Venice, Louisiana: The amount of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from an oil rig disaster is five times as large as had been believed, the Coast Guard said on Wednesday night.
Another leak has been found near the site where the British Petroleum rig exploded and sank last week, Coast Guard Petty Officer Erik Swanson said.
The total amount of oil leaking into the Gulf is 5,000 barrels a day — not the 1,000 barrels that had been estimated earlier, he said.
"We discovered it and we are going to attack it as much as possible now that we know that it's there," he said.
But Doug Suttles, a BP chief operating officer, disputed the larger estimate.
Rear Admiral Mary Landry said that President Barack Obama has been briefed about the larger estimate and she said that the government has offered to have the Department of Defence help contain the spill from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead in the incident.
Officials predict the oil could reach the Louisiana coast by tomorrow, somewhere near the Mississippi Delta.
New leak
The non-profit environmental group SkyTruth warned that the growing disaster "could soon surpass the sorry benchmark 20 years ago set by the 11 million gallon Exxon Valdez spill".
Based on an analysis of radar satellite images of the spill, SkyTruth calculated that at least 6 million gallons had already entered the Gulf — at a rate of about 20,000 barrels a day. (An oil barrel is 42 gallons.) SkyTruth posted its estimates on its website, SkyTruth.org, before the Coast Guard announced its new leak estimates.
Crews continued to fight the spill, which was 960km in circumference and about 37km offshore. BP leased the rig and is responsible for the cleanup.
After days of sucking up the oil-water sheen with special ships and barges and spraying chemical dispersants from planes, crews set a controlled burn on Wednesday to rid the sea of some of the oil.
Crews set ablaze a modest amount of oil that was ringed by a flame-retardant boom, said Daren Beaudo, a BP spokesman. If that succeeds, the oil company could set more fires to burn off more oil.
BP's Suttles said crews were making every effort to keep the oil offshore.
