an estimation method for the oil spill

[flyingfysh]

I was looking at the oil spill videos from before the cap was applied, and was wondering what is wrong with this line of reasoning:

The pipe oil is coming out of is roughly the same diameter as a physical barrel, I think. (I could be wrong). One can look at the stuff moving out, and estimate how fast it is moving. It appears that the distance it moves is well more than the length of a physical barrel in one second. So I'll be conservative, and estimate the leak at one barrel/second.

Now if you do the multiplication: 1 barrel/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day, you get 86400 barrels/day, which is on the high end of most estimates.

Am I missing something obvious?

[HughMoran]

1. Passage is partially blocked within the BOP, a significnant percentage is methane

Oh, and he drill pipe is still in there, wedged in the shears that didn't cut all the way through it when they attempted to activate the BOP.

...but I don't see anything wrong with that technique otherwise.