From what I read, by April 28, about 8 days after the explosion and fire commenced, the Coast Guard estimated that between 5 and 10 million gallons had already leaked out, although I gather estimating even now is a very imprecise matter.  The Exxon Valdez leaked approximately 11 million gallons in the first 2 months after Capt. Hazelwood finished navigating. 

For what it's worth, Wikipedia indicates that the range for the current leak in between 210,000 and 1,100,000 gallons per day.  The high end of the estimates suggest that the spill has reached about 20 million gallons. It appears to be the biggest oil spill at sea in US history.  The word "gush" seems okay to me, but whatever you call it, it is a very bad situation.

This could have as easily happened offshore Brazil or Nigeria - already happened in the East Timor Sea. So now that it's off our own coast, it's a big deal?

As the President of the Sierra Club said (approximately) about the Exxon Valdez, "the cause wasn't a drunk ship Captain, but a nation drunk on cheap oil."

The USA had a chance, in 1986, when Reagan got the Saudis to flood the market with oil and drive down the price of crude about -500%, and bankrupt the Soviet Union (a Very Good Thing).

Reagan could have, with the price of imported oil so low, put a lil' ol' import duty on oil, just 10 cents a barrel, and had the money go to mass transit development, fuel efficiency research, alternate energy development, and research into oil recovery methods for our own oil fields. Instead, nothing was done, cars got even bigger than in the '60s, the suburbs spread like cancer, and now we import more oil than ever.

Last edited by sigmoid freud (2010-05-07 19:32:32)

Emmeran wrote:

I am not a big drill baby drill fan and no matter which way you shake it we should never tap our local oil - let's use everyone else's up first.

At least this is a winning strategy.  I would be more tolerant of conservatives if they actually played to win instead of enriching their cronies.

I’m having fun lampooning local liberals lamenting the oil spill by suggesting more ways they can over-consume petroleum products.

Nearly 85 percent of the 29 million gallons of petroleum that enter North American ocean waters each year as a result of human activities comes from land-based runoff, polluted rivers, airplanes, and small boats and jet skis, while less than 8 percent comes from tanker or pipeline spills, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. Oil exploration and extraction are responsible for only 3 percent of the petroleum that enters the sea. Another 47 million gallons seep into the ocean naturally from the seafloor.

source

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles estimated the flow from the well at 53,000 barrels per day during a June 6 interview