Government Ups Daily Deepwater Spill Rate To 60,000 Barrels

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Every time the government releases new data on the rate at which the Deepwater Horizon rig is leaking, the figure doubles. Today, the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center reported that the rate at which oil is being released may be as high as 60,000 barrels a day. The original estimate from the government was 5,000 barrels. The figure has been revised several times.

“Working together, U.S. government and independent scientists estimate that the most likely flow rate of oil today is between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day.  The improved estimate is based on more and better data that is now available and that helps increase the scientific confidence in the accuracy of the estimate”

BP’s current plans to contain the spill estimate that it can capture between 60,000 and 80,000 barrels a day by the end of July. That should mean that the entire amount of the leak will be contained.

In the meantime, the government will probably double its estimates again.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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