OK — while debate continues over just how fast the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill is dispersing, some thoughts on perspective.
Compare the Deepwater spill to these figures, based on a number of sources and used in an exhibit by the Smithsonian.
Deepwater is estimated to have released somewhere around 210 million gallons into the ocean.
Check that number against those in the link? That’s right. Every year, we dump more than 360 million gallons of oil into the ocean from our storm drains — most of it from road runoff and oil changes. And that’s a 15-year-old estimate, so the figure is probably higher now. Let me know if you find newer information.
Add that to the 137 million gallons released into the ocean from routine maintenance — bilge cleaning of ships and so forth — and you come up with this:
Every twenty weeks, we spew a Deepwater Horizon’s worth of oil into the world’s oceans — without giving it a thought.
But, as Dr. Tittle points out in the comments, crude is not the same as processed oil, and Deepwater Horizon was a single source event affecting a single marine area, while the other numbers are global, spreading around the pollution.
TomHager
18 Aug, 2010
Thanks, Tom. Good points. Motor oil (the kind dumped after an oil change) is different from crude is different from road products. The question of dispersal is interesting, with a number of people saying that the oil dispersed in the Gulf is still dangerous. I tend to think that once it’s in tiny particles, it will get metabolized by some microbe or other.
Thomas V. Tittle
18 Aug, 2010
Processed oil is not the same as crude oil. It doesn’t have the other problem chemicals of crude oil, like benzene and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. 360 million gallon of oil is a lot but it is pre-dispersed and it is not dumped into one site.