A newly released report, meanwhile, shows the federal government could still be drastically underestimating the size of the spill. Last week the government estimated the well is spewing between 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day. But according to the Huffington Post, the Department of Interior’s “Flow Rate Technical Group” now says those figures represent the lower range of “lower bounds” using conservative estimates.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Center for Public Integrity released a report showing the Coast Guard knew within twenty-four hours of the April explosion that the rig’s blowout preventer had failed and that the spill could have reached as high as 8,000 barrels a day, a larger figure than officials disclosed at the time.