[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLiqvZOP8TY&feature=popt00us08]
I didn’t realize how bad the oil spill was till I saw this. It is pretty horrifying how our Oceans are being polluted. Even more horrifying are reports that the spill is spreading faster than expected.
And why is it referred to as the Gulf oil spill in the headlines, with hardly a mention of BP, the company which is responsible? Big Corporations only seemed to think of profit and will put us all at risk in the process. When I visited the BP website, it directs you to a page with a picture of an oil rig in the blue ocean with the headline ‘Gulf of Mexico Response”. (like someone else did it!)
I have a sinking feeling that this oil disaster is being downplayed and may be much larger than we think. I wanted to know just how much oil was flowing into the ocean from that broken pipeline (in both barrels and in gallons) so I did some research on my own.
Barrels vs. Gallons
Most news articles claim that since April 21, 2010 roughly 4 million gallons of sweet crude have been leaked into the Gulf at a rate of 210,000 gallons per day. But according to an Associated Press article just posted today (What went wrong at oil rig? A lot), approximately 4,000,000 barrels have already spilled into the Gulf. When you convert those barrels into gallons, you end up with a whopping 168,000,000 gallons of oil: that’s a difference of 164,000,000 gallons from the previous estimate!
(Don’t believe me? Read the articles and convert the measurements for yourself.)
http://www.examiner.com/x-42484-Environmental-Health-Examiner~y2010m5d12-Toxic-chemicals-used-in-BP-oil-spill-cleanup-oil-to-remain-flowing-through-Gulf-VIDEO
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill
http://www.calculateme.com/Volume/Barrels(Petroleum)/ToGallons.htm
Thanks so much for the links and for sharing your research. It’s pretty scary when you look deeper.