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.


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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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