210,000 gallons/day = 2.43 gallons/second

So we can’t stop the flow from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, 210,000 gallons/day!!! That’s a lot right!  Well, let’s do the math…

 

210,000 gallons/day  = 8750 gallons/hr = 145.83 gallons/minute = 2.43 gallons/second

 

2.43 gallons/second and with all of our American Ingenuity, modern engineering and technology, and we can’t turn it off?!  

 

2.43 gallons/second and they can’t just plug it up somehow?  Can’t drop a giant cement block on top of it to slow it down to an even slower creep.

 

Either that, or it’s a gross underestimate of the actual rate of leakage.

 

Let’s just say it is 1 million gallons/day, that’s still only 12 gallons/second… still seems like we should be able to manage that flow too, doesn’t it?

 

The reductive power of mathematics allows us to see this issue in a whole new light.  With all of the money being spent on containment buoys, dispersants, and other efforts, what else is ongoing to cap the well.  Don’t worry about recovering more oil from it at the same time.  Just cap it.  Kill it. First things first. Fix the leak.