U.S. President Barack Obama, flanked by Florida Governor Charlie Crist, second from left, and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, right, speak durning a briefing with local officials on the BP oil spill on June 15, 2010, in Pensacola, Fla.MANDEL NGAN
As many as 60,000 barrels of oil a day are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, 50 per cent higher than the most recent top-end estimate, according to new research issued late Tuesday afternoon by independent scientists and the United States government.
The government pegged the "most likely flow rate" of oil between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels a day, based on more reliable and additional data collected since last Thursday, when the flow range was estimated at 20,000 to 40,000 barrels of oil a day.
"This [new]estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP's well," said Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
BP currently has a system in place to capture and store 18,000 barrels of oil a day but the most it managed to snare was 15,800 on June 9. An additional ship in the Gulf was set to be readied on Tuesday to capture as much as 10,000 barrels a day, which would be burned, to increase total capture capacity to 28,000 barrels.
By the end of the month, BP aims to install another ship to increase capture capacity to 40,000 to 53,000 barrels per day, with a plan to have four ships in place by mid-July to be able to capture 60,000 to 80,000 barrels per day.
Complete relief won't occur until August when a well being drilled now is set to intersect the original well, and hopefully stanch the flow into the Gulf.
BP's oil collection system on its gushing leak in the Gulf of Mexico has restarted after a fire prompted a shutdown for several hours, a company spokesman and a U.S. Coast Guard officer said.
"I can confirm it has resumed operating," U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Gina Ruoti said.
A spokesman also confirmed the system had restarted.
A bolt of lightning struck the ship capturing oil from a blown-out BP well in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, igniting a fire that halted containment efforts in another setback for the embattled company in its nearly two-month struggle to stop the spill, the company said.
The fire was quickly extinguished and no one was injured. BP said it hopes to resume containing oil from the well sometime Tuesday afternoon.
The fire occurred on the Discoverer Enterprise, where engineers are siphoning about 630,000 gallons of oil a day through a cap on top of the well.
The fire happened as U.S. President Barack Obama was in Florida as part of a two-day visit to the stricken Gulf Coast. It also came a day after the British oil giant announced that it hoped to trap as much as roughly 2.2 million gallons of oil daily by the end of June as it deploys additional containment equipment.
BP has been beefing up its containment efforts with the hurricane season in mind, building a sturdier system that can withstand the volatile weather that is so common in the Gulf in the summer months.
The Coast Guard has taken BP to task for not having enough redundancies in the system to be able to shift gears in events such as Tuesday's lightning strike.
Mr. Wine said company hopes to soon start a second containment system - a burner on a semi-submersible drilling rig that could incinerate up to 420,000 gallons of oil a day. The company had hoped to start the system as early as Tuesday.
Scientists have estimated that anywhere between about 40 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf since a drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. Though the latest cap installed the well has been capturing oil, large quantities are still spilling into the sea.
The company said it would use robotic submarines to survey the entire containment system, including the cap over the well, for possible damage from the fire. The fire occurred in a vent pipe leading from a tank on the Enterprise where processed oil is stored, Mr. Wine said.
Louisiana has been hit with several storms and lightning strikes in the past day.
With reports from Reuters and The Associated Press
David Ebner