"The Justice Department on Wednesday asked a federal judge in New Orleans to require BP to produce documents that outline how it low-balled the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from its Macondo well in 2010. The estimates were sent to the Coast Guard and Congress."

"The request came just one day after BP's guilty plea to criminal charges related to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion and fire that caused the release of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf.

The BP guilty plea accepted by U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance on Tuesday included an admission that the company misled Congress and the Coast Guard in the weeks after the spill, saying that only 5,000 barrels of oil per day were flowing from the well, when its own internal estimates indicated that as much as 100,000 barrels per day could have been released."

Mark Schleifstein reports for the New Orleans Times-Picayune January 30, 2013. [2]