The Oil Spill Is Now 29,000 Square Miles

All together, slicks and sheen are possibly covering as much as 28,958 square miles (75,000 km2). That’s an area as big as the state of South Carolina.

It’s Day 36 of this fatal incident. Our estimated spill rate of 1.1 million gallons (26,500 barrels) per day, now on the conservative end of the scientific estimates, leads us to conclude that almost 40 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf so far. BP and the federal government had said that they would announce a new official estimate of the daily spill rate on May 22, but we’ve heard nothing more about that. As far as we can tell, they are still claiming the spill rate is 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) per day. At that much lower rate, the total amount spilled would be 7.56 million gallons.

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