The Coast Guard told BP to speed up its collection of oil gushing from the well in the Gulf of Mexico, giving the oil giant 48 hours to come up with new plans.

In a letter dated on Friday and made public Saturday, James Watson, rear admiral of the coast guard, said new estimates of the amount of oil gushing into the gulf demand additional containment efforts.

The government doubled its estimates this week of the amount of oil from between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels per day to between 25,000 and 30,000 barrels per day. Millions of gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico and are now washing ashore in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

"It is clear that additional capacity is needed," Watson wrote to BP. "BP must identify in the next 48 hours additional leak containment capacity that could be operationalized and expedited to avoid the continued discharge of oil."

The letter notes that some of BP's proposed containment efforts would take a month to put in place.

"Recognizing the complexity of this challenge, every effort must be expended to speed up the process," Watson wrote.

Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), a former Coast Guard reservist, this week offered his own plan to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil spill from wrecking his state's coastline.

Taylor shared his plan in a letter sent Thursday to BP CEO Tony Heyward, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he gives "fairly low marks" to President Barack Obama's handling of the BP oil spill.

BP’s capitalization level was recently pegged at no more than $160 billion, less than half a low-end calculation for the Delta’s worth. 

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill and looming Senate energy debate are starting to bring Capitol Hill energy proposals out of the woodwork.

On Monday, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) plans to outline a proposal to curb oil demand in a speech before the Center for American Progress, a prominent liberal think tank.

Merkley is working on legislation that could become a rallying point for environmentalists. “It will be a strong bill,” said one environmental lobbyist.

A spokeswoman for Merkley — who was in the Gulf Coast on Friday with several other senators to see the BP spill’s effect — confirmed he is working on a bill to reduce oil use but declined to provide further information.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged Friday the government would recover all federal spending on the Gulf Coast oil spill cleanup from BP.

“There will be no taxpayer dollars that are not repaid by British Petroleum,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at her weekly press conference.

“BP is responsible for the cleanup. Anything that we are doing in advance of that has to be compensated back to the taxpayer. This is BP’s responsibility,” Pelosi said earlier.

Some Democrats have expressed skepticism that BP would end up paying the entire cost, with Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, saying this week that he thought taxpayers would have to pay for some of the cleanup.

The speaker voiced support for legislative proposals that would undo liability limits on what BP would have to pay for economic and environmental damages, as well as compensation for relatives of oil workers who died in the initial rig explosion in April.

Lawmakers want to eliminate a provision that caps payouts at $75 million where no negligence is involved.

Pelosi also repeated her call for BP to stop paying dividends to shareholders until it has paid all expenses from the oil spill.

“I respect what their fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders, but they also first and foremost have the responsibility to pay their bills,” the speaker said.

Sen. Mary Landrieu said her alternative plan would improve safety "without shutting down the Gulf Coast economy."

Federal panel says far more oil may have gushed into the Gulf than previously believed

The panel of federal scientists and outside experts — called the Flow Rate Technical Group — offered the sobering estimates Thursday.

“A government panel on Thursday essentially doubled its estimate of how much oil has been spewing from the out-of-control BP well, with the new calculation suggesting that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days,” the New York Times reports.

“The new estimate is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day. That range, still preliminary, is far above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day,” their piece adds.

Hill reporters Mike Lillis and Julian Pecquet have a good piece about mounting concerns over threats to public health from the BP spill. They report:

After focusing for weeks on the causes of the Gulf oil spill and its economic and environmental impact, Congress shifted its attention Thursday to the dangers it poses to human health.

The Senate Health Committee tackled proposals to protect oil industry workers, while the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy panel heard from experts on potential problems associated with exposure to oil, a carcinogen.

The hearings come as more Gulf Coast residents and cleanup workers have reported getting sick. A recent internal Department of Labor memo describes “significant deficiencies” in BP’s handling of worker safety issues and warns that there has been a “general systemic failure [from BP] to ensure the safety and health” of the responders, according to Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.).