There is one facet of the gulf oil spill that really puts it into context, but I haven’t seen anyone else mention this.

In his testimony before a House subcommittee, BP CEO Tony Hayward is on record as saying there could be 2 billion gallons of oil left in the well. 2 billion gallons of oil that could flood the Gulf of Mexico if it isn’t stopped.

There are 42 gallons to a barrel. My shady-at-best math skills tell me that is around 47 million barrels of oil sitting down there.

The United States consumes 19.5 million barrels of oil. A day. It takes this country 2.4 days to consume the amount of oil that is left down there.

Estimations vary about how much has spilled out so far. The official Department of Energy estimate is 35,000 barrels a day, or 1,845,681 barrels since this whole shindig started.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the total oil leaked so far is the equivalent to 2.3 hours of the USA’s oil consumption.

I could ramble on about cutting energy consumption, yadda yadda yadda. But I won’t. Just look at the numbers. Think about it for a while.