Gulf Oil Leak

Excerpt from The Star article 'Gulf oil may leak until August' dated 1 June 2010:

"In the wake of a devastating failure this weekend to plug the BP well with the tricky 'top kill' operation, BP chief executive Tony Hayward said the Gulf of Mexico leak may not be stopped for two months. 'There's no doubt that the ultimate solution lies on the relief well, which is in August,' he said...The drilling of two relief wells began in May, an expesnive but reliable way to intercept and cap the leaking well that had ruptured with a deadly rig explosion on April 20."

The same article reported that an estimated 1.9 million to 3 million litres of oil is leaking per day.

Based on the above report, let's say an average of 2.4 million litres is leaking per day. Up to today, it's been 44 days since the well gave way.

That would mean a total of 105.6 million litres of oil spewed out. That is equivalent to 70.4 million units of our 1.5 litre mineral water bottles. And more to come in the weeks and months ahead.

Sea birds get covered in oil and they get poisoned when trying to clean themselves. Planktons die, depriving fish of their food and disrupting the entire food chain. Oil enters the whales' body either through their blowhole or mouth and they get poisoned too. Coastlines eroded and contaminated. Substrates are poisoned and again the entire food chain is ruined. People whose livelihoods depend on the sea are adversely affected. The earth's resources are wasted.

Catastrophe.