Oil Spills facts

While investigating facts about Oil Spills In The Ocean and Oil Spills Effects, I found out little known, but curios details like:

One Oil Spill Has Been Leaking Into The Gulf of Mexico For 14 YEARS and if it's not stopped (according government estimates) the leak could go on for 100 more years. Litigation is ongoing.

how oil spills affect marine life?

The Native American "Shame Pole", a totem pole erected to embarrass people for not payment of debts or ridicule misdeeds. In 2007 one such pole was erected in Alaska depicting the CEO of Exxon to highlight an unpaid debt of $5m owed from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

What causes oil spills?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what are the effects of oil spills. Here are 50 of the best facts about Oil Spills In Canada and Oil Spills In The Us I managed to collect.

what oil spills do to the environment?

A drunk hunter singlehandedly caused a 285,000 gallon oil spill by shooting the Trans-Alaska Pipeline with a .338-caliber rifle
About the Taylor oil spill which has been going on since 2004 leaking 300-700 barrels a day
After Equador ordered Chevron to pay $9 Billion to clean up an oil spill in 2011, Chevron pulled out of the country, and a US ruling blocked Equador from using US courts to persue them.
Exxon's punitive damages for the Exxon Valdex oil spill were reduced from $5 billion to $507.5 million
After the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of hair stylists and alpaca farmers donated over 19 warehouses worth of cut hair to absorb the spilled oil.
The solvents used to clean up the Oil spill from the wrecked tanker Torrey Canyon are thought to have damaged the environment even more badly than the oil spill itself.
Corexit, the chemical dispersant used to "clean" the bp oil spill, is known to have high levels of toxicity in humans, with known links to lung damage, cancer, and other chemical poisoning effects. Corexit is still the go-to chemical for oil spills with no policies banning it in the US.
The Exxon Valdez, a ship that caused one of the most infamous oil spills in history is still carrying oil today, albeit with a different name. However,it is banned from carrying oil off of the Alaskan coast, the site of the spill
Dawn dish soap is made from petroleum which makes it better at cleaning oil and grease, especially from animals affected by oil spills.
One of the widely used dispersants used to clean up the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, Corexit, is highly poisonous to biological species, including humans. The health effects are quite adverse.

oil spills facts — What are the effects of oil spills on marine life?

Why oil spills happen?

You can easily fact check why oil spills are bad for the environment by examining the linked well-known sources.

Oil-Dri was, a product invented for cleaning up oil spills on the garage floor it was not until a cat pissed in a bucket of Oil-Dri that they realized another use for it, cat litter. That is how Cat’s Pride became the first cat litter.

Kinder Morgan believes oil spills are good for the economy because it creates jobs to clean it up. - source

Earth Day was conceived by a Wisconsin Senator named Gaylord Nelson after witnessing a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California - source

There was a coal slurry spill in Martin County, Kentucky that was thirty times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

A legitimate way of cleaning up an oil spill is called 'in-situ' burning, or just setting it on fire and letting it burn up completely. - source

What happens when oil spills in the ocean?

There was a 300,000,000+ gallon coal slurry (sludge) spill in 2000 in Martin County, KY. It was 25 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The coal company, Martin Co. Coal, claimed that the spill was an "act of God" in an attempt to dismiss a lawsuit filed against them.

How oil spills affect the environment?

Oil spills also pose a significant danger to the ecosystem of the Persian Gulf which has important fishing grounds, pearl oysters, and coral reefs.

Human error, caused by lack of sleep is one of the causes of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Saddam spilled between 2 million and 6 million barrels of oil in the Persian gulf during the Gulf war, creating a slick 101 miles (160 km) by 42 miles (68 km) and 5 inches (13 cm) thick in some areas. It has never been cleaned up.

In 1979 two tankers near Trinidad and Tobago collided and spilled 83 million gallons into the ocean. As one of the tankers was being towed it lost another 41 gallons of oil into the ocean.

After Equador ordered Chevron to pay $9 billion to clean up an oil spill, Chevron pulled out of the country... and the US passed a ruling that blocked Equador from using US courts to persue them

What happens when oil spills into the ocean?

Some of the ocean pollution that we can see includes floating plastic, oil spills, and trash.

Although oil spills in the water affect marine life, and animal and human life by contact, it can also be introduced into the air and cause health problems when breathed in.

The famous Exxon Valdez was only listed as the 54th largest spill in history in 1989, the largest being the Gulf War oil fires in 1991 by a large margin

More than 8,000 animals had been killed by the 2010 oil spill within the first 6 months.

How oil spills happen?

In 2010 it was estimated that there was still 23,000 US gallons of oil in the sand and soil of the area. In 2014 it was estimated that as many as 21,000 US gallons of oil were still contaminating the area.

In 2006 there was still more than 101 tonnes of oil in the region and approximately 6 miles of the shoreline was still being negatively impacted.

Some environmental applications of biotechnology include uses microbes to clean up an oil spill or fungal or algae outbreak.

In 1990 the band Midnight Oil played an improvised guerrilla concert in NY from the top of a flat bed truck to protest the Exxon oil spill

One of the methods to clean up an oil spill involves placing a floating barrier around the oil and lighting it on fire. This causes even more pollution.

The herring that once provided income for fisherman never fully recovered and the herring industry in the region was devastated.

Because of the Exxon Valdez oil spill a new law called the Oil Pollution Act was passed in 1990. It made it mandatory that oil companies develop plans to deal with such disasters in the future.

Not all oil spills are by accident. Sometimes oil or oil products are deliberately dumped onto the ground which reaches groundwater sources and pollutes them.

Concerns to both the Saint Lawrence River and the Gulf of St. Lawrence include untreated wastewater from cities, oil spills, development along waterways, pollution, boat spills, and invasive species such as zebra mussels.

In 2009 the Timor Sea was the location of Australia's worst oil spill. The spill lasted from August 21 to November 3, and each day it is estimated that the equivalent of 400 barrels oil were leaked.

3 million liters of dispersant were dumped on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, but researchers still don't understand the chemistry and physics of the oil/dispersant mix, nor exactly how the dispersant works

In 1991 Iraqi forces dumped 300 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf. This was part of their offensive tactics in the Gulf War.

One of the two killer whale groups in the region is expected to become extinct because of the oil spill that devastated its population.

In 1983 a production well in Libya exploded and dumped 42 million gallons into the surrounding environment.

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Oil Spills. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Oil Spills so important!