Later on Wednesday, at a White House briefing to reporters, Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, the national incident commander, said that by the end of next week, the two containment systems, including the one most recently installed, should be able to collect 28,000 barrels of oil flowing out from the damaged well. By the end of June, BP should be able to capture 53,000 barrels of crude oil, he said.

BP is also developing a new system to replace the current containment devices, one that will be more flexible in the event of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. This system will also be able to collect more oil, should those estimates increase, with a maximum capacity of 80,000 barrels, Adm. Allen said in the briefing.

The first containment cap was installed after BP cut an underwater pipe called a riser on June 3. The second containment system is attached directly with pipes and other equipment to the failed blowout preventer, the device that was supposed to shut off the flow of oil after an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20. That equipment had already been installed for the failed “top kill” effort weeks ago.

The flow was already categorized as the largest offshore oil spill in the nation’s history, but the new figures that the government released on Tuesday sharply increased previous estimates. Scientists estimated that the flow rate ranged from 35,000 barrels to 60,000 barrels a day — up from the rate they issued only last week, of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day. It continues a pattern in which every new estimate of the flow rate has been dramatically higher than the one before.

The new estimate is far above the figure of 5,000 barrels a day that the government and BP clung to for weeks after the spill started, following the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. That estimate was made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration using methods not recommended for large oil spills, and it came under attack from professors and advocacy groups who said the spill had to be larger. Time has proven those critics right.