Causes
Causes of Oil Spills Accidents ; Drilling-Transportation and Storage-Pipelines
- Any nation or tourist destination close to oil drilling or shipping lanes is at high risk of experiencing economic collapse and the disastrous environmental effects of oil spills and needs to be properly prepared to clean up oil spills….more
Oil Spills are inevitable and occur constantly at all stages of oil and gas production. The levels of oil spills pollution reach lethal limits for marine fauna, mainly for birds, mammals and fish stocks.
Blowouts of oil and gas release numerous heavy metal chemical substances and compounds into the environment. Accidents are caused by equipment failure, human error, and extreme impacts - seismic activity - ice fields - hurricanes - terrorism. The environmental remediation problem is especially severe near the shore.
Drilling accidents - no other situations but tanker oil spills can compete with drilling accidents in frequency and severity.
Transportation and storage accidents - running aground and into shore reefs, collisions with other vessels, and fires and explosions of the cargo - according to official data [IMO, 1990], the total volume of oil spills pollution was 500,000 tons a year.
Pipelines - pipelines are among the main factors of environmental risk during offshore oil developments, along with tanker transportation and drilling operations. Onland pipelines also pose danger to the coastal marine ecosystems if located near rivers as eventually spills reach the river mouth. Acknowledgement: Stanislav Patin, Ph.D
