The oil leak on the Hibernia oil platform that was reported by the company as a 10 liter, or 2.5 gallon oil spill on December 18th has been upgraded to almost 1,600 gallons it is now reported.

Hibernia Management and Development Company, of which Exxon is the largest stakeholder, reported the leak aboard the Hibernia platform 217 miles offfshore of Newfoundland on Canada’s Grand Banks as approximately 2.5 gallons on January 3rd. They blamed the leak on a faulty valve on one of two offloading systems on the platform.

On December 27th, HMDC reported oil visible on the water again and confirmed the leak as coming from a leak in the valve. They did not release an estimate of the size of that leak until this week. A spokesperson for HMDC, Margot Bruce-O’connell said that the company has oil spill response equipment at the platform but have been unable to utilize the equipment because of sea states.

When asked why it took so long to estimate the amount of oil that was spilled in this latest incident, Bruce-O’Connell replied saying, “Our first priority was to respond to the incident, to isolate the source and investigate the cause.”

That cause, determined to be a faulty valve, has been isolated and the leak reportedly stopped, but repairs to the valve have yet to take place. HMDC stated that repairs cannot be implemented until weather comes down and relatively calms seas are present.

The same is true of the spilled oil, none of which was cleaned up, but instead dispursed in the heavy seas.

But, operations are proceeding normally and the second of the two off-loading systems is in full operation pumping off crude from the platform.

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board or CNLOPB is questioning the company on how they came up with this latest estimate because of the sheer size of the spill.