BP has caused 100,000,000 gallons of oil to be released into the Gulf of Mexico.
With numbers getting to be this big, it gets a little harder to visualize even the scope of the breadth of the disaster let alone its effects on the ecosystem. So:
100,000,000 gallons of oil would fill the 555′-tall Washington Monument seven times.
100,000,000 gallons of oil would fill the Big Ben clock tower 70 times
If 100 million one gallon jugs of oil were set side-by-side in a line it would stretch across the country and back again.
If you had started to fill your car with 100,000,000 gallons of BP oil –it would’ve been Amoco Oil–you would’ve started a little before the October 1973 gas shortage (at a rate of 5 gallons a minute).
If on a clear night the best the human eye could see is 6,000 stars, and if each star represented a gallon of oil, it would take 40 years of clear nights to represent the BP disaster.
Hopefully it won’t take 40 years to clean this mess.
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Incidentally, you should check out the insipid history BP has provided for itself at its website For example:
“Our history is full of discoveries, starting in
1908 with oil found in a rugged part of Persia after a long and
difficult search. Since then, discoveries large and small (and sometimes
just in the nick of time) have fuelled our progress.”
Is this written for first graders?
“In our story, you may make a few
discoveries of your own. Winston Churchill gives a rousing speech. The
Smurfs cause a traffic jam. Our employees help construct a giant spool,
build the world’s largest deepwater pipeline and bring solar power to
remote villages in the Philippines.”
It also looks like BP has misspelled “fueled” and “deep water” on their own website. Nice attention to detail!