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[Nonsapient]

I mean that there has never been a spill. Didn't I say specifically that there has never been a spill? There has never been an accident of this type, and there are no known contributing factors to what we're seeing.

That's not true either.
Ixtoc I
Kab 101
Ekofisk Bravo

The oil field is full of mistakes.  This is not isolated.  I'm not saying this isn't horrendous;  just that this is by no means unique.

[Nonsapient]

Just out of idle curiousity, has the spill reached Exxon Valdez proportions yet?

We're almost certainly well past it.  That was only 250,000 barrels.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Maybe we can start measuring oil spills in "Exxon Valdezes" then, like we measure nukes in Hiroshimas?

[The Architect]

Just out of idle curiousity, has the spill reached Exxon Valdez proportions yet?

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-18/bp-doubles-estimate-for-oil-captured-in-gulf-spill-update2-.html

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-05/scientists-push-bp-hand-over-gulf-spill-video

At least 94,000 gallons as of May 18th, based on rather conservative estimates. It was later estimated that much of the oil was not reaching the surface, and that the rate was many, many times the previously estimated amount. Even then, the likely answer to your question is "not even close." There's a lot of difference between 1.5 million (the approximate amount leaked at the highest media-published estimates) and 10 million.

The danger here, they say, is that unlike tanker spills (all too common, I'm afraid), this broken rig will be spewing long into the foreseeable future. It is its potential output that is massive.

I moved on to research oil rig leaks, in case I'd been misinformed. Upon careful research, I find it's only US Gulf of Mexico rigs that have never had an accident of this kind. Australia and some others have had leaks. And after writing all of that, I found this:
http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/may/18/next-deepwater/
Which points to another similar unsafe BP rig, and casually mentions that the Deepwater leak is 210,000 gallons a day. Really??
Over 3 times Congress' published estimated high, this would put the disaster far beyond the Valdez.

"While you were typing 3 new replies have been posted."
List of 3 accidents:
Mexican,
Mexican,
North Sea w/shutoff valve.

Same 'ole.

Upon careful research, I find it's only US Gulf of Mexico rigs that have never had an accident of this kind.

You just beat me to it by a few seconds

[Paranatural]

You know, we need some good 'ol Bush-era conspiracy theories.

 Obama caused the oil spill.

You don't have to look very far for that tripe. Turn on Fox, or Rush Limbaugh (Same thing).

[LeoLeonardoIII]

http://www.texastribune.org/stories/2010/may/18/next-deepwater/
Which points to another similar unsafe BP rig, and casually mentions that the Deepwater leak is 210,000 gallons a day. Really??
Over 3 times Congress' published estimated high, this would put the disaster far beyond the Valdez.

So it sounds like the estimates range frmo 50,000 gallons / day, to 210,000 gallons / day, and someone else here suggested that it was actually 50,000 barrels per day but I don't know if that was really a thing.

Can anyone link to someplace that has an estimate from BP at least? We can assume that it would be no less than that, in any case, but that it could be much more. And then an estimate from some environmental organization, to give us an unreliable estimate on the high end?

[Greiger]

Mmm.  Delicious Fox Tripe.  My fortress subsists on it.

(and fox meat, and sweetbreads, and eyes, and brains.)

[Nonsapient]

So it sounds like the estimates range frmo 50,000 gallons / day, to 210,000 gallons / day, and someone else here suggested that it was actually 50,000 barrels per day but I don't know if that was really a thing.

Can anyone link to someplace that has an estimate from BP at least? We can assume that it would be no less than that, in any case, but that it could be much more. And then an estimate from some environmental organization, to give us an unreliable estimate on the high end?

If BP's siphon is getting 1000 barrels per day, this is a pretty bad leak.

However, there is a question as to the volume of the leak. BP still maintains an estimate of 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of oil per day, based upon surface observations. Dr. Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering has calculated the flow to be more on the order of 70,000 barrels (2.94 million gallons) of methane and oil per day, based upon direct observations from the larger pipe opening. According to him, though the leak shows methane being released in addition to the oil, the oil by far appears to be the majority of material being ejected. If Wereley is correct, BP is underestimating the leak by a factor of 14, and will actually be containing little of the oil eruption through its siphoning plan.

I am pretty certain it is in the 10s of thousands of barrels a day.  The 50,000 was just my conjecture, though others have floated that number.

Upon careful research, I find it's only US Gulf of Mexico rigs that have never had an accident of this kind.

You just beat me to it by a few seconds

That's a very different beast from what you originally said though, sir.  Making a delineation between US spills and other spills is rather specious as well.  BP is a British company, and Transocean swedish.  The same equipment is used in the north sea as that used here. The rig that sank was built in South Korea.  The difference is only this: to whom do the tax dollars go?  This just happens to be the first gulf spill the US govt. had a regulatory hand in.(which reinforces Aqizzar's earlier argument)  It is not the first gulf spill that United States based employees have overseen.  It gets to be a rather specious argument.

[RedKing]

From the latest Wikipedia entry:

On May 15, researchers from the University of Southern Mississippi aboard the research vessel RV Pelican identified enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles (16 km) long, 3 miles (4.8 km) wide and 300 feet (91 m) thick in spots. The shallowest oil plume the group detected was at about 2,300 feet (700 m), while the deepest was near the seafloor at about 4,200 feet (1,300 m). Other researchers from the University of Georgia have found that the oil may occupy multiple layers "three or four or five layers deep". It is thought that the underwater plumes may explain why satellite images of the ocean surface have calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels (210,000 US gal) a day, whereas the studies of the video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000–80,000 barrels (1,100,000–3,400,000 USgal) a day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Spill_area

Oh my God. It's got multiple Z-levels. This could be an exponentially bigger fuckup than the Exxon Valdez was.

[Sean Mirrsen]

If it's dumping a million gallons a day into the sea, Exxon Valdez will be like a drop in the bucket by the time they think up a permanent solution, or even a working temporary one.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I've heard that petroleum companies' stock values are based strongly on their resource holdings. That is, if they sell some oil they gain money, but lose oil, and the money is spent on things or given out as dividends. While they gain company value for selling oil, they lose a little for drinking that milkshake up.

If that's true, then all this lost oil will be a pretty big economic hit. But then cleanup will cost a lot of money too. Hopefully they'll be hit not only for the actual cleanup costs, but for the ecological damage dealt to coastal waters. And the damage to fishing in international waters, to be split among fishing companies.

This could be a pretty big deal for them. Again, hopefully they don't weasel their way out of it.

[kuro_suna]

This is a rare occurrence because its a combination of:

1: Extremely high pressure oil/gas deposit
2: Failure of blowout preventer
3: Destruction of rig hampering effort to seal well.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Oh also, I just want to say I'm surprised that there is a cap on the amount of responsibility an oil company has for paying for a spill.

I'm amazed there is a cap at all.

It's like telling someone that no matter what they do, no matter how bad they are or how many laws they break or how many people they murder, they will only go to jail for 10 years.

Think about what kind of behavior that would encourage.

[Greiger]

Yea that cap is what? Something like 70 million?  I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of cleanup surpassed that in the first week, and a big oil company like BP probably wouldn't even notice something like that.

[RedKing]

BP is already at $625 million (see link here), so I give them credit for not hiding behind that law. Of course, they probably realize that if they did, the public backlash would be like nothing ever seen before. I think a near-total boycott of BP would actually be within the realm of possibility if they tried to skip out on paying for this.