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

Answer 1

This could have fueled 155,167 cars for a year.

Explanation:

The question is incomplete so below is the complete 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 per year.

Now, to find the number of cars could this have fueled for a year.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in 4.9 million barrels

1 million = 10,00,000

Number of barrels = 4.9 × 10,00,000 = 49,00,000.

Each barrel of oil can be processed into about 19 gallons of gasoline.

So, the gallons of gasoline in the barrels of oil are:

`19* 4900000`

`=93100000.`

Thus, in 4.9 million barrels contain 931,00,000 gallons of oil.

The total quantity of oil = 931,00,000 gallons.

An, average car gets 20 miles to the gallon.

And drives about 12,000 miles per year.

So, gallons a car drives in a year to the:

`(12000)/(20)` =
`600\ gallons.`

Now, to get the number of cars this have fueled for a year we divide the total quantity of oil by gallons a car drives in a year:

`931,00,000\ gallons/ 600\ gallons`

`=155166.66`

Approximately 155,167 cars.

Therefore, this could have fueled 155,167 cars for a year.