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BP: Oil Collected From Spill Down To 1,120 Barrels a Day

24 May 2010 20:07 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The amount of oil BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) is siphoning from a massive leak on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico has declined to 1,120 barrels a day, a company spokesman said Monday, APA reports quoting â€œThe Wall Street Journalâ€.
It was the third consecutive day BP has collected less oil gushing out of the damaged well, which is located a mile below the surface of the water. BP spokesman John Curry said the rate decreased Sunday because the company had some "operational fine tuning."
Sunday, the company said it was collecting to a vessel in the surface 1,360 barrels of oil equivalent, down from the 2,200 it captured Friday and Saturday. The updated figure is also much lower than the 5,000 barrels of oil a day the oil giant said it was collecting Thursday.
Thursday’s figure, which was as much crude as was officially estimated to be leaking, forced BP to admit the spill is larger than previously thought.
BP has been under fire for not being able to stop the spill or provide an accurate estimate of how much crude is leaking. The pressure intensified last week as heavy oil started to make landfall in Louisiana.
Curry also said that 3 million cubic feet a day of natural gas are being siphoned through a milelong tube the company inserted last week into a shattered oil pipe on the gulf’s floor. The natural gas being captured is down from the 7 million cubic feet the company said it was collecting Sunday.
Curry confirmed BP is planning to start a procedure known as a "top kill" Wednesday morning, which involves shooting heavy drilling fluids into the well, followed by cement to seal it. BP has previously said the procedure was likely to start early in the week. But BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward warned staff in an email late Friday that the "top kill" procedure could fail.
The spill followed the explosion and sinking of the rig Deepwater Horizon from Transocean Ltd. (RIG), which was drilling a well for BP. The rig caught fire and sank last month, killing 11 people.