BP Oil-Capture-Rate Increases as Pace of Spill Stays a Mystery

Jim Polson and Jessica Resnick-Ault
Bloomberg
June 8, 2010

 BP Plc said more oil is being recovered from its leaking Gulf of Mexico well with a cap device, as the commander of the U.S.’s spill-response team said it’s unknown how much crude continues to leak.

A drillship above the leak recovered 7,541 barrels of oil in the 12 hours to midday yesterday, BP said on its website last night. Sustained over 24 hours, that would be 36 percent more than the 11,100 barrels the London-based company gathered June 6. BP said it will give its next update on the recovery rate at 9 a.m. U.S. central daylight time.

A governmental scientific team will reassess its estimates of the spill amount, which ranged from 12,000 barrels to 25,000 barrels a day, after BP stabilizes the recovery rate, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander, said yesterday at a press conference at the White House.

“We’re groping in the dark trying to figure out what our recovery capacity should be,” said Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University in Tallahassee. “They keep painting themselves into a corner and having to abandon the positions that they held before because they were not truthful about this, and didn’t try to get real numbers.”

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