Estimates show oil gush worse than Exxon Valdez

ROBERT, La. - As BP labored for a second day yesterday to choke off the oil gush at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, dire new government estimates showed the disaster has easily eclipsed the Exxon Valdez as the biggest oil disaster in U.S. history.

The company announced late in the day that it had suspended shooting heavy drilling mud into the blown-out well 5,000 feet underwater about midnight Wednesday so it could bring in more materials. Last night, BP PLC said it had resumed the pumping procedure known as a top kill. Officials said it could be late today or the weekend before the company knows if it has cut off the oil that has been flowing for five weeks.

As the world waited, President Obama announced major restrictions on drilling projects, and the head of the federal agency that regulates the industry resigned under pressure, becoming the highest-ranking political casualty of the crisis so far.

BP insisted the top kill was progressing as planned, although the company acknowledged that drilling mud was escaping from the broken pipe along with the leaking crude.

"The fact that we had a bunch of mud going up the riser isn't ideal but it's not necessarily indicative of a problem," said spokesman Tom Mueller.

The top kill is the latest in a string of attempts to stop the oil that has been spewing since a drilling rig exploded April 20. Eleven workers were killed.

If the procedure works, BP will inject cement into the well to seal it permanently. If it doesn't, the company said it has a number of backup plans.

A top kill has never been attempted before in water so deep. BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said the company is also considering shooting small, dense rubber balls or assorted junk such as golf balls and rubber scraps to stop up a crippled five-story piece of equipment known as a blowout preventer to keep the mud from escaping.

The stakes were higher than ever as public frustration over the spill grew and a team of government scientists said the oil has been flowing at a rate 2 1/2 to five times higher than what BP and the Coast Guard previously estimated.

Two teams of scientists calculated the well has been spewing between 504,000 and more than a million gallons a day. Even using the most conservative estimate, that means about 18 million gallons have spilled so far. In the worst-case scenario, 39 million gallons have leaked.

That larger figure would be nearly four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster, in which a tanker ran aground in Alaska in 1989, spilling nearly 11 million gallons.

"Now we know the true scale of the monster we are fighting in the Gulf," said Jeremy Symons, vice president of the National Wildlife Federation. "BP has unleashed an unstoppable force of appalling proportions."

BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said the previous estimate of 210,000 gallons a day was based on the best data available at the time. As for the new figures, he said: "It does not and will not change the response. We are going all out on our response."

In Washington, Elizabeth Birnbaum stepped down as director of the Minerals Management Service, a job she had held since last July. Her agency has been harshly criticized over lax oversight of drilling and cozy ties with industry.

An internal Interior Department report released earlier this week found that between 2000 and 2008, agency staff members accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography.

Fishermen, hotel and restaurant owners, politicians and residents along the 100-mile stretch of Gulf coast affected by the spill are fed up with BP's failures to stop the spill. Thick oil is coating birds and delicate wetlands in Louisiana.

Charlotte Randolph, president of Louisiana's Lafourche Parish, said: "I mean, it's wearing on everybody in this coastal region. You see it in people's eyes. You see it. We need to stop the flow.

"Tourism is dead. Fishing is dead. We're dying a slow death," she added.