I found these 10 biggest oil spills in history at Popular Mechanics, which give me a glimmer of hope during these difficult times.  I know that is what we all need right now, especially when we look at what day we are on the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.


photo credit: (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)

Location: Kuwait
Gallons: 240 to 336 million

How It Happened:
As Iraqi forces retreated from Kuwait during the first Gulf War, they opened the valves of oil wells and pipelines in a bid to slow the onslaught of American troops. The result was the largest oil spill history has seen. Some 240 million gallons of crude oil flowed into the Persian Gulf. The resulting oil slick spanned an area just larger than the size of the island of Hawaii.

The Cleanup:
Coalition forces managed to seal off some of the open pipelines using smart bombs, but most recovery efforts had to wait until after the war. At that point 25 miles of booms (orange ropelike products that contain the oil that is floating on top of the water) and 21 skimmers (machines that separate oil from water) were deployed in the gulf, mostly to protect the water intakes of desalinization, industry and power plants. Together with vacuum trucks, about 58.8 million gallons of oil was recovered from the gulf.

The largest oil spill the world has seen exacted little permanent damage on coral ecosystems and local fisheries, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at Unesco. The study concluded that about half the oil evaporated, one-eighth of it was recovered and another quarter washed ashore, mostly in Saudi Arabia.

photo credit: (Photo by John Hoagland/Getty Images)

Ixtoc 1 Oil Well, 1979
Location: Bay of Campeche, Mexico
Gallons: 140 millionHow It Happened:
In June 1979, an oil well in the Bay of Campeche collapsed after a pressure buildup sparked an accidental explosion. Over the next 10 months about 140 million gallons of crude spouted into the Gulf of Mexico from the damaged oil well.The Cleanup:
In order to slow down the flow of oil from the damaged well, mud and later steel, iron and lead balls were dropped down its shaft. According to PEMEX (Mexican Petroleum), half the oil burned when it reached the surface and a third evaporated. PEMEX also hired a company to spray dispersants over 1100 square miles of oil slick. Dispersants effectively act like dish soap, breaking up oil so that more of it can mix into the water. That way, they can reduce the effect of the oil slick on shorelines. On the Texas side of the gulf, skimmers and boomers were placed in the water to protect the bays and lagoons of the Barrier Islands.

photo credit: (Photo by Hein Hinrichs)

Atlantic Empress, 1979
Location: Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies
Gallons: 88.3 millionHow It Happened: One stormy evening in July 1979, two full supertankers collided off the coast of Tobago in the Caribbean Sea, precipitating the largest ship-sourced oil spill in history.Crippled by the accident, both vessels began to leak their crude and caught fire. The fire on one of the vessels, the Aegean Captain, was soon controlled, and the damaged vessel was towed to Curacao, where its remaining cargo was recovered.The other tanker, the Atlantic Empress, stubbornly ablaze, was towed farther out to sea until it exploded 300 nautical miles offshore.All told, 26 crew were killed in the disaster and nearly 90 million gallons of crude was dumped into the sea.

The Cleanup: The response to the incident included firefighting efforts and the use of dispersants to treat the oil that spilled over the course of the accident and then while the Atlantic Empress was towed away. Luckily, only minor shore pollution was reported on nearby islands.

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Fergana Valley 1992

Location: Uzbekistan
Gallons: 87.7 million

How It Happened:
Nearly 88 million gallons of oil spilled from an oil well in Fergana Valley, one of Uzbekistans’s most active energy- and oil-refining areas. While the spill didn’t get much press at the time, it is the largest inland spill ever reported.

The Cleanup:
The ground absorbed this spill, leaving nothing for cleaning crews to tackle.

photo credit: (Photo by Tom Stoddart/Getty Images)

Nowruz Oil Field, 1983
Location: Persian Gulf
Gallons: 80 millionHow It Happened:
Smack in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War, an oil tanker crashed into the Nowruz Field Platform in the Persian Gulf and knocked it askew, damaging the well underneath. The oil well then leaked about 1500 barrels a day, but because it was in the center of a war zone, seven months went by before it was fixed.The Cleanup:
Norpol, a Norwegian company, used booms and skimmers to stem the spread of oil.
photo credit: (Photo by Terje Rakke/Getty Images)
ABT Summer, 1991

Location: Off the coast of Angola
Gallons: 80 million

How It Happened:
While en route to Rotterdam, the fully loaded tanker ABT Summer experienced an explosion onboard and caught fire while it was 900 miles off the coast of Angola, leaking its payload into the ocean.

photo credit: (Photo by Martin Harvey/Getty Images)

Castillo de Bellver, 1983
Location: Off Saldanha Bay, South Africa
Gallons: 78.5 millionHow It Happened:
Another torcher, the Castillo de Bellver caught fire about 70 miles northwest of Capetown, South Africa, on August 6, 1983. The blazing tanker was abandoned and drifted offshore until it eventually broke in half. The stern capsized and sank into the deep ocean, with some 110,000 ton of oil remaining in its tanks. The bow section was towed away and sunk in a controlled explosion.The vessel was carrying nearly 79 million gallons of crude at the time of the accident.

The Cleanup:
Cleanup was minimal. There was some dispersant spraying, but by and large the environmental consequences were small. About 1500 gannets that happened to be gathered on a nearby island, gearing up for their breeding season, were oiled, but the impact on local fish stocks was minimal.

photo credit: (Photo by Jean-Pierre Prevel/AFP/Getty Images)
Amoco Cadiz, 1978
Location: Off Brittany, France
Gallons: 68.7 millionHow It Happened:
The tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground off the coast of Brittany after its steering failed in a severe storm. Its entire cargo of 246,000 tons of light crude oil was dumped into the roiling waters of the English Channel, with the grim consequence of killing off more marine life than any other oil spill to date at the time.The Cleanup:
Cleanup efforts were foiled by strong winds and heavy seas and less than 3300 tons of dispersants were used. Within a month of the spill, 200 miles of the French shoreline was contaminated with oil. Vacuum trucks and agricultural vacuum units were used to suck up some of the oil, although a lot of it was simply removed by hand.

photo credit: (Photo by Paul Edmondson/Getty Images)
Odyssey Oil Spill, 1988
Location: 700 nautical miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada
Gallons: 43 millionHow It Happened:
In November 1988 the Liberian tanker Odyssey, virtually full to the brim with North Sea crude oil, broke in two and sunk in the North Atlantic 700 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. It also caught fire as it sunk.The Cleanup:
Because the incident took place so far from the coastline, the oil was expected to dissipate naturally, ergo no clean up at all.

photo credit: (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
photo credit: (Photo by Romano Cagnoni/Getty Images)
M/T Haven Tanker, 1991
Location: Genoa, Italy
Gallons: 42 millionHow It Happened:
An apparently shoddily maintained tanker exploded and later sunk off the coast of Italy. The accident killed six people.Immediately after the incident, an effort by the Italians to tow the Haven to shore failed, and the 820-foot-long (250 meter) vessel sunk off the coast of Genoa. Today it is believed to be the largest shipwreck in the world and is a popular tourist destination for divers.

The Cleanup:
Immediately after the incident Italian authorities scrambled to fight the fire and control the spread of the spillage using six miles of inflatable barriers that were submerged below the water surface around the vessel. The rest of the surface oil was sucked up using vacuums.

photo credit: (Photo by Paul Edmondson/Getty Images)
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