Update: CNN is reporting that the spill may be far in excess of the 5,000 barrels per day estimated by BP. 
From the http://www.huffingtonpost.com.
For more than three weeks now, at least 200,000 gallons of crude oil a day has been erupting out of a pipe a mile underneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
And nobody really knows where it is, or where it's headed.
Federal officials are carefully tracking the trajectory of the oil that's made it to the water's surface and, increasingly, on shore. They even put out a daily map. (http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doctype/2931/53979/)
But there's never been an oil spill this big and this deep before. Nor have authorities ever used chemical dispersants so widely.
As a result, some scientists suspect that a lot, if not most, of the oil is lurking below the surface rather than on it, in a gigantic underwater plume the size and trajectory of which remain largely a mystery.
Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska marine conservationist who recently spent more than a week on the Gulf Coast, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] risks wildly underestimating the damage caused by the massive spill.
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