Tony's Rant: Double Double Oil and Trouble

At the time of this posting, it has been 38 days since the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon and the rupture of the oil pipeline it was working on. Everyone has presented ideas on fault and blame and the political, environmental, and practical fallout from the tragedy. However, there's one aspect that I feel needs to be put into plainer language: the numbers. People need to be able to see just how much and how little these are affecting us.

If people can understand the facts, then the impact of this may start to become that much clearer. Regardless, here are the facts:

The government estimates that anywhere from 12,000 to 25,000 barrels of oil have been spilled into the ocean each day. With a "barrel" containing 42 US gallons, this means that there is anywhere from 19.152 and 39.9 million gallons of oil in the Gulf.

That's a rough guess of THIRTY MILLION GALLONS of oil flooding into the gulf to wash ashore or kill wildlife at sea, right now. Based on those numbers, we can expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 750,000 more gallons being pumped into the gulf each day until they can finally fix the problem with the relief well. That's slated to take about 90 days at the best case scenario. based on the current numbers, that makes it just shy of seventy million gallons of crude oil floating in the Atlantic or washed up on the eastern seaboard by the time the hole is plugged.

Seventy million gallons. That's what British Petroleum has loosed upon us with thier negligence.

Some people think that BP has suffered enough, that the losses from just the lack of oil will be punishment enough. It's true that they stand to lose a pretty penny from the loss; crude oil accounts for approximately 55% of the price of gasoline. With the average gas price in the Midwest at $2.69/gallon, the 70 million gallons of crude would account for $188,580,000 in "losses", money they would have coming in with the gas they could have sold using the now seabound crude oil. And while they certainly might miss the $188 million, it's not even a drop in the bucket of the $4.4 Billion (or $4400 million) in profit the company made in the fourth quarter of 2009 alone.

Assuming the numbers stay the same (which I know they wont but it makes calculations easier), this spill would accunt for 4.3% of the company's quarterly income. It's the equivalent of four days' worth of profits.

This disaster will consist of at least 90 days to fix the leak, 70,000,000 gallons of oil loosed onto a world that has no way to properly deal with it, and countless injuries and fatalities to humans, plants, and animals. Under the current law, BP is only responsible for covering up to $75 Million in damages, for a total "loss" of $263,000,000

BP can recoup that monetary loss in 131 hours worth of drilling. That's less than 6 days.

I don't know about you, but I personally feel that BP deserves a lot more punishment than just breaking even for 6 days.