Taking Stock of Domestic Oil Consumption in the Wake of the Gulf Spill

Published: June 7th, 2010

The “Drill, Baby, Drill” mantra has lost favor as the hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, punched by the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, continues into its second month spewing oil. BP’s recent effort to place a cap over the ruptured riser pipe is reported to be succeeding at siphoning off up to 10,000 barrels of oil per day. But many are still wondering just how much oil has and will spill into the Gulf.

An estimate of the leakage rate by the Flow Rate Technical Group (about as no-nonsense a name as one can imagine) may be as good as any, and is perhaps better than most given that the National Incident Command established the interagency group as an independent team of federal scientists, independent experts and academics. In late May their estimate of the leakage rate was 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day (or 504,000 to 798,000 gallons per day).

Others have mentioned higher rates, including a spokesperson for BP (as reported by the New York Times) who evidently told a closed briefing in Congress that the well could conceivably spill as much as 60,000 barrels per day or more. Since no one really knows what the leakage rate is, PBS decided to post a leak meter online where you can choose your favorite leak rate and have the meter calculate the corresponding total amount of oil that has leaked so far.

When I dial 15,500 barrels per day (651,000 gallons per day) into the leak meter, the mid-range of the Flow Rate Technical Group’s estimate, the total leakage as of this writing is about 700,000 barrels (29 million gallons).

This number will be bigger in the end, since BP says the leak won’t be fully stopped until August, when they finish installing relief wells. Relief wells were ultimately how the blowout of the Ixtoc offshore oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was stopped in 1980. It took about 10 months from blowout to plugging in that case. If it takes BP five to ten months to stop this leak, the cumulative oil spilled (at 15,500 barrels per day) would be 2.5 to 5 million barrels.

That’s a lot of oil from the perspective of the ecological and economic damage it will cause in the Gulf region. Most of us have probably already seen pictures of oil-covered pelicans and oily globules washing ashore.

But there is another image that large amounts of oil bring to my mind — the image of an oil-dependent country. What does 2.5 to 5 million barrels of oil mean in this context? Here are a few numbers that offer some perspective both on the Deepwater Horizon well leak and on the extent of America’s oil dependence:

Every single day we use about 20 million barrels of oil, about two-thirds of that for driving. (Less than ten percent of this comes from offshore drilling). One year of oil use in our country is thus equivalent to 1,500 to 3,000 times the amount that may ultimately leak from the Deepwater Horizon well. On the one hand, this makes the leak seem like a drop in the bucket. On the other, it highlights the fact that our appetite for oil provides many other opportunities for environmental damages arising from oil production. Damages also arise from oil use: oil is the largest contributor among all fossil fuels to US greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.
If everyone driving on an interstate highway were to decrease their average speed by one mile per hour to improve their gas mileage a little, the savings in national gasoline consumption would be about seven million barrels per year, the equivalent of one and a half to nearly three Deepwater Horizon leaks. For driving on interstate highways, which accounted for about 24 percent of all miles driven in the US last year, it’s well known that the fuel economy of a car falls once the vehicle exceeds about 55 mph, due to ever-increasing wind resistance. This fact was the basis for a federal law, passed in 1974 in the wake of the first oil price shock and since repealed, to cap speed limits at 55 mph.
If drivers of large SUVs (such as a Toyota 4Runner) were to drive smaller SUVs instead (such as a Toyota RAV4), the oil savings from interstate highway driving by SUVs alone would amount to about 200 million barrels of oil over a seven-year period (an assumed vehicle lifetime). That’s equivalent to 40 to 80 Deepwater Horizon leaks.
Similarly, if drivers of small SUVs were to trade in their vehicles for mid-size cars instead, oil consumption from interstate highway driving by those drivers would be reduced by about 378 million barrels per year, or between 75 and 150 Deepwater Horizon leaks.

These comparisons illustrate both the huge extent to which we are dependent on oil in this country, and a couple of relatively modest measures we can take as individuals — slowing down a little, trading up to a more fuel-efficient car — that could substantially reduce our country’s dependence on oil and the environmental risks that come with that dependence.

*** UPDATE: June 16, 2010 ***

The Flow Rate Technical Group released its latest estimate of the oil leak rate yesterday: 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day, before subtracting what BP’s “top hat” is managing to direct into tankers floating on the surface. The upper end of this range coincides, strangely, with an estimate made in the early days of the leak by a BP spokesperson and to which I referred in my original blog [above].

The new FRTG estimate is three times their original estimate made three weeks ago. But the numbers are still uncertain. Energy Secretary Steven Chu drew attention to this fact, stating in reference to the FRTG’s latest estimates, “As we continue to collect additional data and refine these estimates, it is important to realize that the numbers can change. In particular, the upper number is less certain — which is exactly why we have been planning for the worst case scenario at every stage and why we are continuing to focus on responding to the upper end of the estimate, plus additional contingencies.”

Fortunately the “top hat” system is now capturing some of the leaking oil. Its current “containment capacity” is an estimated 18,000 barrels per day, and BP is planning modifications to increase the capacity to as much as 53,000 barrels per day by the end of June, and 80,000 barrels per day by mid-July. (The latter number, being greater than the upper end of the latest FRTG flow estimate, lends weight to Secretary Chu’s statement about uncertainty). But if the FRTG is close to being right, and BP meets its top-hat modification schedule, BP may start capturing most of the leaking oil within a month. This will also require a little luck, such as a lack of hurricanes hitting the area during what is projected to be an active hurricane season.

How do the new flow estimates change the thrust of the arguments in my original blog post on this topic? They don’t. My main point was that there are modest measures we can take as individuals and as a society that could substantially reduce our dependence on oil and the environmental risks that come with that dependence. What has changed since my original blog, however, is that we now know there is much more oil floating in the Gulf of Mexico and washing up on our shores than was first thought, and the environmental consequences are going to be correspondingly greater.