Oil spill in context: Miss. River pours as much water in 38 seconds as total BP well leak

WASHINGTON – WASHINGTON (AP) — Overwhelmed and saddened by the gargantuan size of the Gulf oil spill?

A little mathematical context to the spill size can put the environmental catastrophe in perspective. Viewing it through some lenses, it isn't that huge. The Mississippi River pours as much water into the Gulf of Mexico in 38 seconds as the BP oil leak has done in two months.

On a more human scale, the spill seems more daunting. Take the average-sized living room. The amount of oil spilled would fill 9,200 of them.

Since the BP oil rig exploded on April 20, about 126.3 million gallons of oil has gushed into the Gulf. That calculation is based on the higher end of the government's range of barrels leaked per day and the oil company BP's calculations for the amount of oil siphoned off as of Monday morning. Using the more optimistic end of calculations, the total spill figure is just shy of 68 million gallons.

For this by-the-numbers exercise, The Associated Press is using the higher figure.

For every gallon of oil that BP's well has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, there is more than 5 billion gallons of water already in it. And the mighty Mississippi adds another billion gallons every five minutes or so, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

So BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward was factually correct last month when he said the spill was "relatively tiny" compared to what he mischaracterized as a "very big ocean."

But another big number that Hayward provided on Thursday also offers some troubling news. He said the reservoir of oil under the sea that is the source for the leak is believed to hold about 2.1 billion gallons of oil. That leaves about 2 billion gallons left to spew. So there are about 16 gallons of oil underneath the sea floor yet to gush for every gallon that has already fouled the Gulf. If the problem were never fixed, that would mean another two years of oil spilling based on the current flow rate.

More not-so-dreadful context: The amount of oil spilled so far could only fill the cavernous New Orleans Superdome about one-seventh of the way up. On the other hand, it could fill 15 Washington Monuments and two-thirds of the way up a 16th. If the oil were poured on a football field — complete with endzones — it would measure nearly 100 yards high.

If you put the oil in gallon milk jugs and lined them up, they would stretch about 11,000 miles. That's a roundtrip from the Gulf to London, BP's headquarters, and a side trip from New Orleans to Washington for Hayward to testify.

BP has spent more than $54.8 million lobbying federal officials in Washington since 2000; that's about 43 cents for every gallon of oil it has spilled. Since 2000, the oil and gas industry — along with their employees — has contributed $154.2 million to candidates for federal office. That's $1.22 for each gallon of oil spilled. Of that money, 78 percent went to Republicans and the rest to Democrats.

Take the 126.3 million gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf and convert it to gasoline, which is what Americans mostly use it for. That produces 58.6 million gallons of gas — the amount American drivers burn every three hours and 43 minutes. It's enough to fill up the gas tanks in nearly 3.7 million cars — more than those in Louisiana and Mississippi combined.

At $2.75 a gallon for gas — the national average — that's more than $161 million worth spilled into the Gulf.

Want your own piece of this spill? If all the oil spilled were divided up and equal amounts given to every American, we would all get about four soda cans full of crude oil that no one really wants.

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Associated Press Writer Sharon Theimer in Washington contributed to this report.