Re: Natural oil leak
Two Exxon-Valdez's worth of leakage a year, if the other numbers on that page are correct, comes to 22 million gallons a year, or about 60,000 gallons a day. The current leak is dumping about 200,000 gallons a day, which calculates out to about three times the natural rate.
More imporantly, a slow, widely distributed leakage initially dispersed over many thousands of square miles would behave differently than a large, rapid single point leak. For one thing, the single-point slick would start out a lot thicker, and would take a lot of time to thin out to the type of slick generated by natural leaks.
Nature will overcome this leak, but not as easily as natural ones.