The dark calculus. How many gallons of crude in the Gulf? Two-hundred-million?

[skip fox]

The worst case for BP's oil spill in the Gulf in 100,000 barrels per day (twenty times more than what BP has publically estimated for over a month). This is worst-case simple math based on that real possibility. (Source: see DU's Lastest Breaking News link below.)

100,000 barrels per day is 4,000,000 gallons per day.

40 days times 4,000,000 gallons is 160,000,000 gallons.

That is, we might be approaching 200,000,000 gallons!!!!!

That might be a top end estimate, but even 1/2 as much is exponentially greater than what BP would have us believe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4417515

[XemaSab]

1. As we say here in Northern California

there's hella.

[jdlh8894]

2. How many gallons of seawater are in the Gulf? %Please?n/t

[tnlurker]

3. I was wondering

How long would this have to keep flowing before it raises the ocean levels a quarter inch or so.

[SidDithers]

9. The Gulf of Mexico is ~600,000 square miles...

a quarter inch is ~ 0.000004 miles

Raising the gulf by quarter inch would be a volume 600,000 square miles x 0.000004 miles = 2.4 cubic miles

1 cubic mile = 1.1 x 10^12 gallons

Therefore 2.4 cubic miles = 2.64 x 10^12 gallons

That's 2.64 trillion gallons needed to raise the Gulf of Mexico by a quarter inch.

Roughly.

Sid

Edit: raising the ocean level by a quarter inch is a fucking astoundingly huge number.

[tnlurker]

15. thanks

[SidDithers]

8. 4.63 x 10^17 gallons of water in the Gulf...nt

Sid

[skip fox]

4. I'm going to try to figure out how many cubic yards would hold 200,000,000 gallons.

Then I could put in in terms of how high of a container, the base of which is a football field, it wold take to contain 200,000,000.

Trying to see it in human terms.

[yella_dawg]

5. Rough estimate.

1,025,000 cubic yards. Or, in more human terms, an unimaginable shitload.

[skip fox]

7. "unimaginable shitload" is so much better than what I came up with.

[skip fox]

6. A football field as the base 54 stories high!!!!!

That's a football field without the end-zones as a base (100 X 53 yards) and each story being 10 feet. That would (given my sketchy math) be able to hold 990,226 cubic yards of oil or 200,000,000 gallons. Almost 1/2 the heigth of the Empire State Building.

If we could extract and clean up a cubic yard every minute, it would take us over three-and-a-half years to capture it all. (That works as a sense of measure or scale better than a pragmatic measure.)

Could someone check my math?

[SidDithers]

10. Math is correct...

Alternately, you'd have ~ a 1 mile square area x 1 foot deep to get 200,000,000 gallons.

Edit: I've worked with skimmers that pick up ~ 100 bbl per hour. That's 4200 gallons per hour, or 50,000 gallons per day operating for 12 hours. Ten of those skimmers could theoretically skimm 200,000,000 gallons in 40 days.

http://www.crucialinc.com/oilspill/skimmers.asp
The Crucial C29d fits on the back of a flatbed tow truck and can skim 100 bbl per hour.


Sid

Edit: my math was wrong. Should be 400 days, not 40.

[skip fox]

11. 40 days to pick up 200.000.000 gallons ideally.

That's the best case put upon the worse case. (Or put on one worst case . . . others have this never stopping.)

[SidDithers]

12. I screwed up my math...

50,000 gallons per day x 10 would need 400 days to clean 200,000,000 gallons, not 40.

However, other skimmers are avialable with a much higher recovery rate.

Sid

[skip fox]

13. interesting.

But even with a higher rate that doesn't mean all will be easily skimmed, right?

[SidDithers]

14. The skimming isn't too hard...

oil floating on the surface, away from land, is fairly easy to contain, and easy to separate from the water. It's the oil that washes up on shore, into marshes and onto beaches that is much more difficult to remove.

But there's no way they'll get all the oil cleaned up. They're going to rely on nature to break down most of the oil And that, too, will take an unacceptably long time.

Sid

[skip fox]

16. I live in the western Gulf region, Lafayette, Louisiana.

Many here wonder how greatly (amount and time) their lives will be changed.

Though I am not in tourism, fishing, or shrimping, if we are hit hard and long enough even old college profs will personally feel it. (And old college profs will feel it regardless as the people and way of life around him--the distinct Cajun culture--are effect.)

[SidDithers]

17. You have my best wishes and hopes for minimal damage and disruption...nt

Sid