ABSTRACT
In this chapter after a brief review of historical oil spills and their impacts on the environment and economy, several oil spills with major impacts are reviewed. The chapter begins with an introduction followed by methods of detection of oil spills and determination of the size and thickness of slicks with satellite remote sensors. Then several major oil spills caused by oil tankers are reviewed followed by oil spills caused by offshore exploration and production activities. Among these oil spills two incidents are reviewed in more detail. These two spills are the 1991 oil spill in the Persian Gulf as a result of the Iraq invasion of Kuwait and the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) as a result of a blowout in the Macondo exploratory well due to a flawed well plan. In the Gulf War between 6 and 8 million barrels of oil were spilled, and the cleanup efforts continued for more than two decades. In the GOM accident about 5 million barrels of oil flew into the sea for a period of nearly three months. Although much of the oil was recovered, the damage to the ecosystems is not yet fully done. As the BP oil spill is the most recent and significant environmental event, and with the availability of data in the public domain, much of this chapter is devoted to this accident, its occurrence, the amount of oil spilled, its trajectory and simulation by NOAA, chronological data, and specifications of the Macondo well and its reservoir fluids.
