Drilling Oversight Director Resigns

Elizabeth Birnbaum, director of the U.S. government’s Minerals Management Service, which has been roundly criticized for its cozy relationships with oil companies like BP, resigned Thursday in the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf, a source told the AP. Meanwhile, regardless of whether or not the latest would-be fix, the “top kill,” works, the oil leak looks much worse than previously estimated. Dismissing original estimates, scientists said Thursday that the well is leaking two to five times more oil into the Gulf of Mexico than the previously thought. An official for the U.S. Geological Survey put the preliminary number at 504,000 gallons a day. The Geological Survey is leading a team trying to figure out just how much oil is spilling out. Two other teams determined the rate was between 798,000 gallons and a million gallons a day. For the record, BP and the Coast Guard had first said the oil was flowing out at 210,000 gallons a day.