Admiral Thad Allen of the Coast Guard led a briefing from the White House on the ongoing efforts to mitigate the oil spill, as well as the efforts in cleaning up the mess.

He began by announcing that BP had been able to ramp up their recovery of the leaking oil from 6 thousand barrels and day to 11 thousand barrels a day, after successfully installing a cap on the well head.  While this is not even close to all of the oil leaking from the bottom of the Gulf, it is an improvement.  One which BP believes they can improve even further because they are moving a new rig to the former location of the Deepwater Horizon in an effort to begin production again, which they believe could raise the amount of oil recovered up to 20 thousand barrels a day.

That of course raised the question as to how much oil is actually leaking from the well each day, which the admiral said scientists from their geologic team feel that they will be able to accurately determine once the new rig is producing oil from the leak.  At that point they will  know if earlier estimates of 25 thousand barrels of oil a day were as incorrect as the first estimate tabled by BP at only 5 thousand barrels a day.

As far as the cleanup goes, the general belief was that the coast guard will be working for some months after the relief wells fix the leak permanently.  When pressed on the likelihood that the cleanup would actually last years, based on the experience from the Exxon Valdez spill, the Admiral agreed that cleanup would last years but he drew a distinction between the coast guard cleanup of oil on the surface of the water and what would without a doubt be an extended cleanup on land.

Watch some of the briefing below: