Doin’ the Oily Math

July 9, 2010 by Susan Hansell.

The other night, after dinner, and after reading Alexander Cockburn’s essay in The Nation of 7/12/2010, and after thinking more about the oil-based Gulf Disaster, I asked my genuine math-whiz husband this pretty and profound question:  If NOAA’s estimates of the oil, currently spewing as much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day (@55 gallons per barrel) — if this oil keeps spewing at such a rate into the Gulf until the entire reserve unloads itself (estimated by BP at 2.1 billion gallons), then how long before all 2.1 billion gallons enters the Gulf?

The answer goes terrifyingly like this:  100,000 barrels = 5 million gallons per day.  This means that if NOAA’s worst case scenario estimation of the amount that’s currently spewing is correct, 5 million gallons are polluting the Gulf every single day.  In ten days that’s 50 million gallons.  In 100 days, it’s 500 million.  This means it will take only 400 days for the entire 2.1 billion amount to empty itself into the Ocean.  We might be a quarter of the way there now folks, and if you’re thinking about this like I am, you might want to open another window on your browser and watch BP’s live spew-cam, imagining the pressure under which such a viscous fluid is enabled to spew itself from the Ocean’s floor like a fountain, or like a volcano.

Now, following this horrifying math, if the entire Gulf Ocean coastline, including all of West Florida and all of East Mexico, equals 10,000 miles, then according to NOAA estimates, right now, enough oil is spewing to coat every foot of that coastline with 0.1 gallons (about a cup) every day.  This means that there’s 1 gallon per coastline foot every ten days, and ten gallons per coastline foot in 100 days, and if the entire 2.1 billion gallon reserve enters the Ocean, there will be 40 gallons of oil every foot for every 10,000 miles of Gulf Coastline.  And we will soon be at the ten gallons per coastline foot (or the 100 days) amount.

If you’ve ever known someone who can do on-the-spot-&-in-the-head math and even calculus problem-solving, then you know how illuminating it is to ask such a person a few extraordinarily pertinent questions that really need answering…  And I’ve gotta think that BP has people working for it who are maybe almost as smart as my husband, and who maybe have even also done this math.  Which means they already know the possible amount of the spew (the total reserve), and the possible rate it can spew and is spewing, and the possible fact that it may only take 400 days to completely empty.

So I think we have to ask why BP has not vacuumed more oil and separated it from the water (100% possible and doable though such work takes vessels and workers and thus costs more than burning it off, along with LIVE sea turtles); and I think we have to ask why BP did not immediately employ an army-sized force to get on this disaster faster and more thoroughly and more competently (oh yeah those flimsy booms have worked so well);  and I think we have to ask why the oil corps keep saying the world is out of oil (hello, 2.1 billion gallons).

Unforch, not all Qs can be broken down directly or mathematically, but answers about numbers and rates imply conceptual speculations that may answer to BP’s motives and actions:  Like maybe they already know they can’t stop the entire oily load from emptying into the Ocean in 400 days; like maybe they’re doing whatever is cheapest for them while they send their media flacks and their private security corps out to do damage and info control; like maybe they’re just acting like they’re on it when they’re actually just waiting for 400 days to go by; like maybe they lied about all this and more from the beginning like always, like forever; like maybe they know where all the oil will eventually end up and permanently reside; like maybe in Mexico, or in the Caribbean, in places where people have even less ability to make the facts known, and less money or power or international clout to be able to do anything about it.

NOTE:  if you google NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) you can link to their site, which has further information on the numbers of dolphins, sea turtles and sperm whales washed up on the Gulf coastline oiled and dead, which does not include the uncountable numbers of oiled and dead land and sea birds, and the unknowable numbers of eggs and larval offspring of the unfathomable number of these affected birds and fishes, which does not include the affected plant life, or even the oxygen count in the Gulf waters themselves.  And of yeah, the eleven humans who were blown up on the rig, and those fishing professionals who have committed suicide since seeing their lives and their livelihoods washed up in the oily BP mess.

UPDATE:  Now emergency capped after 87 days of Full Spew (worst case scenario=500 million gallons or 1/4 of the total “reserve” — but since BP never placed a simple meter on it’s drilling rig or pipe, we’ll never know), this current 3-day cap on the Oil Spew is showing signs of deep fissure wounds down within the pipe that goes a mile under the Gulf’s floor, evidenced by methane gas or crude bubbling through the Ocean’s floor in the vicinity of the Original Gash.  As of the morning of 7/19/2010, the U.S. is trying to force BP to fork over all the information about what’s going on “down there,” and although BP is stalling, they may have to uncap the Spew in order to stop an even larger Rip of hydrocarbons from bursting into creation.

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