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the reporter's notebook of Christopher Mims

How much oil does the world use in a day?

The world uses 85 million barrels a day.

At 42 gallons to the barrel, that’s three billion, five hundred and seventy million gallons of oil (3,570,000,000).

Niagara falls has a flow rate of 150,000 U.S. gallons per second.

3,570,000,000 of oil / 150,000 gallons per second = 23,800 seconds of flow equivalent.

In other words, if by some horrific means you were able to replace the flow over niagara falls with nothing but oil for 6.6 hours a day, that’s how much oil the 6 billion inhabitants of the earth burn every single day of every year, and have been for more or less the past ten years.

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One Response

  1. Peter says:

    Works out to about 4.5 cu miles, or 16 cu km per year. About 430 tonns per second or 500,000 litres per second

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