UPSC Express

In brief: Oil Spills

• Oil Spill is basically leakage of crude oil and its products in the environment.
• While oil spills are catastrophic when they occur in water, they can severely affect the environment when they occur on land too.
• In water, the major oil spills occur due to accidents, release of crude oil from tankers, refuse of waste oil offshore, drilling rigs etc
• Land-based oil spills occur due to leakage in tankers, vehicles etc.

Major Oil spills

• Recent events of major oil spills include
  • Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Gulf of Mexico. (2010)
  • Exon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (1989)
  • Gulf war oil spill in Kuwait (1991)
  • 2014 Sundarbans oil spill in Shela River in Bangladesh Sundarbans.
  • 2017 Ennore oil spill in Kamarajar Port near Chennai.

Harmful effects

• Oil spills have caused severe mortality among seabirds.
• The feathers of the seabird is significantly affects by oil thereby reducing their insulating ability and less buoyant in the water.
• Oil during oil spills is consumed by planktons and bio-accumulate the entire marine food chain including fish, crabs and other aquatic animals.
• Other marine mammals exposed to oil spill get severely affected in terms of insulating property.
• Land-based oil spill cause soil and water pollution
• Sunderban oil spill have severely affected the mangrove forests.

Bio-remediation

• Bioremediation is the use of microorganisms to metabolize and remove oil during oil spills.
• The bacteria used for bio-remediation could include sulfate-reducing bacteria, acid-producing anaerobic bacteria etc.