A tiny nonprofit group with one paid staffer in a one-room office in a small West Virginia town has been causing US officials and oil company executives to backtrack and revise their estimates of the size and flow of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank after a fire April 22, SkyTruth first analyzed satellite and radar data on the spill. It challenged initial estimates that 1,000 barrels of oil were gushing daily from the wellhead nearly a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. Federal officials and BP quickly revised the estimated daily rate to 5,000 barrels.

The group updated its analysis on Saturday to estimate that the slick contained more than 11.1 million gallons of oil, which would make it the largest oil spill in American history. The group’s president, John Amos, also revised the estimate of the rate of oil leaking to 25,000 barrels a day, saying it was a “rock bottom” figure. There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil.

(article source: Los Angeles Times, photo source: The Hindu)