Just how big is that gusher in the Gulf of Mexico?

http://pesn.com/2010/05/23/9501654_Gulf_gusher_size/



It is entirely safe to say that this well has been releasing more oil every day than the Exxon Valdez wreck did. Nobody wants to believe the size of the spill. History will settle the matter beyond all question that my math was probably giving a very low estimate of the well output.

Using my estimate of 350,000 BPD * 42 gals/barrel we get 441 million gallons of spill over 30 days. That is 59,000,000 cubic feet. A square mile is 27,878,400 square feet. The area of the slick is now about 12,000 square miles more or less. This is enough oil to cover one square mile 2.11 feet thick. That averages 0.00017 inches thick over the spill area. That would hardly be a shiny surface.

The fact is that the oil will not so easily disperse to some sort of equilibrious distribution. It will move about in more concentrated form, so the shiny surface thingy is meaningless. IN addition, even a hardly shiny surface could cause tremendous damage to top feeding plankton and several other aquatic creatures. Kill one part of the food chain and you effect several others dramatically.

There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. There are 86,400 seconds in a day. How many barrels do you think are escaping in one second? I think no more than a barrel a second. You are estimating that 4 barrels per second are escaping, a number that appears to be far too high.

At one barrel per second, that's 3,628,800 gallons a day. In 30 days, that's 108,864,000 gallons.

If you calculate about 25% of the spillage you estimate, you're probably a lot closer to right.

This gusher is horrific, and the damage is undoubtedly far greater than the Valdez, because it is not simply a ship leaking its cargo. 86,400 barrels a day sounds closer to right than four times that amount.

its more than any will admit to for sure..

I also applaud you for trying to put the volume into an understandable format. May I suggest you use something most can comprehend? A football field with a foot of oil on it. How many football fields of oil would the gusher produce at 1 barrel per second?

It's a huge amount of oil gushing into the gulf, and we need ready examples to help people visualize the magnitude of the problem. I like your approach, and think it is valuable. If you adjust your estimate of the amount of oil gushing from the well, I think you help protect your examples from attack for overstating the amount.