I truly believe the article is low on the spilled crude and your number is a little high. Good friend and I did some calculations and determined that the well was flowing between 80 and 100 thousand barrels per day. Total flow was somewhere around 4.5 to 5 million barrels of crude.
Your number is considered to be a mega field. Billion versus million.
I took the article’s barrels, multiplied by 55, and rounded up on the grounds that one ought to round against one’s self when arguing (probably about a 10% difference due to rounding).
I have no idea what your next to last sentence means, but would be very interested in learning. I also understand that your last sentence is meant to shed light on the previous sentence, but I don’t get it—my guess is that I’m off three orders of magnitude due to something I don’t understand.