BP (NYSE:BP) Oil Spill Could Go On Until December, Despite Best Hazardous Spill Containment Efforts

Despite BP's (NYSE:BP) best hazardous spill containment efforts, it's looking like the oil could be raging on continually until December and possibly into the new year. Dan Pickering, the head of research at energy investor Tudor Pickering Holt. & Company in Houston said, this process is teaching us to be skeptical of deadlines. The worst case scenario is Christmas time.

If this time frame is correct and the crude oil continues to pour out of the well, that will be approximately 4 million barrels of oil since April 20th. This is based on the governments estimate of the oil leak spewing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day into the Gulf.

Mak Saito, an Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts said, with so much crude pouring into the ocean, it could change the very chemistry of the sea. Robert Wine, a BP spokesman, would not give the company's worst case scenario. Although, in its original plans for Monacondo, BP estimated the worst case scenario for an oil spill loss was 162,000 barrels a day, according to its filing with the U.S. Interior Departments Mineral Management Service.

Fred Aminzadeh, a research professor at the University of Southern California's Center for Integrated Smart Oil Fields, said the absolute worst case scenario is that the well is never successfully plugged. That would leave the well to flow for probably more than a decade.