Comprehensive Report on Oil Spillage: Causes, Impacts, and Solutions

This report provides a detailed analysis of oil spillage, beginning with an introduction that defines the phenomenon and its impact on the environment, particularly the marine ecosystem. It explores both natural and anthropogenic causes of oil spills, including climate change, accidental spills during transportation, and the cleaning of ships. The report then delves into the multifaceted impacts of oil spills, examining their environmental effects on beaches, plants, and wildlife habitats, as well as the impact on aquatic life and biodiversity. Furthermore, it discusses the detrimental effects on human health, including skin and respiratory problems, and the contamination of food and water sources. The report also addresses the consequences for animals, including marine mammals and birds, highlighting health and reproductive problems, and the depletion of oxygen in water bodies. It further explores the economic repercussions, such as damage to coastal areas, tourism, and fisheries. The report concludes with a discussion of methods to clean up oil spills, including the use of oil booms, skimming, and manual labor, and suggests new methods such as remotely operated vehicles and new pipeline safety rules. Finally, the report emphasizes the need for safety measures in the oil industry and responsible human activities to mitigate the harmful effects of oil spillage.

Running head: OIL SPILLAGE
OIL SPILLAGE
Name of the student
Name of University
Author note

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Introduction
Oil spills takes place when liquid petroleum hydrocarbon get released in the environment.
It highly impacts the marine ecosystem due to irresponsive human activity and it forms pollution.
Marine oil spills take place when considerable amount of crude oil from tankers is released into
the ocean, sea and other coastal water. Spills can happen in land as well. Oil spills reduce the
insulating ability of the birds and animals. It is very difficult to recover the oil spills once it gets
spilled into the ocean and other water bodies. Oil spills have a detrimental effect on the society,
economy, and the environment to a huge impact. It affects the aquatic environment and impacts
on the biodiversity. Hence it must be reduced.
Figure 1: Dead whale found due to oil spillage
Source: Google.com. (2019).

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Causes of oil spillage
According to Doerffer, (2013) there are various causes of oil spillage:
 Natural causes: Due to various factors such as climate change and environmental
disturbaces, oil maybe naturally spilled. It mainly occurs in oceans, due to eradiation of
sedimentary rocks. The oil is formed at the bottom of the ocean through natural forces
like organic matter from the dead micro organisms. This spillage happens as oil seeps out
from the bottom of the ocean.
 Anthropogenic causes: Accidental spillage takes place due to human activities of oil
refining, handling, transport and other forms of distilled products. Spill pollution is
highly detrimental to the humans and environment and can have disastrous impacts
because of high concentration of contaminants. This is highly difficult to remediate such
big spills
 Accidental spills: According to Chang, et al. (2014) spillage takes place due to various
accidental circumstances, due to miss handling of the crude oils; large oil spills take place
during transportation of these oils.Cleaning of ships also release oil into the sea and
ocean. Oil spills pollution are still affecting our environment to great extent and needs to
be stopped.

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Figure 2: spillage of oil
Source: Google.com. (2019).
Impact of Oil Spill:
Oil spill can have several impacts. These include the following:
Environment:
Oil spill from damaged tankers, oil rigs and pipelines can cause damage to the environment that
can last for a very long time. It can damage sea beaches, can damage plants and can cause
destruction to the habitats of the wildlife. Apart from this, oil spill can also affect the aquatic life
as they cause problems to the marine mammals and other creatures.

