Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

(Community Matters) certainly not making light of the spill underway – just another bit of information from NYTimes article Bad, but How Bad? which helps with perspective

The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Istox I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher could be stopped.