[agere_contra]

I’ll wait for someone from BP to tell us this. I stopped trusting Government officials years ago.

[marioinohio]

I’ll wait for someone from BP to tell us this. I stopped trusting Government officials years ago.

BP can't be honest, as the company has to pay fines depending on the number of barrels spilled.

[wbill]

I’ll wait for someone from BP to tell us this

If I remember right, the maximum output that BP was expecting from this well was something on the order of 5000 - 7000 barrels / day.

And, for clarification, since the MSM seems to use barrels and gallons more-or-less interchangeably, there are (I think) 40 gallons to a barrel. So 5000 barrels = 20000 gallons.

Wiser freepers can correct me, though. I'm not 100% certain of the numbers. And, I've no idea if the explosion might have "opened things up" and allowed more oil than originally expected to escape.

Anyhoo, I think that if they thought they could get 100K barrels /day out of ANYTHING, BP would be pulling out all the stops, full speed ahead, government lawsuits be damned. At current prices, that's what, 7 million bucks a day out of a single well? And a significant percentage of the total US consumption?

Do the math, it just doesn't add up. After all this is over (figure by this fall it will have faded from the headlines and be a distant memory) people will look over the aftermath and conclude that it was 20% "a problem" and 80% "utterly overhyped".

[P-Marlowe]

I’ll wait for someone from BP to tell us this. I stopped trusting Government officials years ago.

And you trust BP?

I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you.

[mojitojoe]

LOL, if you’re waiting for BP to tell you, don’t hold your breath.

A team of experts from government science agencies and universities estimated last week that at a minimum 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day were flowing from the well, but the team declined to estimate an upper end for the flow because the information they received from BP was inadequate.

Leifer, who is described in the flow rate’s preliminary report released last week as a “world reknown researcher” who’s published more than 60 scientific articles, said BP still has not delivered the data that scientists need for an accurate appraisal of the spill’s size.

“We’re still waiting,” he said.