BP recovers 3,000 barrels a day from oil leak

Greenpeace demonstrators, stand on a balcony after they scaled and then hung a flag reading ‘British Polluters’ at the British Petroleum (BP) headquarters in central London, yesterday.

British energy group BP said yesterday that it was retrieving about 3,000 barrels of oil per day, or 60 percent of the flow, from the enormous oil leak in the US Gulf of Mexico.
BP said in an update that a tube inserted into the leak “is estimated to be [collecting] about 3,000 barrels a day of oil and some 14 million standard cubic feet a day of gas”.
The group had announced on Monday that it was collected some 1,000 barrels of oil per day and increased this estimate to 2,000 barrels on Tuesday.
“This remains a new technology and both its continued operation and its effectiveness in capturing the oil and gas remain uncertain,” BP said yesterday.
An estimated 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, of oil have spewed into the Gulf every day over nearly a month since BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank, dragging the company into an environmental nightmare.
By BP’s estimates there are still 2,000 barrels of oil each day gushing into the Gulf, a vast amount of crude that experts warn could soon be drawn into a current that would take it up Florida’s coast, threatening fragile coral reefs, marine life and beaches.