U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt, releasing the findings of a U.S. government expert panel that has produced an official pronouncement on the amount of oil that has spilled from the Deepwater Horizon:

This is obviously a very, very significant environmental disaster and I think with the numbers I’ve given you, you can do the math.

That’s what she thinks. What I think is that she couldn’t do the math, and wants someone to help her.

For example, here are her numbers, refracted through the prism of Reuters:

On May 17, there were at least 130,000 barrels of oil on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, and a similar amount had been skimmed off the surface or evaporated, according to a panel of government scientists known as the Flow Rate Technical Group.

The findings, made public by U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt, confirm that more oil has been spilled from BP’s leaking well than the estimated 257,000 barrels that fouled Alaska’s Prince William Sound by the grounding of the Exxon Valdez tanker.

If the panel’s calculations are accurate, a total of at least 260,000 barrels of oil had spilled into the ocean by May 17.

The high-end estimate of oil on the water that day was 270,000 barrels, with a similar amount contained or evaporated, the panel found.
[...]
The team’s best estimate for the amount of oil pouring from the well is 12,000-19,000 barrels per day, though one of three measurement methods the team used returned a high-end rate of 25,000 barrels per day, McNutt said.

Assuming the well has flowed 12,000 barrels (504,000 gallons/1.9 million liters) a day since April 20 — the day the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded — the total amount of oil released by the well is 444,000 barrels (18.65 million gallons/70.59 million liters), nearly twice the amount from Exxon Valdez.

So let’s accept her invitation, and do some math.

The expert panel’s estimates of the amount of oil gushing from the well range from 12,000 barrels per day to 25,000 barrels per day.

The estimate of 260,000 barrels having spilled into the ocean by May 17 corresponds to the low-end estimate of 12,000 barrels a day. The estimate of 540,000 barrels having spilled into the ocean by May 17 corresponds to the high-end estimate of 25,000 barrels a day.

Deepwater Horizon went kaboom on April 20. Even if you exclude that day, and also leave out May 17, oil gushed from the spill for 26 days. According to both me and Bill Gates (who I summoned up in Turkish Excel), 12,000 barrels a day for 26 days makes 312,000 barrels, not 260,000. (Or if you’re a high-end kind of person, 25,000 barrels a day for 26 days makes 650,000 barrels, not 540,000.)

Here’s my hypothesis. Just the other day I wished for the oil to magically disappear. Now some of it has.

It’s only the Flow Rate Technical Group’s math that is inscrutable, by the way. Nothing wrong with Reuter‘s 444,000 barrels computation. That’s 12,000 barrels a day for the 37 days from April 20 through May 26 (or possibly April 21 through May 27). (Of course, then they had to spoil it all by telling us that 444,000 is almost double of 257,000.)

*** Update, 10:34 a.m. ***

In my hurry to publish the post, I forgot to mention that the expert panel seems to have totally ignored the huge underwater plumes. They are only talking about what’s on the surface now, and what’s been skimmed off the surface or evaporated. (I guess that makes it an admittedly superficial estimate?)