Oil Spilled at Sea

Oil Spills at Sea

Introduction

As known, world is spinning around the oil and according to statistics; world is consumed more than 3.5 billion gallons of oil each day (source: U.S. Dept. of Energy).Sixty percent of that was reached to its destination by sea. It is undeniable that when mentioned about the issues of sea pollution, first impression that came into mind is oil spills at sea. According to the survey, oceans are polluted by oil on the daily basis mainly from oil spills from offshore drilling, routine shipping, run-offs and dumping activities. Among them, oil spills make up about 12% of the oil that enters the ocean. Oil spills may be released due of release of oil from tankers, offshore platform, drilling rigs and tanker ship accidents; this may cause severe problem since it can be affected the local marine wildlife such as fish, birds and sea otters. One of the largest oil spill happened in Alaska and it caused about 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled in March 1989.

A beach after an oil spill.

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Due to that, the effort to clean up and recovery from oil spill are much crucial to prevent damages to natural ecosystems. However, the clean up and recovery from oil spill is difficult process and it cost up huge amount of money and the work is time consuming, taken up weeks, months and even years to clean for most severe conditions.

Therefore, in order to curb the existing problems, several methods to clean up the spills and control and prevention methods of oil spills at sea are discuss in detail.

Methods of Cleaning

When an oil spill occurs, oil will forms a millimeter-thick layer or slick that floats on the water due to its properties. The oil will eventually spreads out as thinning as it would until become...