4 barrels? 1,500 barrels? Who’s counting?

We all learned during last year’s Deepwater Horizon incident that oil spill estimates can fluctuate pretty rapidly, but this is still pretty dramatic: Enbridge Inc said a leaking pipeline in the Northwest Territories spilled as much as 1,500 barrels, drastically higher than its initial estimate of a four-barrel leak and the third major spill on ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

We all learned during last year's Deepwater Horizon incident that oil spill estimates can fluctuate pretty rapidly, but this is still pretty dramatic:

We all learned during last year’s Deepwater Horizon incident that oil spill estimates can fluctuate pretty rapidly, but this is still pretty dramatic:

Enbridge Inc said a leaking pipeline in the Northwest Territories spilled as much as 1,500 barrels, drastically higher than its initial estimate of a four-barrel leak and the third major spill on the company’s lines in less than 12 months.

The company said late on Monday that its initial forecast for the size of the spill on the Norman Wells line last month at a remote site 50 km (31 miles) south of Wrigley, Northwest Territories, was based on the amount of oil that collected on the surface. The company raised that estimate to 90 barrels earlier this month.

But further excavation found even more oil trapped under the surface. The company now says it expects between 700 and 1,500 barrels leaked from the line.

So somewhere between four and 1,500?

The company already spilled more than 20,000 barrels into a Michigan river system this year. Or should that be, "more than eight."

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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