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told "Good Morning America" today.

For weeks scientists warned about massive plumes of oil under the water's surface, and in late March, scientists aboard a research vessel in the Gulf told "GMA" they were tracking an "enormous" plume that was about four miles long and at least a mile wide. On May 30, BP CEO Tony Hayward said such claims by researchers were backed up by "no evidence" and said flatly "there aren't any plumes."

On Tuesday the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed for the first time the existence of "very low concentrations of subsurface oil." Today Suttles said BP had widely published their findings about underwater oil and the confusion was likely a matter of semantics.

"What NOAA talked about yesterday was very consistent with what we've measured and we've seen," Suttles said. "No one has yet found any concentration that measured higher than the parts per million. It may be how you're defining [an oil plume.]"

Suttles: BP Focused On Battling Oil, Not Counting It

Suttles also denied allegations that BP was intentionally dragging its feet in finding an accurate calculation of how much oil was leaking into the Gulf for fear of legal repercussions.

"This is horribly difficult. You can't put a meter on this down at the sea bed," he said. "I can tell you what our team is focused in on is how do we get this flow stopped, how do we minimize the impact, how do we fight this thing off shore. That's what we've been worried about... We have not been talking about the difficulty in measuring this about any legal issue."

Suttles said he did know the cap is currently catching an estimated 15,000 barrels each day that's not heading into the sea.

Authorities said Tuesday that the cap is collecting anywhere from a third to three quarters of the oil coming out of the damaged well, but no one is sure how much is escaping.

When asked Tuesday whether the flow could be as high as 60,000 barrels per day, the top government official on the job, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, said he simply didn't know.

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