Oil spill

An oil spill is a release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term often refers to marine oil spills, where oil is released into the ocean or coastal waters. Oil spills include releases of crude oil from tankers, offshore platforms, drilling rigs and wells, as well as spills of refined petroleum products (such as gasoline, diesel) and their by-products, and heavier fuels used by large ships such as bunker fuel, or the spill of any oily refuse or waste oil. Spills may take months or even years to clean up. Oil also enters the marine environment from natural oil seeps. Public attention and regulation has tended to focus most sharply on seagoing oil tankers

Primary Causes
Accidents: There is often a large oil loss in accidents, up to 1/5 have an oil loss of over 700 tonnes.

Collisions hull failures fires and explosions groundings

Operations: Most oil losses occur when ships are carrying out routine operations at ports or oil terminals, but the majority of such spills are small, with 93% of them producing a spillage of less than 7 tonnes.

loading/discharging: commonest cause of oil spillages (either during routine operations or resulting from accidents) bunkering: the least common operational oil loss

Primary Effects
Oil spills have affected many people and many industries. They affect both the economy and the environment. Some of the things affected are:

marine life local industries (often tourist industry)

fishing industry

Effect on marine life People immediately think of birds and fish as being species affected by an oil spill. On the news you will often see large numbers of dead birds and dead fish washed up on the beach. Some birds die because they have ingested oil. However, more commonly the birds drown because they stick to the oil and cannot get out of the water, starve because there's no food left for them because the fish have been poisoned by the oil or lose too much body heat because of damage to their plumage by the oil. Fish die of starvation because of loss of food or from being poisoned by the oil. Some marine mammals and reptiles, such as dolphins, whales and turtles are very vulnerable to oil spills because they have to be able to surface to breathe and the reptiles also need to leave the water to breed. The layer of oil makes surfacing difficult and the animals drown. Vegetation in the water can be vulnerable to light crude or light refined oil spills if the oil reaches the root area of the plants. However, a thick coating of oil on the leaves does almost no damage if it occurs outside the growing season. Loss of vegetation can lead to more animal deaths as they lose sources of food. Living coral is also vulnerable to oil slicks. If the living coral dies, then the reef of coral can be destroyed by wave erosion. This means many fish and animals lose their homes. The time taken for these damaged populations to recover depends on many factors and is highly variable.

Effect on local industries Oil, tarballs, dead fish and birds all get washed up on the shores and the oil slick inteferes in activities such as fishing, sailing, swimming, ... The local tourist industry suffers because tourists are not interested in coming to a coastal area where they cannot do the activities as listed above. Industries that rely on clean seawater for routine operations can also suffer because operations have to be stopped while the water is cleaned. Effect on fishing industry The fishing industry suffers badly when an oil spill occurs. Firstly because the fish are often covered in oil, or have swallowed oil making them poisonous. Also a large number of fish die, decreasing the number of fish that could have possibly been caught. It is also difficult for boats to sail because the oil can damage them and the devices they use to catch the fish. However there are usually no long-term effects because the normal over-production of fish eggs means there will be few losses.

Ways of transporting oil

Pipeline transport is the transportation of goods through a pipe. Most commonly, liquid and gases are sent, but pneumatic tubes that transport solid capsules using compressed air are also used. An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: thecrude tanker and the product tanker.[2] Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally much smaller, are designed to move petrochemicals from refineries to points near consuming markets

Guimaras oil spill

The Guimaras oil spill is a massive oil spill at the Guimaras Strait, the Philippines. It is dubbed as the worst oil spill ever in the Philippines

The oil tanker M/T Solar 1, carrying more than two million liters of bunker fuel, sank on August 11, 2006 at the Guimaras Strait off the coast of the Guimarasand Negros Occidental provinces, causing some 500,000 liters of oil to pour into the strait. Siphoning the remaining 1.5 million liters from the sunken tanker, at a depth of more than 600 meters, was scheduled for MARCH 2007 It has been said and said about the recent oil spill which has now adversely affected marine sanctuaries and mangrove reserves in three out of five municipalities in Guimaras Island and reached the shores of Iloilo and Negros Occidental. The oil spill occurred in the Visayas Sea which is considered a rich fishing ground that supplies most of the fisheries demand for the entire country. (NDCC, August 2006)

CAUSES Several causes has been mentioned, including bad weather and human error. Allegations have been made stating that the tanker only had a capacity of 1.2 million, implying the possibility of overloading. Other investigations have claimed that the captain of the ship has no capacity to manage it. EFFECTS The spill has damaged Taklong Island National Marine Reserve, a marine sanctuary for feeding and breeding ground for fish and other species. Dr. Jose Ingles, eco-region coordinator of the World Wide Fund for Nature in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, said that the damage may be felt by at least two generations. He warned that the disaster may have damaged the reefs and mangroves, scarring the ecosystem and causing seafood yields to significantly decrease. According to him, the worst hit would be the shorelines, the coasts and the swamplands with mangroves. This will greatly impact the livelihood of the fishermen, mostly living in poor conditions.

The oil slick also poses as a threat to the blue crab industry of Enrique B. Magalona, Negros Occidental. In the south-southeast of the spill site is located the Sulu Sea, a deep water area frequented by commercially valued fishes. The towns of southern Negros Occidental province prides themselves as the home of the Blue Marlin and the Yellow Fin Tuna. This is an important source of income for the communities. When the slick is not effectively contained, this will surely damage this thriving local industry. As of August 22, the Philippine Coast Guard says that the spill has affected 20 communities in 4 municipalities in Guimaras as of August 22, 2006. It also threatens 27 communities in Iloilo provinceand 17 others in Negros Occidental. A villager from Barangay Lapaz, Nueva Valencia, Guimaras became the first casualty directly affected by the spill. He died after inhaling the fumes of the oil sludge causing him to contract cardio-respiratory disease.[5] Two workers from the ship has also been reported missing.