Actually a NOAA video conference estimates it could be as bad as 4.6 million gallons A DAY.
This is up on the al.com website
A leaked memorandum obtained by the Press-Register on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the Deepwater Horizon well site could be on the verge of becoming an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.
It’s been interesting to see how the community has upped the estimates of this ecological disaster as the days have passed. Kos diarists were talking about the end of the world at 25k gallons a day. Now there is this one Alabama news site is reporting this truly horrific number.
ABC News was reporting tonight there was concern that the spill could ultimately go through the Florida Keys and up the east coast.
The Press-Register reported that estimate was not for public release.
From the article:
Asked Friday to comment on the document, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said that the additional leaks described were reported to the public late Wednesday night. Regarding the possibility of the spill becoming an order of magnitude larger, Smullen said, "I'm letting the document you have speak for itself."
In scientific circles, an order of magnitude means something is 10 times larger. In this case, an order of magnitude higher would mean the volume of oil coming from the well could be 10 times higher than the 5,000 barrels a day coming out now. That would mean 50,000 barrels a day, or 2.1 million gallons a day. It appears the new leaks mentioned in the Wednesday release are the leaks reported to the public late Wednesday night.
The reporter on this story also has another story with a video clip of a NOAA meeting. It includes a shot of a white board with the 110,000 barrels written on it as the worst case. The NOAA estimates there are much worse:
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration video, shot as officials coordinated response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, shows that federal officials almost immediately worried that the oil well could leak up to 110,000 barrels per day, or 4.6 million gallons.
How bad is it on the ocean floor? From an oil engineer:
First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it.
When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean.
Now they've got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you!
First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water? That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? There just is no way. No way.
He goes on to say:
It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?
One ecologist has called this disaster ‘America’s Chernobyl’. I fear that might be an understatement.
Link to the first story:
http://blog.al.com/...
Link to the second story with the NOAA video conference:
http://blog.al.com/...
Link to the engineer (disclaimer – I’m not a survivalist – I just clicked through a couple of stories and ended up there):
http://www.doomers.us/...
UPDATE from a link provided by Tyto Alba in the comments.
Dr. Ian MacDonald at FSU just produced a new spill-size estimate based on the US Coast Guard aerial overflight map of the oil slick on April 28, 2010. The bottom line: that map implies that on April 28, there was a total of 8.9 million gallons floating on the surface of the Gulf.
That implies a minimum average flow rate of slightly more than 1 million gallons of oil (26,000 barrels) per day from the leaking well on the seafloor. Since we're now in Day 11 of the spill, which began with a blowout and explosion on April 20, we estimate that by the end of the today 12.2 million gallons of oil, at a minimum, have been spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
The difference here is this is an estimate of the current rate of flow from the well, not a worst case scenario.
http://blog.skytruth.org/
Update 2 Bill Maher slams Obama - about a minute in:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...