This paper presents a comparison of hydraulic oil conductivity obtained from interpreting bail-down test data to values calculated from theory. The bail-down tests were performed at laboratory scale, on a radial portion of a circular domain filled with calibrated sand allowing hydraulic oil conductivity to be calculated using Parker's theoretical model (Parker et al. in Water Resour Res 23(4):618-624, 1987). The bail-down tests were interpreted using the modified Bouwer and Rice (Huntley in Ground Water 38(1):46-52, 2000) and the modified Cooper methods (Beckett and Lyverse in API Interact LNAPL Guide 2:1-27, 2002). The results show that (1) both interpretation methods from bail-down test data give similar hydraulic oil conductivities, and (2) the hydraulic oil conductivities estimated from bail-down test data agree well with the hydraulic oil conductivity predicted when using the Parker theoretical model. Overall, this paper confirms that the modified Bouwer and Rice (Huntley 2000) and the modified Cooper methods (Beckett and Lyverse 2002) are valid to estimate hydraulic oil conductivity, giving realistic values despite test conditions not meeting all the assumptions and boundary conditions of each analytical solution.