Jude Wanniski's computation is off. He puts a barrel at 42 gallons - I don't know where he gets that. My old ('53-'54) edition of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics gives a U.S. liquid barrel as 31.5 gallons or .11924 cubic meters. 50 miles converts to 80,500 meters and 63.3 ft is 19.29 m. Thus Wanniski's hole has a volume of 125 billion cu. m which, using the figure above translates to 1048.5 billion barrels. Thus, to hold the 812 billion barrels the hole would only need to be about 49 feet deep.
A 50mix50 mi hole is comparably in area to the figure I quoted for Great Salt Lake in my post 48.
From:
USGS 6. Each barrel of oil has 42 gallons.
From: chevroncars.com
An Average Barrel
(42 U.S. gallons) is refined into:
- Gasoline (18 Gallon)
- Kerosene, Light Fuel Oil (10 Gallons)
- Residual Fuel Oil (5 Gallons)
- Jet Fuel (3 Gallons)
- Lubricating Oil, Asphalt, Wax (2 Gallons)
- Chemicals For Use In Manufacturing (Petrochemicals) (2 Gallons)
- Other (2 gallons)
The type of crude oil being processed determines the amount of each product obtained from each barrel.