5 Ways to Measure the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is getting progressively worse, as the media reports that the latest effort to stop it, the "top kill" method, is not working. So far, an estimated five million gallons of crude oil have leaked into the gulf.

Asylum has put together five interesting ways to understand just how much oil this actually is: enough to fly a full Boeing 777 jet around the world, six times, for example.

Let's do some simple math. There are 42 gallons per barrel of oil. That means 5 million gallons of crude oil equals about 119,047 barrels. From those barrels we can create 56,666 gallons of actual gasoline. So what can you do with nearly 57,000 gallons of gasoline? For starters, you can hop into a Hummer and drive from New York City all the way to Los Angeles. And back. About 100 times.

Link - via mentalfloss

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.


Well, when you put it that way - it's really not that much. I mean I was figuring the oil spill could have filled up like a million cars for a whole year or something...

But when you say you can fly around the world 6 times it's like, okay why is everyone making a big deal about this. That's really not that much oil, especially when you consider it being in the ocean which is already huge
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The basic math in this article is ENTIRELY wrong.

If a Barrel of oil costs $74 (approximate current price)
and you only get .5 gallons of gasoline (119047 barrels = 57,000 gallons of gasoline) from a barrel how much does gasoline cost?

I don't know the truth but I can sure spot an UNTRUTH
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Yeah, I mean that still doesnt give anyone any relation to the amount of damage that this much oil can do. Sure, I can drive a Hummer across the USA 100 times, but that's not really a great way to visualize it.
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That math seems off:

That means 5 million gallons of crude oil equals about 119,047 barrels. From those barrels we can create 56,666 gallons of actual gasoline.

About 50-60% of crude oil can be made into refined gasoline. Maybe they mean 56,666 barrels of gasoline?

So 2.38 million gallons of gas.
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