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2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill

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From NY Times

Coast Guard officials said Monday afternoon that the oil spill near Louisiana was now covering an area in the Gulf of Mexico of 48 miles by 39 miles at its widest points, and they have been unable to engage a mechanism that could shut off the well thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface.

The flow of oil from the leaks is about 42,000 gallons of oil a day.

Sea life that congregates at the surface and has no mobility of its own — like plankton and fish eggs — is the most vulnerable to the slick. A large-scale destruction of eggs could affect fish populations in the future.

Officials are monitoring the environmental effects of the spill by boat and planes.

I wonder how many gallons an hour the cleanup, monitor and rescue burns?
 
"U.S.: Oil spill of ‘national significance’"

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Offshore Oil Drilling by the numbers:

105: Deaths caused by accidents on offshore drilling operations from 1996 to 2009
165: Spills caused by accidents on offshore drilling operations from 1996 to 2009
1,945: Injuries caused by accidents on offshore drilling operations from 1996 to 2009
1,515: Fires and explosions caused by accidents on offshore drilling operations from 1996 to 2009
$3,000,000,000: Cost estimate for cleanup of the BP spill, mostly covered by BP’s insurance
$5,598,000,000: BP’s first quarter profits in 2010
$100,000,000: Amount Iran would lose per day in oil revenue if America capped its carbon emissions
$154,000,000: Amount the oil and gas industry spent on Congress in 2009
$16,000,000: Amount BP spent on lobbying in Washington in 2009
210,000: Gallons of oil spilled per day at the BP platform site
162,000: Gallons of oil spilled per day in BP’s “worst-case scenario” exploration plan

315,000,000,000: Barrels of oil the U.S. consumes per year (approx)
2,726,000: Million metric tons of greenhouse gases emitted on U.S. roads every year (approx)

1.6%: Percentage of total global proven oil reserves the U.S. possesses
0.3%: Percentage of total global proven oil reserves in the U.S. outer continental shelf

1: Number of shut-off switches BP may have needed to purchase to prevent this accident
3-4: Months it could take to contain the spill
 
I'm just curious. Is this the first oil spill that's happened at the source, an oil well?

No, there have been many others.

Major deepwater blowouts happen on average every 5 years

...
But, said Bercha, going back 40 years, there have been eight deepwater blowouts. The worst was the Sedco blowout. That also happened in the Gulf, but on the Mexico side, in 1979 and spilled 3.5 million barrels of oil over nine months.
Bercha said based on historical statistics, we get one deep offshore blowout of more than 10,000 barrels every five years worldwide so "the occurrence of this is not entirely unexpected."
 
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