![]() The spill cost oil company BP an estimated $61.6 billion, and they still couldn’t contain or recover all the oil that was spilled, said Michel, who worked on the project to assess some of the impacts. Over nearly 90 days the broken well pumped 680,000 tons (approximately 5 million barrels) of oil into the Gulf. At 35,000 feet, it was the deepest well ever drilled until the blow out that killed 11 workers. None of Sanchi's 32 crew members survived.īy far the biggest accidental spill into the ocean was from the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. An Iranian oil tanker, the Sanchi, lost 117,000 tons of highly toxic natural gas condensate. The worst tanker accident in the past 25 years occurred in January 2018, when two tankers collided off the coast of China. (There is roughly 305 gallons in a metric ton of oil.) For comparison, the Valdez lost 37,000 tons. The biggest between 19 happened in 1979, off the coast of Tobago in the West Indies when the Atlantic Empress lost 287,000 tons of crude in a collision with another tanker. Perhaps surprisingly, given its notoriety and impact on the shipping industry, the Exxon Valdez spill was only the 36th worst tanker oil spill yet recorded. The decline in large spills greater than 700 tons was even more dramatic, falling from 24.5 per year to just two per year. Looking for Killer Whales 26 Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (Part 1)Ĭombined with tougher regulations and better navigation equipment, oil spills releasing more than seven tons from tankers plummeted from a high of 79 spills per year in the 1970s to six per year over the past decade, according to ITOPF, an association of shipowners that responds to oil spills. Today, all of the world’s fleet of 12,000 to 14,000 tankers for oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and chemicals are double hulled. waters to have double hulls (unlike that fateful ship) and increased penalties for spills. Congress passed a law, in 1990, that required oil tankers in U.S. In the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, the U.S. However, digging up those residues to remove them would likely do more harm than good, she added. It’s likely to remain there for decades to come, according to a 2017 study by Jacqueline Michel, a geochemist specializing in oil spills, and president of Research Planning Inc.Ī powerful storm or earthquake could potentially put that oil residue back into Prince William Sound, Michel said. Recent sampling along the coast revealed pockets of oil buried four to eight inches under sand and gravel, often topped by stones. Thirty years later, local populations of killer whales and some seabirds in Prince William Sound have still not recovered, he said. And the impacts of these disasters can linger for decades. It’s impossible to fully clean up an oil spill in the ocean, said Steiner, who’s been involved in many spills since 1989. ![]()
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