The government has new estimates of the amount of oil currently flowing out of the oil gusher, and the numbers just keep getting bigger. The new estimates fall somewhere between 1.47 and 2.52 million gallons a day.
Per the AP:
A government panel of scientists said that the ruptured well is leaking between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons a day of oil. That is an increase over previous estimates that put the maximum size of the spill at 2.1 million gallons per day.
"This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP's well," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.
The latest numbers reflect an increase in the flow that scientists believe happened after undersea robots earlier this month cut off a kinked pipe near the sea floor that was believed to be restricting the flow of oil, just as a bend in a garden hose reduces water flow. BP officials has estimated that cutting the kinked pipe likely increased the flow by up 20 percent.
This is the estimate for the post-cutting of the riser number, so it is likely higher by about 20% than the flow before the riser was cut. What this means though is that even with the current containment numbers, almost 2 million gallons of oil a day are leaking into the gulf.
Lets hope that these numbers are the final estimates, and they don't keep going up. If they are really able to get containment to 80,000 barrels by mid-July, then they should be capturing all of the oil under their worst case scenario. If it's mid July and oil is still leaking out, then this thing has been even worse than possibly imagined.