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"It's been moving up since the beginning. No one knows for sure, estimates range widely."

True. But I can guarantee you that BP and the Coast Guard have got the best estimates, and have since not long after the "pump and capture" process has been put in place.

Here is how they know:

1) the size of all the leak points is known (by this point they have 3D CAD models of the whole riser pipe and all the penetrations).

2) the size of the inlet pipe for "pump and capture" is known (obviously, since BP installed it).

3) BP knows how fast they have to run the suction pump so as to draw in the maximum amount of oil and minimum amount of water from that inlet line. Given these facts, "I" could calculate a pretty reasonable figure for the amount of oil flow, and I'm sure that the oil professionals could calculate it even more closely.

Is this an accurate method. No, it's an estimate, since BP has NOT known what the spill flow was prior to the installation of the pump and capture. But it will certainly give the full size of the spill to within a factor of two, and probably closer than that.

I left off one key point. What I summarized will yield the "linear velocity" of the oil column. This can also be gotten by "particle velocitometry" (the Purdue guy). But without knowing the oil/gas ratio (which is also available from samples taken from the "pump and capture" plumbing), the linear velocity isn't worth a bucket of warm spit in calculating the amount of oil spilled.

Which is why the stargazing done by all the armchair experts looking at the video feed has zero likelihood of being right.

But BP and the Coast Guard "do" have all the necessary information. You might say (as many on here do) that "BP lies". That may be true, but not with the Coast Guard (and probably others by this time) auditing every action taken.