New Orleans - The official United States government estimate for the size of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is between 35 000 and 60 000 barrels a day.
The leak started when the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 22, two days after a massive explosion that killed 11 workers.
A cap was fixed over the ruptured pipe late Monday, 81 days later, by which time between 2 835 000 barrels and 4 860 000 barrels had gushed out.
BP says 787 600 barrels have been collected by various containment systems, meaning the spill's total size is somewhere between 2 047 400 barrels and 4 072 400 barrels.
If the upper estimate is correct, this would make the Gulf of Mexico spill the biggest accidental oil disaster of all time, second only to the intentional release of crude by Iraqi forces during the 1991 Gulf War.
Here is a list of the largest spills ever recorded in order of size:
- 1991: GULF WAR: Six to eight million barrels is the estimated spillage when Iraqi forces set fire to Kuwaiti oil wells during the Gulf War.
- 1979: GULF OF MEXICO: Around 3.3 million barrels gush from the Ixtoc-1 well after an explosion on a rig operated by the Mexican state oil company Pemex. Capping the leak takes nine months.
- 1979: WEST INDIES: Two tankers - the Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain - collide and catch fire during a tropical storm off Tobago, spilling an estimated 2.1 million barrels of crude in the largest ship-sourced spill to date.
- 1994: SIBERIA: An estimated 733 000 to 2.1 million barrels spill from a ruptured pipeline in Russia's Komi Republic.
- 1991: ANGOLA: Loaded with 1.9 million barrels of Iranian crude, the ABT Summer explodes some 1 500km off the coast of Angola. The ship and a large slick burned for days, but the bulk of the oil did not reach land.
- 1978: FRANCE: 1.6 million barrels of crude wash up on 400km of coastline when the Liberian-registered supertanker Amoco Cadiz sinks off the western tip of Brittany.
- 1967: BRITAIN: 880 000 barrels of oil pollute the southern coast of England, and also French coasts, after the grounding of the Torrey Canyon supertanker.
- 1996: BRITAIN: Some 530 000 barrels of crude spill into the ocean when the Sea Empress went aground off Wales, polluting 200 miles of pristine coast - much of it in a national park.
- 1989: UNITED STATES: The Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 271 000 barrels of oil and impacting 1 770km of coast in what had been the country's worst environmental disaster to date. - AFP