The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, March 24, 1989, when Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 1.5 miles west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 am local time and spilled 10.8 million US gallons (260,000 bbl)(or a mass of 35,000 metric tonnes) of crude oil over the next few days. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters. The Valdez spill is the second largest in US waters, after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in terms of volume released. Prince William Sound's remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane, or boat, made government and industry response efforts difficult and severely taxed existing response plans. The region is a habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals and seabirds. The oil, originally extracted at the Prudhoe Bay oil field, eventually covered 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of coastline, and 11,000 square miles (28,000 km2) of ocean.
Enbridge Inc. is a Canadian multinational energy transportation company based in Calgary, Alberta. It focuses on the transportation, distribution and generation of energy, primarily in North America. As a transporter of energy, Enbridge operates in Canada and the United States, the longest crude oil and liquid hydrocarbons transportation system in North America. As a distributor of various fuels, it owns and operates Canada's largest natural gas distribution network, providing distribution services in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and New York State.
Plains All American Pipeline is a publicly traded Master limited partnership in the oil pipeline transportation, marketing, and storage business in the United States, liquefied petroleum gas business in Canada, and natural gas storage business in Michigan and Louisiana. It owns about 37 million barrels of terminal and storage capacity and 15,000 miles (25,000 km) of crude oil pipelines.
Dilbit is a bitumen diluted with one or more lighter petroleum products, typically natural-gas condensates such as naphtha. Diluting bitumen makes it much easier to transport, for example in pipelines. Per the Alberta Oil Sands Bitumen Valuation Methodology, "Dilbit Blends" means "Blends made from heavy crudes and/or bitumens and a diluent, usually natural-gas condensate, for the purpose of meeting pipeline viscosity and density specifications, where the density of the diluent included in the blend is less than 800 kg/m3." If the diluent density is greater than or equal to 800 kg/m3, the diluent is typically synthetic crude and accordingly the blend is called synbit.
The Santa Barbara oil spill occurred in January and February 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, near the city of Santa Barbara in Southern California. It was the largest oil spill in United States waters by that time, and now ranks third after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. It remains the largest oil spill to have occurred in the waters off California.
Spill containment is where spills of chemicals, oils, sewage etc. are contained within a barrier or drainage system rather than being absorbed at the surface. One method is to use an inflatable stopper or pneumatic bladder which is inserted into the outflow of a drainage system to create a containment vessel. In the event of a spill the stopper bladder is inflated to block the drain/s and to prevent the spilled agent from entering the ground water, stream or river.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an industrial disaster that began on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8% to 31% larger in volume than the previous largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill, also in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels. After several failed efforts to contain the flow, the well was declared sealed on September 19, 2010. Reports in early 2012 indicated that the well site was still leaking.
Corexit is a product line of oil dispersants used during oil spill response operations. It is produced by Nalco Holding Company, associated with BP and Exxon and an indirect subsidiary of Ecolab. Corexit was originally developed by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Corexit is typically applied by aerial spraying or spraying from ships directly onto an oil slick. On contact with the dispersant, oil that would otherwise float on the surface of the water is emulsified into tiny droplets and sinks or remains suspended in the water. In theory this allows the oil to be more rapidly degraded by bacteria (bioremediation) and prevents it from accumulating on beaches and in marshes.
Following is a timeline of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for June 2010.
A Whale is a Liberian-flagged ore-oil carrier built in 2010 by Hyundai Heavy Industries, Ulsan, South Korea for TMT Co. Ltd. from the Republic of China (Taiwan). She has seven other sister ships in the fleet, built in 2010-2011 and named in succession: B Whale, C Whale etc., to H Whale.
The Kalamazoo River oil spill occurred in July 2010 when a pipeline operated by Enbridge burst and flowed into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. A 6-foot (1.8 m) break in the pipeline resulted in one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history. The pipeline carries diluted bitumen (dilbit), a heavy crude oil from Canada's Athabasca oil sands to the United States. Cleanup took five years. Following the spill, the volatile hydrocarbon diluents evaporated, leaving the heavier bitumen to sink in the water column. Thirty-five miles (56 km) of the Kalamazoo River were closed for clean-up until June 2012, when portions of the river were re-opened. On March 14, 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered Enbridge to return to dredge portions of the river to remove submerged oil and oil-contaminated sediment.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was discovered on the afternoon of 22 April 2010 when a large oil slick began to spread at the former rig site. According to the Flow Rate Technical Group, the leak amounted to about 4.9 million barrels of oil, exceeding the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill as the largest ever to originate in U.S.-controlled waters and the 1979 Ixtoc I oil spill as the largest spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has challenged this calculation saying that it is overestimated as it includes over 810,000 barrels of oil which was collected before it could enter the Gulf waters.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred between April 10 and September 19, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. A variety of techniques were used to address fundamental strategies for addressing the spilled oil, which were: to contain oil on the surface, dispersal, and removal. While most of the oil drilled off Louisiana is a lighter crude, the leaking oil was of a heavier blend which contained asphalt-like substances. According to Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, this type of oil emulsifies well. Once it becomes emulsified, it no longer evaporates as quickly as regular oil, does not rinse off as easily, cannot be eaten by microbes as easily, and does not burn as well. "That type of mixture essentially removes all the best oil clean-up weapons", Overton said.
The 2013 Mayflower oil spill occurred on March 29, 2013, when the Pegasus Pipeline, owned by ExxonMobil and carrying Canadian Wabasca heavy crude from the Athabasca oil sands, ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Little Rock releasing about 3,190 barrels of oil. Approximately 12,000 barrels of oil and water mix was recovered. Twenty-two homes were evacuated. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified the leak as a major spill.
The Mega Borg Oil Spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico on June 8, 1990, roughly 50 miles off the coast of Texas, when the oil tanker Mega Borg caught on fire and exploded. The cleanup was one of the first practical uses of bioremediation.
The Refugio oil spill on May 19, 2015, deposited 142,800 U.S. gallons of crude oil onto one of the most biologically diverse coastlines of the West Coast of the United States. The corroded pipeline blamed for the spill has been closed indefinitely, resulting in financial impacts to the county estimated as high as $74 million if it and a related pipeline remain out of service for three years. The cost of the cleanup was estimated by the company to be $96 million with overall expenses including expected legal claims and potential settlements to be around $257 million.
The 2004 Taylor oil spill is an ongoing spill located in the Gulf of Mexico, around 11 miles (18 km) off the coast of the U.S. state of Louisiana, which resulted from the destruction of a Taylor Energy oil platform during Hurricane Ivan. It was first brought to public attention when the contamination at the site was noticed in 2010 by those monitoring the nearby Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A later report by the Associated Press in 2015 challenged the estimates of the extent of the leak given by the company and the U.S. Coast Guard, which were then revised to be around 20 times greater than initially reported.
