http://www.skytruth.org/about.htmlhttp://blog.skytruth.org/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-new-spill-rate.htmlSNIP~
That suggests a minimum average flow rate of slightly more than 1.1 million gallons of oil (26,500 barrels) per day from the leaking well on the seafloor. Since we're now in Day 11 of the spill, which began with a blowout and explosion on April 20, we estimate that by the end of the today 12.2 million gallons of oil, at a minimum, have been spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
The oft-quoted official estimate for the Exxon Valdez spill is 11 million gallons, although some think that is the lower limit of the likely range. It appears that we've just set a very sad new record.
These estimates of the total volume of oil released by the Deepwater Horizon spill were derived from the USCG fly-over map (Figure 1). The map was geo-referenced in Arc Map and the areas of each of the slick types (dull oil streamers, etc) were measured with a planimeter tool. Thickness estimates for each slick classification were taken from the BONN guidelines as published in the NOAA field manual (Figure 2). Conservative values were used for each slick types. Note that the predicted average layer thickness are still very small.