Energy

Fishing Ban Area’s Massive Increase As BP Spill Expands

The size of the BP plc (NYSE: BP Deepwater Horizon spill is growing rapidly, as some scientists estimate the leak at 95,000 barrels a day instead of the 5,000 barrels estimate given by BP and the NOAA. The size of…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published May 21, 2010, 2:55pm ET · 1 min read

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The size of the BP plc (NYSE: BP Deepwater Horizon spill is growing rapidly, as some scientists estimate the leak at 95,000 barrels a day instead of the 5,000 barrels estimate given by BP and the NOAA.

The size of the “no fish” zone expanded today and now includes areas as far east as waters off the Florida panhandle. Some of the oil has entered “The Loop”, a strong current that runs east toward the Florida Keys.New maps from the NOAA show the extent of the spill’s Gulf coverage as of early today.

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BP says it may be able to close the leak by pumping mud into the source, but if that does not work, the most likely solution is to drill adjacent wells and that process could take another 60 to 90 days.

In an attempt to control that spill, 1.4 million feet of boom have been deployed. Over 600,000 gallons of dispersants have been put into the spill. Regulators have told BP that it needs to use chemicals that are less environmentally dangerous than those being used now. That may delay the process of breaking the spill up.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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