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People:
It has been that oil spill can cause serious impacts on the human health. Direct exposure
to oil spills can cause serious problems for humans. As stated by Costa (2015), it can cause
problems in their skin as direct contact with oil spill can cause contaminants to be absorbed by
the skin and thus, can enter the human body. It can also cause breathing problems for the humans
as oil spills can cause the air to become contaminated. As stated by Laffron (2016), it can also
contaminate food, and water which can also be very harmful for people when they consume such
food and water. Exposure of oil spill on human skin can lead to problems like irritation on the
skin and other problems.
Figure 2: Impact of oil spill on people
Source: - Google.com (2019)
Animals:
As stated by Beyer (2016), oil spill can cause serious damage to the marine animals and
birds. Oil spill can harm marine mammals as oil spill contains poisonous chemicals which can

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lead to the accumulation of components of oil in the skin and tissues of these animals. The can
cause various health and reproductive problems for these animals. Marine Animals consume
food which also gets affected by the poisonous chemicals released from the oil spills. When
these animals eat these foods, it causes various problems in their bodies. Oil spill also results in
oxygen depletion in the water bodies which can cause breathing problems for these marine
animals and fishes. Wildlife living in areas close to an oil spill can also have problems in their
bodies as they consume contaminated foods. Sometimes, these animals can even die as these
contaminated foods can cause poisoning in the bodies of the animals that consume them.
Figure 3: Impact of oil spill on animals
Source: - Google.com (2019)
Economy:
As stated by Helm (2015) oil spill can cause serious problems to the economy of a
country. It can cause damage contamination to the coastal areas which can cause problems to the
industries and other businesses that are dependent on the coastal areas for their profit. The
biggest impacts of oil spills can be felt in the tourism sector and in the fisheries sectors as

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contaminated tourist sea beaches do not attract much tourists in the area. Similarly, contaminated
fisheries are also affected by oil spills as contaminated fish cannot be sold for consumption.
Hotels in holiday destinations may suffer losses in case of oil spills as it might lead to decrease in
the number of tourists coming in that area. Shipyards, ports and industries that depends on sea
water for normal operations can also be affected by oil spills as this might result in huge losses
for the businesses.
Methods to Clean Up Oil spill:
As stated by Williams (2015), oil spills can be controlled by several various factors.
These are as follows:
Use of oil booms:
Oil booms are a very good method of controlling oil spill as they can help in clean up
wherever there are oil spills.
Skimming:
Skimming is another method that can be used to clean up the oil spill. This is because it
can help to remove the oil from the water.
Use of Manual force:
Manual Labour can be useful in helping to remove oil spills. Simple tools like shovels
and spades can be used to remove the oil from sea water.

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New methods to reduce oil spillage
1. Remotely operated vehicles on every oil rig
Remotely operated vehicles are submarines with are robotic in nature. It can be used to
travel deep down into the water and monitor the offshore drilling. It gives safety alerts and it
detects the areas of malfunction and can fix the equipment (Siegrist, and Sütterlin, 2014)
2. New GE blowout preventers
The new GE blowout preventers can be operated to handle the reservoir pressures the
industry faces. It helps in preventing gas and oil from oozing out into the sea and ocean.
3. New pipeline safely rules
The new safety rules are implemented by Canada, these pipeline are designed to reduce
the cost of major oil spillage, irrespective of the fault. This encourages the oil spill companies to
work with safety. This reduces the chance of oil spillage and even if it accidentally takes place, it
can be cleaned.
Conclusion
Therefore it can conclude that the consequence of oil spillage is huge. The marine and
aquatic animals’ biodiversity is highly threatened. If it continues to take place, it will lead to
extinction of animals especially the marine and aquatic animals, there life is endangered. It
damages the entire food chains of the organisms. The birds get affected due to oil slicks, it sticks
in their feathers and might chock to death (Wu et al., 2014). However, it can be checked. The
industries must consider safety while transporting crude oil or other oil through shipping.
Various irresponsible human activities need to be checked.

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Reference List:
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effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: a review. Marine pollution bulletin, 110(1), pp.28-51.

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Chang, S., Stone, J., Demes, K. and Piscitelli, M., 2014. Consequences of oil spills: a review and
framework for informing planning. Ecology and Society, 19(2).
Doerffer, J.W., 2013. Oil spill response in the marine environment. Elsevier.
Google.com. (2019). oil spills - Google Search. [online] Available at:
https://www.google.com/search?
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