Oil Spill: BP Well Gushing Up to 60,000 Barrels a Day

A large oil slick was reported about a mile off Perdido Key, FL, where cleanup crews worked to recover the oil on June 12, 2010. Photo by Tasha Tully.

The latest government estimate says as much as 60,000 barrels of oil a day are gushing from BP’s well 5,000 feet below the surface into the Gulf of Mexico. That sounds like a heck of a lot, but it’s difficult to grasp the size of the spill. “I keep wondering, as I go through my day, how much oil is pouring into the Gulf? How much seeped out while I took a shower this morning?” one of my coworkers said the other day. His question spurred me to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations, all of which assume 60,000 barrels—or 2.52 million gallons—are spewing into the Gulf each day from the BP oil spill.

-In one minute, the volume of crude that leaks is enough to fill 97 cars’ gas tanks.

-During a 5-minute shower, enough oil pours out of the broken pipe to fill 116 bathtubs.

-In one day, the crude would fill nearly 4 Olympic-size swimming pools.

-In one day, the oil seeping out is equivalent to 26,964,000 tall (12-oz) Starbucks lattes.

-It would take about 2.5 days to fill the 6,750,000-gallon reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

-The 60,000 barrels pouring into the Gulf each day are equal to ~1% of the 4,950,000 barrles of US crude oil produced each day.

Because it’s so difficult to get a sense of how big the oil spill is, Google Maps engineer manager Paul Rademacher has made it possible to overlay the area of the spill on your town or any location in the world using Google Earth. Here, the spill is overlayed on Manhattan. Click here to try the tool for yourself.