Gallons or barrels?

I wish the news orgs would standardize on a single unit of measurement when talking about the oil spill.

Consider this recent article about the advent of a new oil skimming ship.

• capacity of "300,000 to 400,000" gallons per day
  
• two containment ships are collecting about 25,000 barrels
  
• well has spilled "50 million gallons of oil, roughly 50,000 to 70,000 gallons per day"
  

Let's re-state all this information with a common unit of measure, the "oil barrel"

1 oil barrel = 42 US gallons

• capacity of 7,142-9,523 barrels of oil/day
  
• two containment ships are collecting 25,000 barrels of oil/day
  
• well has spilled 1.1M barrels of oil, roughly 1,190 to 1,666 barrels of oil/day
  

Does this mean the ship can collect nearly 5 times the amount of oil being spilled daily?

No... we're really spilling 25,000 to 30,000 barrels/day. (up from previous estimates of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels/day). Or worst case, 100,000 barrels/day.

But since the units are all over the place, nobody notices.

Stop using large numbers without proper context or comparison.