Oil Spills

“Oil spills occur somewhere in the world almost every day of the year.”

The public did not pay much attention to oil spills until in 1967, when one supertanker, TORREY CANYON, ran aground on Pollard Rock off the coast of England. A lever left in the wrong position caused the helmsman “steering dude” to lose control of the ship. The TORREY CANYON plowed into Pollard Rock at a high speed. More than 500,000 barrels of oil spilled into the sea. This oil spill polluted the coast of England, France and Spain.

The IXTOC 1 oil well, located in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico accidentally sank its drill into an underwater oil reservoir 140 million gallons of oil came bursting into the gulf. Another equally large spill occurred in 1991. During the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi army dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from a loading dock in Kuwait into the Persian Gulf. They also dumped contents of several supertankers into the gulf. This oil spill was comparable to the IXTOC 1 disaster and dwarf all other oil spills in history.

One of the other most famous oil spills is the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill. The Exxon Valdez was an American oil tanker that went aground on a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska in March 1989. The 301-m (987-ft) tanker leaked 260,000 barrels of oil, the largest oil spill in United States history. The cleanup was very slow due to a lack of preparedness on the parts of Exxon and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company those responsible for containing and cleaning up the spill. The oil slick eventually coated about 1770 km (1100 miles) of the Alaska shoreline, killing thousands of birds and sea mammals and damaging fisheries.

On the afternoon of January 29, 1969, an environmental nightmare began in Santa Barbara, California. A Union Oil Co. platform stationed six miles off the coast of Summerland suffered a blowout. For eleven days, oil workers struggled to cap the rupture. During that time, 200,000 gallons of crude oil bubbled to the surface and was spread into an 800 square mile slick by winds and swells. In all 3686 birds were estimated to have died because of hitting the oil.

Animals that depended on the sea were hard hit. Incoming tides brought the corpses of dead seals and dolphins. Oil had clogged the blowholes of the dolphins; causing massive lung hemorrhages. Animals that ingested the oil were poisoned.

Shorebirds like plovers, godwits and willets, which feed on sand creatures, fled the area. But diving birds, which must get their nourishment from the waters themselves, became soaked with tar.

Equipment: A boom is a device used to keep oil in a certain area or to block off some its travel directions so it cant harm a to major spot in aquatic life. There are different kinds of booms one is a foam filled boom its light weight and inexpensive used for quick action. There are permanent booms which are there 24/7. There are also inflatable booms, which are usually used from boats. All booms do the same job just at different times. If it isn’t in water and on land they will sometimes used pads. Pads are roll outs that absorb oil and other chemicals.

Every oil spill is a potential disaster. The EXXON VALDEZ and AMOCO CADIZ oil spills were as large as the IXTOC 1 and the PERSIAN GULF spills. What matters in an oil spill is what happens after it is spilled. It is in the aftermath of an oil spill that the real disaster occurs.