Oil spill latest: Newest estimates suggest 40,000 barrels

40,000 barrels are gushing...

It has been 56 days since the Deepwater Horizon caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, crippling a riser pipe and sending gallons of crude oil into the sea. Despite several estimates concerning the quantity of oil flowing from the ruptured pipe, new evidence has put a more accurate estimate at 40,000 barrels, dwarfing the current guess of 17,000 barrels.

BP originally estimated around 1,000 barrels in the days preceding the spill, but were quickly corrected by the US Coast Guard, who speculated 5,000 barrels. However the figure was greatly inflated when scientists from Purdue University studied remote cameras of the spill, and put the number of gallons gushing per day at a catastrophic 80,000 barrels. This figure was reduced to around 17,000 barrels a day by the US Coast Guard, after the amount of oil BP were collecting after the installation of the RITT was calculated. So what is to be deduced with all the to-ing and fro-ing? Truthfully, that no-one really knows for sure.

One thing for certain is that with every siphoning technique deployed, BP's figures have proven hopelessly optimistic.

This has been further highlighted this week when scientists doubled the estimate from around 17,000 to 40,000 barrels, taking into account the Lower Marine Riser package siphoning oil to a containment vessel.

Democrat Ed Markey has accused BP of lying about the size of the spill to limit the financial impact on the company, an allegation that BP has vehemently denied.

If the oil has been gushing at 40,000 barrels a day since the Deepwater Horizon sank, then it would make the spill eight times worse than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and one fifth the size of the 1990 Persian Gulf spill caused by Saddam Hussein blowing up the Kuwaiti oilfields.

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