Just a quick followup to our last post. The Ocean Saratoga rig is working to plug 26 wells that had been connected to an oil platform damaged (and destroyed, or removed) by Hurricane Ivan in 2004:

The Taylor wells are leaking an average of less than one-third of a barrel of oil each day, the Interior Department said. The leaks have been “substantially reduced” over the years by containment domes and other interventions, Taylor said in a statement yesterday.

1/3 of a barrel is 14 gallons. The slick we measured on June 18 satellite imagery holds an estimated 3,157 gallons of oil, assuming the slick is only 1 micron thick. It would take 225 days, at a rate of 14 gallons per day, to make an oil slick that large. Oil on the surface of the ocean can’t survive that long — especially a slick that’s only 1/1000th of a millimeter thick.

The leakage rate from these wells in recent days must be significantly higher, probably in the range of 100-400 gallons per day. If they’ve been leaking at that rate since Hurricane Ivan, that’s a total of 210,000-840,000 gallons of oil. To put it in perspective, less than one day’s worth of leakage from BP’s Macondo well.