sanity checks on oil leaks

there have been some speculative stories out there on catastrophic consequences of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, up to and including Florida being swallowed

can't happen

the ecological consequences are going to be bad enough, along with damage to economy and tourism

the leak has now been estimated at 60,000 barrels per day,
or 2.5 kb per hour, as I'm sure BP would like it to be referrred to

if the leak continues for 3 years, without being capped, that would be about 60 million barrels, or 2.4 billion gallons, or about 10 billion liters of oil.

that is probably about the maximum that can leak out under its own pressure, even if the well hit a particularly rich field, only a fraction of the total oil will leak out under its own pressure before porosity and back pressure lead to need for active extraction

a liter is 1000 cm³, a billion of them is a stack of 1000x1000x1000that is a cube that is 100m by 100m by 100m

ten of them, gives us a square kilometer by 10 m height.

Now, at these pressures oil and water are essentially incompressible, so even if there was no backflow, and the seabed subsided to fill the space vacated by the oil, it'd be a a small drop by something of the order of square kilometer - maybe a bit bigger if you allow for the methane trapped with the oil, but not orders of magnitude bigger

this is not going to swallow Florida, cause giant tidal waves or really do much of anything

it is the sticky toxic oil at boundary of the water and land that is problem
that goes a long way

or, there is the worst case scenario...