Oil Spill Data, Facts, and Healthy Conjecture

"It's always better to know more rather than less, even when that knowledge complicates your life."

- Michael Pollan

After recent developments in the Gulf with the leak being "capped," the USCG claims that daily, up to 1,000 barrels of oil are being collected by the "cap".

My question:

Although fractional in regards to the total amount of total oil leaking daily, is BP exporting the collected oil? If so, how much daily, and at what price?

I did some math.

1 barrel of oil = 42 gallons(roughly)

NOAA estimates current leak rate of 210,000 gallons per day

210,000/42=5000 barrels of oil leaking daily

Number of days since leak (April 25, 2010): 40

210,000 gallons x 40 days = 8,400,000 gallons of oil spilled so far as of June 8, 2010

8,400,000/42=200,000 barrels of oil spilled

Price per barrel of crude as of June 7, 2010: $71.61

Oil leak "cap" collecting 1,000 barrels per day

71.61 x 1,000 = $71,610

Retail value of oil collected daily by "cap": $71,610

5,000 barrels @ $71.61 = $358,050 of oil revenue lost daily

200,000 barrels @ $71.61=$14,322,000 of total oil revenue at market value BP has lost as of today June 8, 2010.

*All of the previous data used is from NOAA, USCG, and Crude Indices. Not one number from BP.

All of this led me to recall the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

I came across a site that the state of Alaska hosts about the Exxon Valdez spill. Click HERE to visit the site.

Exxon Valdez (1989) spilled 11,000,000 gallons of crude oil

Excerpts from the site about the spill:

Oil Remains: The Persistence, Toxicity, and Impact of Exxon Valdez Oil

In 2001, researchers at the Auke Bay Laboratories, NOAA Fisheries, conducted a survey of the mid-to-upper intertidal in areas of the sound that were heavily or moderately oiled in 1989. Researchers dug over 9,000 pits, at 91 sites, over a 95-day field season. Over half the sites were contaminated with Exxon Valdezoil. Oil was found at different levels of intensity from light sheening; to oil droplets; to heavy oil where the pit would literally fill with oil. They estimated that approximately 16,000 gallons (60,000 liters), of oil remained. The survey also showed a trend of an increasing number of oiled pits as they surveyed lower into the intertidal zone, indicating that there was more oil to be found lower down the beach. In 2003, additional surveys determined that while the majority of subsurface oil was in the mid-intertidal, a significant amount was also in the lower intertidal. The revised estimate of oil was now more than 21,000 gallons (80,000 liters). Additional surveys outside Prince William Sound have documented lingering oil also on the Kenai Peninsula and the Katmai coast, over 450 miles away.

The amount of Exxon Valdez oil remaining substantially exceeds the sum total of all previous oil pollution on beaches in Prince William Sound, including oil spilled during the 1964 earthquake. This Exxon Valdez oil is decreasing at a rate of 0-4% per year, with only a 5% chance that the rate is as high as 4%. At this rate, the remaining oil will take decades and possibly centuries to disappear entirely.

This shit is infuriating, depressing, shocking, and above-all; sad. After more than 20 years the oil is still all over Alaskan shores. The fact is that the Exxon tanker held a finite amount of crude oil, 11,000,000 gallons, all of which spilled. The Gulf leak comes from a tapped artery in the earth's crust, there is no finite amount, it's endless. After a little more than a month we are already approaching Exxon spill levels, with no end in sight. That's it, that's all.