UPDATE: BP: Collected 7,630 Barrels Of Oil Thursday

11th Jun 2010 01:18

(Updates to include time period when oil was collected) DOW JONES NEWSWIRES BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) said Thursday that its containment system collected 7,630 barrels of oil earlier in the day, after collecting 15,800 barrels of oil Wednesday from a broken well in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. The oil was collected between midnight and noon Central time. Those figures are in line with the amount of oil BP said it collected Tuesday. The report comes hours after the U.S. Geological Survey said government and university scientists increased their estimate of the amount of oil that was flowing out of the well before BP installed the containment system June 3. The USGS said the estimates from various teams of scientists range from 20,000 to 40,000 barrels of oil a day, with one study indicating the flow was as high as 50,000 barrels a day prior to the containment system being installed. Scientists are continuing to study the flow of oil from the well to estimate how much oil has gushed since June 3, the USGS said. The Discoverer Enterprise, where the recovered oil is being collected and processed, might be able to handle up to 18,000 barrels a day, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Wednesday. BP said that it flared 15.3 million cubic feet of natural gas on Thursday, and 31 million cubic feet of natural gas on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the company burned off 29.4 million cubic feet of natural gas. BP has said that it hopes to complete a system by next week that could collect up to 28,000 barrels a day from the spill site. However, some of that oil would be flared into the atmosphere. Neither BP nor the U.S. government has provided an estimate of how much oil has been flowing from the Macondo well since the containment device was installed. -By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-439-6468; [email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 10, 2010 20:18 ET (00:18 GMT)