Has anyone, including the fabulists at BP given out

[jimshoes]

to the general public, the dimensions of the piping, of the leaking well, especially the pipe that is gushing the bulk of the oil? Has it been reported elsewhere?

[havocmom]

1. If I heard KO correctly, 28 inches

but wouldn't swear to it.

Big pipe, lost of pressure. Gotta be more oil per day than they are trying to convince us.

[jimshoes]

3. Thanks, I also found this on wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well
Is the outer 28 inch pipe the (casing) or the smaller inner pipe (tubing) what needs to be sealed? Or both?
Just out of curiosity, what is the diameter of an oil barrel? Also the height? Capacity=42 gallons iirc.

[madokie]

4. I've never seen a 42 gallon barrel

I think it is only a term used whereby we can gauge the volume of oil. I would think that if they actually made a 42 gallon barrel I'd have seen one in my 62 plus years but to this day I haven't so the question to me is do they actually make a 42 gallon container? I'd like to see one in real life.

[Statistical]

5. Oil hasn't been "barreled" for a century however the term as a unit kinda stuck.

Just like a lot of other weird US/English units.

The oil barrel unit came from 1800s wooden barrels which were standardized to carry 42 gallons. Today a modern 55 gallon drum would contain 1.3 "barrels" of oil.

The measurement originated in the early Pennsylvania oil fields. In the early 1860s, when oil production began, there was no standard container for oil, so oil and petroleum products were stored and transported in barrels of different shapes and sizes for beer, fish, molasses, turpentine, etc. Both the 42-US gallon barrels (based on the old English wine measure), the tierce (159 litres) and the 40-U.S.-gallon (151.4-litre) whiskey barrels were used. 45-gallon barrels were also in common use. The 40-gallon whiskey barrel was the most common size used by early oil producers, since they were readily available at the time.<7>

The origins of the 42-gallon oil barrel are obscure, but some historical documents indicate that around 1866 early oil producers in Pennsylvania came to the conclusion that shipping oil in a variety of different containers was causing buyer distrust. They decided they needed a standard unit of measure to convince buyers that they were getting a fair volume for their money. They agreed to base this measure on the more-or-less standard 40-gallon whiskey barrel, but added an additional two gallons to ensure that any measurement errors would always be in the buyer's favor as an additional way of assuring buyer confidence, apparently on the same principle as is behind the baker's dozen and some other long units of measure. By 1872 the standard oil barrel was firmly established as 42 US gallons.

A "barrel" of oil today has no meaning other than 42 gallons. Most oil never makes it to a barrel. Oil rigs are connected directly to pipeline networks and oil spends its whole life in pipes or supertankers. Still the unit kinda stuck.

[madokie]

2. No link but I read here yesterday that it is a 21 inch od, 20 inch id pipe