Video suggests 95,000 barrels, not 5,000, gush into gulf daily

WASHINGTON - The latest glimpse of video footage of the oil spill deep under the Gulf of Mexico indicates that around 95,000 barrels, or 4 million gallons, a day of crude oil may be spewing from the leaking wellhead, 19 times the previous estimate, an engineering professor from Purdue University told Congress yesterday.

BP and the federal government have been using the figure of 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day for weeks. That estimate is based on observations of the surface slick from satellites and aircraft. Even NASA's satellite-based instruments, however, can't see deep into the gulf waters, where much of the oil from the gusher seems to be floating. The well is 5,000 feet below the surface.

Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., earlier this month made simple calculations from a single video BP released on May 12 and calculated a flow of 70,000 barrels a day, NPR said last week.

Yesterday, Mr. Wereley told a House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee that his calculations of two leaks that are on videos BP released on Tuesday showed 70,000 barrels from one leak and 25,000 from the other.

He said the margin of error was about 20 percent, making the spill between 76,000 and 104,000 barrels a day. However, Mr. Wereley said he'd need to see videos that showed the flow over a longer period to get a better calculation of the mix of oil and gas from the wellhead.

Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), who led the hearing, said in a news release last night that BP had agreed to his request to make available online a live feed of the oil spill, starting on his Web site, markey.house.gov.

Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, said in an interview yesterday that over the week he'd had talked with other government science officials about how to get a more precise calculation of the flow, a better estimate of the total oil in the gulf since the April 20 blast, and an accurate assessment of what's happening to the oil on the surface.