New official figures on the eve of BP's well kill operation on Tuesday showed that the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is now the biggest maritime spill ever. The US government's flow assessment team said 4.9 million barrels (205.8 million gallons) of oil gushed from the ruptured Macondo well before a cap placed over the wellhead finally sealed it on July 15. They said the figure was correct to within 10 percent, meaning the wider estimate is somewhere between 4.41 million barrels and 5.39 million barrels. BP captured approximately 800,000 barrels of oil with its various containment devices, meaning the amount of crude that spewed into the Gulf was somewhere between 3.61 million barrels and 4.59 million barrels. Here is a list of the largest spills ever recorded in order of size: - 1910: CALIFORNIA: The Lakeview Gusher Number One in Kern County, California is regarded as the largest oil spill in history, lasting 18 months and releasing nine million barrels of crude oil, but it was on land. - 1991: GULF WAR: The only maritime contender that could possibly rival the Gulf of Mexico spill was deliberate not accidental, when Iraqi forces set fire to Kuwaiti oil wells during the Gulf War. Original estimates put the volume at around 11 million barrels but later studies suggested somewhere between two and six million barrels were unleashed. - 1979: GULF OF MEXICO: Around 3.3 million barrels gushed from the Ixtoc-1 well after an explosion on a rig operated by the Mexican state oil company Pemex. Capping the leak took nine months. - 1979: WEST INDIES: Two tankers -- the Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain -- collided and caught fire during a tropical storm off Tobago, spilling an estimated 2.1 million barrels of crude in the largest ship-sourced spill to date. - 1994: SIBERIA: An estimated 733,000 to 2.1 million barrels spill from a ruptured pipeline in Russia's Komi Republic. - 1991: ANGOLA: Loaded with 1.9 million barrels of Iranian crude, the ABT Summer explodes some 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) off the coast of Angola. The ship and a large slick burned for days, but the bulk of the oil did not reach land. - 1978: FRANCE: 1.6 million barrels of crude wash up on 400 kilometers of coastline when the Liberian-registered supertanker Amoco Cadiz sank off the western tip of Brittany. - 1967: BRITAIN: 880,000 barrels of oil polluted the southern coast of England, and also French coasts, after the grounding of the Torrey Canyon supertanker. - 1996: BRITAIN: Some 530,000 barrels of crude spill into the ocean when the Sea Empress went aground off Wales, polluting 200 miles of pristine coast -- much of it in a national park. - 1989: UNITED STATES: The Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 271,000 barrels of oil and impacting 1,770 kilometers of coast in what had been the worst US environmental disaster to date. 