Oil Spillage — A concern yet to be taken seriously

By Tejatha A Hallur

In today’s unremittingly progressing ecosystem, everything happens within a blink of an eye. Rapid enhancements in technology are serving mankind’s every essential necessity. However, this led to environmental damage at a great extent. Most technologies require resources and machines to utilize these resources. Though technology contributed to happier, easier and safer lifestyle, its implications on the environment are often being neglected and people are unaware of the damages. Oil spillage is one among such major complications caused by environmental distress. Oil spills occur inadvertently both on the surface and off shore (Marine) due to certain human activities. Oil spillage on land are relatively less damaging to the environment as compared to marine oil spillage. 70% of oil spillage in water bodies like ocean, river is mainly due to oil carrying tanks and subversive oil pipes, and the rest include damages due to offshore drilling, spills of refined oils like petroleum and its byproducts. (Onwurah, et al., 2007; Kingston, 2002)

Reasons for oil spillage

In most of the cases accidents or imprecision are to be blamed as the reason for oil spills and occasionally due to deliberate dumping of oils. Accidents of oil carrying tankers in ocean is another. In transit, oil carrying ships may damage due to climatic conditions and other factors and lead to oil spillage. This kind of spill tends to have larger damage footprint to marine ecosystem. Natural occurrences can also be taken into consideration as earthquakes and hurricanes can result in the moment of tectonic plates which may disrupt underground oil reservoirs. Underground oil drilling also contributes to increase in the oil seepage. Most of the off-shore rigs get corroded overtime due to sea water and have mechanical and technical difficulties which may result in devastating consequences. Oil pipelines, damaged in natural calamities will have oil seepages and it can also be due to vandalism and low maintenance (Madaan, 2020).

Largest oil spills in history (Rafferty, n.d.).

• The Amoco Cadiz oil spill (1978), tank carrying 69 gallon of light crude oil collided in Brittany, France.
• The Castillo de Bellver oil spill (1983), 110,000 tons of oil carrying tank, burned in south Atlantic Ocean.
• Nowraz oil field (1983), 63,000 gallons of oil leaked due to a collision, near Persian-gulf.
• The Kolva river spill (1994), roughly 84 million gallons of oil spilled into Kolva river as a corroded oil pipe leaked.
• The Mingbulak oil spill (1992), One of the land-based oil spill in Uzbekistan recorded 80 million gallons of oil spilled.
• The Atlantic empress oil spill (1979), 90million gallon of oil.
• The toxic 1 oil spill (1979), 140 million gallons of oil was released into bay of Campeche.
• BP’s Deepwater horizon oil spill (2010),134 million gallons of oil released into Gulf of Mexico due to exploded oil rig.
• The Persian-gulf war oil spill (1991), it is one of the largest oil spill in the history, estimation of oil spill was 380 to 520 million gallons, in Kuwait.

Figure 1 Number of oil spills over the year (ITOPF, 2019)

Effects of oil spillage

Effect of oil spillage is severe as it gets, may it be on environment, economy, animals and human health. Coastal areas are highly affected in off shore spills, it will degrade the productivity of local industries such as fishing, shipping and tourism in turn contributes to economic crisis. And animals suffer major health issues. Fish, plants, waterfowls and other living organisms suffer in such situations. It causes hypothermia in birds, it poisons sea creatures, little birds drown, disturbance to breeding zone, and compromise in overall immunity of ocean. And it will reduce the growth of water plants, algae, seaweed etc. During the cleanup of oil spillage, many workers face health complexities, it causes headaches, respiratory problem, eye irritation, lung infections, kidney damage, liver damage, etc. According to some studies it its evident that people who get exposed to oil spillage have tend to suffer anxiety, mental illness, post-traumatic stress and depression (Osofsky, et al., 2011).

Solution to avoid effects of oil spillage

It is important to avoid oil spillage to protect the environment, economy and society. As discussed, major oil spills happen in marine regions. Hence, skimming is one of the best possible ways to remove the oil pigments from the surface of the water with the help of special fine filtration equipment. Another method is natural degradation if the oil that is not hazardous to human or animal health. Surface tension of oil is decreased using dispersants which will break the surface tension make it sink. By introducing biological agents like nitrogen, phosphorous in water, it reduces the tension between water and oil with the help of bacteria (Chandrasekar, et al., 2006). If the oil spill is at a smaller area, then oil boom technology is a simpler yet effective method to avoid the oil spread. It will help to enclose the oil in one area. Burning is an effective method. With necessary safety arrangement and highly professional team it is possible to burn the oil spilled area, it will burn 98% of oil from the ocean surface.

Remedies to avoid oil spill

It is a challenging to avoid oil spillage altogether but using proper new technologies, and ideas it is possible to achieve certain milestone to avoid the disaster. The initial step to tackle the oil spill is to prevent the oil spill by training the workers with updated standard procedures and technologies for transporting the container ships to port and sailing through narrow channels, shipping of tanks from one place to another and loading and unloading the oil. Using ultrasonic devices, and electromagnetic equipment, it is possible to avoid the damages from the breaking of underground oil carrying pipelines. These devices inform the maintenance facilities in the case of any discrepancy and help in fixing the damages before the breaking point. By improving the operation and maintenance system we can control the damages, it is also important to use high quality material as the equipment tends to corrode due to sustained usage. By using special materials, the corrosion in the tanks and pipelines can be controlled. And at last it is necessary to have good supervision and consistent structural integrity checks of the equipment, oil rigs and oil tanks to maintain sustenance and avoid spillages.