The massive clean-up operation in the Gulf of Mexico continues and has now cost BP $2.65bn (£1.75bn) and the oil giant is stopping almost 23,000 barrels of oil from leaking into the sea.BP, which said last Friday that its bill for the disaster had risen to $2.35bn (£1.57bn) from $2bn (£1.4bn) on the Monday, has so far spent $128m settling 41,000 of 80,000 claims.Two systems are collecting oil and gas flowing from the Deepwater Horizon's failed blow-out preventer (BOP) and transporting it to vessels on the surface. The lower marine riser package (LMRP) containment cap, installed on 3 June, collected 14,730 barrels of oil on Saturday, while the second system flared an additional 8,020 barrels of oil. That takes the total collected since the explosion in April to about 435,600 barrels on top of the 652,000 barrels of oily liquid skimmed from the surface of the sea, although millions of gallons are still leaking and washing up along America's Gulf coast.An additional containment system, expected to be ready by the end of this month or early July, should be able to catch an extra 20,000-25,000 barrels a day, increasing total oil containment capacity to 40,000-50,000 barrels.At the start of the crisis, BP said just a few thousand barrles were escaping from the broken well. That soon rose to 5,000 before a recent internal memo put the maximum theoretical flow rate at 60,000 barrels of oil a day, although the author accepts it "could be as high as 100,000 barrels". Shares in the stricken firm sunk close to 300p a share for the first time in 14 years Friday as clean-up costs continue to spiral and on fears about legal action, storms in the Gulf of Mexico, a possible fundraising and trouble in Alaska.