They first tried to fix the leak, but did not work. On July 19, the leak was stopped by putting a cap on top of the broken well pipe. About 7.9 million barrels (780×10 m) of crude oil spilled out before the well was fixed. The amount of oil coming out of the broken well probably started at about 52,000 barrels per day (9,900 m/d) and gradually went down after that.