The view from space indicates that the oil may be leaking at a rate of 25,000 barrels a day, dwarfing the figure of 5,000 barrels that US officials and the British oil giant BP have used in recent days.
That would mean that some nine million gallons may already have escaped from the underwater well following the April 20 explosion that killed 11 rig workers. It suggests the disaster will almost certainly prove greater than the Exxon Valdez tanker spill off Alaska in 1989, which released 11 million gallons and was the worst previous spill at sea.
Even BP has acknowledged that the 5,000-barrels-a-day figure for the leak – already a five-fold increase on the 1,000 barrels that it initially gave – is only a “guesstimate”. The Coastguard has also said that that leak rate could turn out to be much greater than 5,000 barrels.
The implications of the higher figures for the fishing waters, wildlife and beaches of the Gulf – and the residents whose livelihoods depend upon them – are potentially devastating.
John Amos, director of SkyTruth, a satellite data monitoring outfit that supplies analysis to environmental groups, told The Sunday Telegraph that the images and information made public by BP indicated that the slick was made up of at least six million gallons of oil.
“That is a conservative estimate and it would mean that oil is leaking at a rate of 20,000 barrels a day,” he said. “That’s a real eye-opener. And I believe the true figure is significantly higher.”
Ian MacDonald, a Florida professor of oceanography who tracks maritime oil seepage, estimated that more than nine million gallons may already have escaped into the sea on the basis of higher industry estimates of the rate of leakage. BP engineers have been desperately and unsuccessfully trying to use unmanned submarines to initiate a failed switch-off device on the well about a mile beneath the surface of the water.
– from telegraph.co.uk