PROFESSIONS AND OCCUPATIONS AFFECTED
The most obvious example of those who are suffering the hardest economic impact from the oil spill is those connected primarily to the seafood industry. These are the people who were working every day to catch, transport, prepare and sell fish, shrimp, crabs and oysters in a region renowned for its seafood. Experience from past oils spills shows that such disasters most severely affect:
- Commercial fishermen
- Fish &tackle stores
- Bait shops
- Sportfishing tour operators
- Restaurants and their employees
- Shipping industry workers
- Port workers
- Park and recreation workers
- Private recreation facility workers
- Shipyard workers
- Pleasure craft operators and maintenance workers
- Teamsters
- Longshoremen
- Cruise ship workers
Major Oil Spills
There are many detailed records of major oil spills but one of the best is compiled by The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF), which, according to its Web site is a non-profit organization that prepares for and responds to oil spills.
The data compiled below from the London-based firm is full of British spellings and usages - you'll notice tonnes instead of tons right away, but it provides valuable insight into accidental spillages from 1970.
All of the following was taken directly from the organization's Web site at itopf.com
Figure 1: Numbers of spills over 700 tonnes
Figure 2: Number of medium sized (7-700T) and large (>700T) spills per decade from 1970-2009
Quantities of Oil Spilt
The vast majority of spills are small (i.e. less than 7 tonnes) and data on numbers and amounts is incomplete due to the inconsistent reporting of smaller incidents worldwide.
Reports on spills of 7 tonnes and above tend to be more reliable and information from these are included in the database to give a series of annual estimates of the total quantity spilled for the years 1970-2009. These amounts are rounded to the nearest thousand where practical.
Year Quantity (tonnes)
1970 330,000
1971 138,000
1972 297,000
1973 164,000
1974 174,000
1975 355,000
1976 398,000
1977 291,000
1978 352,000
1979 641,000
1970s Total 3,140,000
1980 206,000
1981 48,000
1982 12,000
1983 384,000
1984 29,000
1985 85,000
1986 19,000
1987 30,000
1988 190,000
1989 174,000
1980s Total 1,177,000
Year Quantity (tonnes)
1990 61,000
1991 430,000
1992 167,000
1993 140,000
1994 130,000
1995 12,000
1996 80,000
1997 72,000
1998 15,000
1999 29,000
1990s Total 1,136,000
2000 14,000
2001 8,000
2002 67,000
2003 42,000
2004 15,000
2005 18,000
2006 23,000
2007 18,000
2008 2,000
2009 100
2000s Total 206,000
Figure 3: Quantities of oil spilt
Approximately 5.65 million tonnes of oil were lost as a result of tanker incidents from 1970 to 2009. However, as figure 4 indicates, the volume of oil spilt from tankers does demonstrate a significant improvement through the decades. Consistent with the reduction in the number of oil spills from tankers, the volume of oil spilt also shows a marked reduction. In some cases, the total quantity of oil spilt in the last decade was less than had been spilt previously in a single year. Last year the volume of oil spilt was the lowest in ITOPF's history of collating statistics on tanker spills.
It is notable that a few very large spills are responsible for a high percentage of the oil spilt. For example, in the 1990s, 360 spills over 7 tonnes were recorded, totalling 1,136,000 tonnes of oil, but 830,000 tonnes (73%) were spilt in just 10 incidents (just under 3% of the number of incidents in that decade). In comparison, in 2000s, 172 spills over 7 tonnes were recorded, totalling 206,000 tonnes of oil, but 93,000 tonnes (45%) were spilt in just 2 incidents (1%). The figures for a particular year may therefore be severely distorted by a single large incident. This is clearly illustrated in 1979 (ATLANTIC EMPRESS - 287,000 tonnes), 1983 (CASTILLO DE BELLVER - 252,000 tonnes) and 1991 (ABT SUMMER - 260,000 tonnes).
Figure 6: Location of Selected Spills (click map to view larger version in PDF format)
The table below gives a brief summary of 20 major oil spills since 1967, and the map overleaf shows where they occurred. A number of these incidents, despite their large size, caused little or no environmental damage as the oil was spilt some distance offshore and did not impact coastlines. It is for this reason that some of the listed names may be unfamiliar. EXXON VALDEZ is included for comparison although this incident falls someway outside the group.
