Fifty years after a major oil spill in Santa Barbara helped launch the environmental movement, Californians strongly oppose the Trump administration’s push to expand offshore drilling.
Sockeye salmon need strong hearts to migrate long distances. An oil spill could hurt their survival.
(AP Photo/Gary Stewart, File)
Pacific salmon are ingrained in the culture and economy of Canada. They are also a key link between ocean and land. But what happens if a pipeline failure contaminates their habitat?
Shell’s drilling rig destined for waters off Alaska met with problems in the Arctic and protesters in Seattle.
AP Photo/Elaine Thompson
The industry has wanted access to offshore oil for decades, but the Arctic remains challenging. Consumers, meanwhile, seem conflicted on expanded offshore drilling.
BP’s plans for the Bight say it would take 10 days to begin dispersing an oil spill at source, and 35 days for well-capping equipment to reach the site – making it likely that oil would hit the coast.
Overfishing can teach us valuable lessons about ecosystem resilience.
Andreas Altenberger/Shutterstock.com
Large-scale natural experiments such as oil spills, tsunamis and climate change are things you wouldn’t want to do on purpose. But that doesn’t mean they’re not scientifically useful experiments too.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has moved to address environmental pollution and improve the livelihoods of the Ogoni people.
Akintunde Akinleye/ Reuters
Oil spills have long plagued the Ogoni people living in the Niger Delta. President Buhari is finally doing something about the pollution. But there are flaws in the government’s approach.
The oil fields in the Niger Delta are regularly sabotaged by people living in communities surrounding the fields.
Reuters
Nigeria must work together with its people to help keep the peace in the Niger Delta.
Offshore oil is not just a risk to the environment – if the world gets serious about mitigating climate change, these resources risk becoming stranded assets.
Green Fire Productions/Flickr
Big oil companies are moving to exploit new resources such as the Arctic or the Great Australian Bight. But are they worth the risk?
The MV Shen Neng I spills oil onto the Great Barrier Reef in 2010. Large accidents are rare, but there is still very little monitoring of long-term chronic damage from shipping.
AAP Image/AMSA
Port traffic near the Great Barrier Reef will more than double by 2025, as coal and other exports grow. While major incidents are rare, the chronic toll on the reef itself still remains largely unknown.
Uncertainty over seafood safety caused anxiety in coastal communities in the wake of the spill.
Sean Gardner/Reuters
Five years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Gulf Coast communities are still grappling with the social and economic ills caused by the oil spill.
An oil and gas drilling platform offshore from Australia.
CSIRO
If anything good is to come from the devastation caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and Australia’s Montara oil and gas leak the year before, it is that we learn from our mistakes…
Looks like an oil slick, but the similarity ends there.
Badagnani
Swimmers in Hawaii have been warned out of the water for fear of shark attacks after around 1,400 tonnes of molasses - treacle - leaked from a pipe into the sea while being transferred to a tanker from…
The catastrophic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform allowed five million barrels of oil to gush into the Gulf of Mexico between April and July 2010. Since then, remediation and restoration…
If oil spills in the forest and no one is around to see it, will anyone care?
Denis Sinyakov/Greenpeace
Lying to either side of the Urals, the Republic of Komi and Khanty-Mansiysk in the north of Russia are among the country’s most oil-rich regions. Scarcely populated, they provide a substantial share of…
Grangemouth refinery: keeping the home fire burning.
Andrew MillJigan/PA
Don Fullerton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The runaway train of 73 oil tankers that derailed and exploded in the small town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec, Canada last week left 15 dead, around 50 missing, and shows how dangerous transporting oil can…