Anyone who reads this regularly knows that I have a massive crush on the NY Times Infographics. And today while poking around, I found one that's very helpful in keeping track of all efforts with the oil catastrophe in the Gulf. 

There's a handy chart that lists out all the various efforts undertaken by BP since the explosion on April 20th started this whole mess. I found three shocking things. 

First off, the amount of time lapse between fix-it attempts. For instance, they started drilling the first relief well on May 2, but didn't start drilling the second relief well until two weeks later on May 16. Why on earth would they wait? 

Secondly -- and I'm not sure why I haven't focused on this before -- but the problem here, the entire problem, is that the safety mechanism to keep this kind of thing from happening failed. Why on earth are we allowing ANY offshore drilling right now with the knowledge that this could conceivably go wrong on any of the other platforms at pretty much anytime. 

Lastly, and again, this is staggering in retrospect. They didn't begin capturing the oil until June 4. At the new 'best guess' of 60,000 gallons pumping out of the pipe a day, that's a disaster about five and half times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill before even a drop was cleaned up, forty-five days after the explosion.