Anyone who has had a car with a minor engine leak will know that a little oil can go a long way. BP has amply established for everyone that a lot of oil can go even further. The volumes involved are scary and at the same time instructive.
A barrel of oil is 35 British gallons. The amount of oil gushing into theGulf of Mexicohas been estimated in various ways but a middling figure might be 40,000 barrels per day. That represents a flow of 1,400,000 gallons per day.
Compare this with the fuel capacity of a typical small or medium car. The fuel tank might hold 50 litres or 11 gallons. This implies a daily oil spillage equivalent to the fuel capacity of 28,000 cars.
In Britain, we have the largest onshore oil field inWestern Europe, called Wytch Farm. It is located on the southern shore of Poole Harbour in Dorset. In 2002, production was 50,000 barrels per day, which is comparable to some estimates of the BP oil spill.
To give another everyday life context to the volumes involved, consider what four or eight pints of milk look like on an average doorstep. Eight pints might look crowded but the fuel tank from my average car referred to above puts down 88 pints. The oil spill delivers 11,200,000 pints each day.
For BP to plug the oil leak at an operational depth of 5,000 feet poses huge technical challenges. It is far deeper than any conventional submarine can go and there is a dependency on highly specialised technologies. All of this causes governments to naturally review their attitude to supporting deep drilling offshore.
If there is now a withdrawal from riskier drilling operations, we could sooner reach the point where economic growth causes oil demand to exceed supply. In a sense, the banks helped us to defer this day by stimulating a worldwide recession. This resulted in a slowdown in the growth in oil demand from certain key countries including the BRIC economies ofBrazil,Russia,IndiaandChina. We have gained what could be a temporary respite but at considerable economic and social cost.
Events in theGulf of Mexico should increase the sense of urgency for identifying and using other sources of energy. At the same time, there should be an even greater incentive to draw back from the production and purchase of vehicles with unusable speed, unusable acceleration and unsustainable fuel consumption.
Councillor Bob Lanzer, Leader of Crawley Borough Council
16th June 2010