By the Numbers: Oil Leak Wouldn't Fill Superdome

From NewsMax.com - Overwhelmed and saddened by the gargantuan size of the Gulf oil spill? A little mathematical context to the spill size can put the environmental catastrophe in perspective. Viewing it through some lenses, it isn't that huge. The Mississippi River pours as much water into the Gulf of Mexico in 38 seconds as the BP oil leak has done in two months. Since the BP oil rig exploded on April 20, about 126.3 million gallons of oil has gushed into the Gulf. For every gallon of oil that BP's well has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, there is more than 5 billion gallons of water already in it. And the mighty Mississippi adds another billion gallons every five minutes or so, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. So BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward was factually correct last month when he said the spill was "relatively tiny" compared to what he mischaracterized as a "very big ocean." The amount of oil spilled so far could only fill the cavernous New Orleans Superdome about one-seventh of the way up. Read more

By the Numbers: Oil Leak Wouldn't Fill Superdome