Question

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in 4.9 million barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. Each barrel of oil can be processed into about 19 gallons of gasoline. How many cars could this have fueled for a year? Assume an average car gets 20 miles to the gallon, and drives about 12,000 miles in a year.

Answer 1

Answer: 155167 cars could have been fueled.

Step-by-step explanation:

The total volume of oil that spilled into the Golf of Mexico is 4.9 million barrels of oil.

Each barrel of oil can be processed into about 19 gallons of gasoline. This means that the number of gallons from 4.9 million barrels of oil would be

4900000 × 19 = 93100000 gallons

Assuming an average car has a gas mileage of 20 miles per gallon. This means that if the car drives about 12,000 miles in a year, the total number of gallons of oil used by a car would be

12000/20 = 600 gallons

Therefore, if each car uses 600 gallons in a year, the number of cars that would be fueled with 93100000 gallons is

93100000 gallons/600

= 155166.7

Approximately 155167 cars