Oil spills

• Oil spill refers to any uncontrolled release of crude oil, gasoline, fuel, or other oil by-products into the atmosphere. Oil spills can contaminate land, air or water
• Oil spills in rivers, bays, and oceans are often caused by accidents involving tankers, barges, pipelines, refineries, drilling rigs, and storage facilities
• Spills can be caused by:
  • Human errors or carelessness.
  • equipment breaking down
  • natural disasters such as hurricanes
  • Deliberate actions by terrorists, war-torn countries, vandalism, or illegal dumpers

Impact of Oil Spills:

• In general, oil spills harm marine life in two ways.:
• • • Fouling or oiling: Fouling or oiling occurs when oil causes physical harm to a plant or animal. The oil can wrap the bird’s wings and leave it unable to fly or take off the insulating properties of the sea otter’s fur, putting it at risk of hypothermia. The degree of oiling often affects the animal’s chances of survival
    • Oil toxicity: Oil contains many different toxic compounds. These toxic compounds can cause serious health problems such as heart damage, stunted growth, immune system effects, and even death

• It also has an impact on tourism, fishing, other economic activities like water sports and cultural activities of the region

Oil spills exhibit one of the most complicated and dynamic pollutant distribution and effect patterns in the maritime environment. In some ways, each spill is one-of-a-kind and unrepeatable due to the almost infinite potential combinations of natural and manmade elements at a particular site and time. This presents a hurdle that affects crude oil dispersion modelling, not to mention developing quantitative forecasts of the environmental repercussions of spills. At the same time, a large number of particular research and field observations on oil behaviour and the environmental risks of oil spills have been done in a range of maritime places throughout the globe during the last few decades. These studies give a solid foundation for calculating the harmful effect of oil spills on the maritime environment and living resources.

Methods to clean oil spills:

• Oil booms-floating barriers called booms are used to stop spreading of oil which could be retrieved
• Skimmers- they are used to physically retrieve oil by separating them from water
• Sorbents- they are used to absorb oil from the surface e.g. volcanic ash.
• Chemical surfactants can be used to dissociate oil into smaller particles to accelerate their dispersion
• Biological agents such as microorganisms are used to speed up natural bio degradation
• In situ burning, which is a method of burning freshly spilled oil, usually when it floats on water
• Washing oil from beaches with high pressure or low pressure hoses
• Vacuum trucks, which can vacuum oil spilled off the coast or under water
• Shovels and road equipment, sometimes used to take oil or to carry down oily beach sand and gravel where it can be cleaned by tangling in the waves

Case Study- Chennai oil spill accident:

• A big oil spill hit Chennai on January 28th, 2017. The spill occurred when two container ships collided about two miles off the coast of Chennai. Approximately 75 metric tons of heavy fuel oil were spilled into the Bay of Bengal as a result of the accident.
• A substantial amount of oil was trapped in the relatively stagnant zone near the seawall-groin inter- section. The initial clean-up efforts focused on manual methods to skim the trapped oil, and these efforts were successful in recovering a considerable amount of oil
• The INCOIS  report had mentioned that the spillage has polluted 24.06km of the city’s shoreline

Conclusion

Oil spills that are closer to the beach and human populations have higher ecological and economic consequences. Oil spills and oil-related pollutants have harmed the land, water, and air quality for decades, threatening the extinction of living things. The majority of environmental dangers in the country’s oil area are the result of oil spills, gas flaring, and oil pollution. Human mistake, theft, accidents, and operational expulsions of petroleum hydrocarbons into the environment are all common causes. Environmental hazards hinder the maximal functioning of plants and animals, resulting in environmental conditions that are incompatible with healthy existence. This chapter looked at the short- and long-term repercussions of oil spills on the environment and people’s economic activities, as well as their influence on growth and development.