Update:
Take this with the usual grain-of-salt that comes with reading commenters’ thoughts, but I found this gem from a comment on a PBS article about how the government and BP have vastly underestimated the flow of oil:
…there were at least two leaks – one “set” of leaks from the well head, the other from the broken 21″ riser pipe. From just the former video of the broken riser, NOT including the well head leaks, it is relatively simple math to figure out the amount of oil that was leaking from the pipe. With d=inner diameter of pipe in inches, the flow rate assumed at 2.5 pipe diameters per second (from the video), and oil assumed as 50% of total flowing fluid flowing out of pipe (from the video), the math is: [(3.14159) * (d/2)**2] in2 * [2.5d] in/sec * [1 gal/231 in3] * [3600 sec/hr] * [24 hr/day] * [0.5 oil/total ratio] = (367.20)*d*d*d in gallons/day. For a 20″ inner pipe diameter, this would equal 2,937,593 gallons/day. To get new numbers, we could change: (a) flow rate in pipe diameters per second (used 2.5 above), (b) oil ratio from pipe (assuming methane gas the rest) (used 0.5 above), and (c) d as inner pipe diameter in inches. But even if the reasonable numbers used above give us an estimate that is off the mark by 50% too high, we’re still talking 2 million gallons per day leaking just from the end of the broken riser (instead of 3 million), NOT including the well head leaks. And that, my friends, is 47,619 barrels per day, NOT including the well head. But let’s say we’re WAYYY off… 200% too high, so there would “only” be 1 million gallons per day from the broken riser. That is still 23,809 barrels per day, NOT including the well head leaks, much more than the new estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day…
Could this possibly be even close to correct?
