[Wonder Warthog]

"And, I've no idea if the explosion might have "opened things up" and allowed more oil than originally expected to escape."

Emphatically no. The explosion happened on the drill ship on the surface. No possible way to affect downhole. Flow might increase, but any such increase will be driven by things happening in the oil reservoir.

[wbill]

Good, I was hoping that more learned Freepers than I would jump in.

So, is it possible to get 100K bpd out of a well that was expected to produce a small fraction of that? Any idea?