USGS: Teams Estimate BP Well Gushing 20,000 To 50,000 Barrels A Day

10th Jun 2010 22:43

By Cassandra Sweet Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Teams of government and university scientists have estimated that a broken BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was likely spewing between 20,000 and 50,000 barrels of oil a day before BP partially contained the flow earlier this month, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday. That estimate is up from a range the government put out May 27 of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day. Teams of scientists working separately and using different measuring techniques came up with a range of estimates of the rate at which the oil was flowing out of the well before BP sliced a broken pipe connected to the well and placed a containment device over the well June 3, said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. Some of the flow-rate estimates within the range were based on analyzing high-resolution video of the gushing oil, while other teams used remote sensing technology and satellite imagery to estimate the flow, McNutt said. She added that scientists are still working to determine how much oil has been flowing before the well pipe was cut, and how much oil has been flowing after the pipe was cut and the containment device was placed. McNutt said the calculations were made assuming that 40% of the material flowing out of the pipe is oil. The teams include scientists from the Department of Energy, the USGS, the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Georgia and other research institutions, McNutt said. Earlier Thursday, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said BP might be increasing its ability to capture crude spewing from the broken Macondo well, but that all the extra crude will be flared off into the atmosphere. BP has captured 73,000 barrels of oil aboard the vessel Discoverer Enterprise in the last six days, Allen said. -By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-439-6468; [email protected] Order free Annual Report for BP plc Visit http://djnewswires.ar.wilink.com/?link=BP or call 1-888-301-0513 Order free Annual Report for Transocean Inc. Visit http://djnewswires.ar.wilink.com/?link=RIG or call 1-888-301-0513 (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 10, 2010 17:43 ET (21:43 GMT)