The U.S. government announced today that as much as 60,000 barrels per day of oil may be gushing into the Gulf as a result of BP’s oil rig explosion in April. This sounds like a lot of oil and it certainly looks like a lot. But what does this number mean exactly in relation to the world’s oil supply?
The following chart shows the relative amount of oil BP is capturing, the amount leaking, total BP production, and total U.S. production.
What we can tell:
– BP may be capturing less than 20% of the spill
– BP is losing as much as 7.6% of production
– The spill represents roughly 1% of total U.S. production
To put these numbers into a larger context, the following chart shows the total U.S. production, U.S. consumption, world production, and world consumption.
What we can tell:
– The U.S. produces only 25% of oil consumed (not shown: 57% is imported)
– The U.S. accounts for 23% of world oil consumption and less than 6% of production
– World oil demand exceeds supply (not shown: demand dropped in 2009)
Another way of looking at the oil spill is this…
The amount that can now be seen leaking represents, at most, 1/4 of one percent of total U.S. oil consumption. In other words, we use a lot of oil and spilling a relatively small amount causes serious damage.
UPDATE (6/22/2010):
BP CEO Tony Hayward presents a similar analysis, finds spill equals 4 hours of gasoline burned in US. Two billion gallons left in oil well.
References:
Bloomberg
BP Response
US EIA Petroleum Basic Data
