In march 1989 the exxon valdez ran aground and spilled 240,000 barrels of crude petroleum off the coast of alaska. one barrel of petroleum is equal to 42 gal. how many liters of petroleum were spilled?

240,000 barrels contain a total of:

240,000 barrels * 42 gal per barrel = 240,000*42 gal = 10,080,000 gal of petroleum.

now we need to convert gallons to Liters. For this we use the conversion:

1 US liquid gallon = 3.78541 Litre, 



thus 10,080,000 gal  are 10,080,000*3.78541 Litre = 38,156,932.8 Litre

38,156,932.8 Litre