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What Are the Causes of Oil Disasters: Lack of Shallow Drilling?

The move from shallow water drilling to deep-sea drilling is characteristic of an oil industry that has to rely more and more on risky forms of oil extraction. Oil extraction and transport has always been risky, however, to both the environment and human life, as evidenced by past oil disasters. The causes of oil disasters are likely to become more numerous, as the risk involved in the industry increases.

Deep-Sea Drilling
- Oil extraction companies have tapped most oil deposits at shallow depths, and are now going to deeper and deeper depths to find oil deposits to exploit. This practice has become known as deep-sea drilling. The deeper oil extractors have to go to remove oil, the greater the risk of something going wrong. An ocean is a dynamic environment, and offshore oil rigs operating at deep depths have to contend with currents, storms and the varying pressures experienced under potentially miles of water.
Shipping Oil at Sea
- Shipping oil by sea in oil tankers also comes with several inherent risks that make oil tankers another source of oil spills. The Exxon Valdez oil spill, which happened off the coast of Alaska in 1989, is one notable example of an oil spill at sea. The ship ran aground on a reef, which caused a massive oil spill. At the time of publication, oil from the spill is still negatively affecting the surrounding ecosystem. The cause was a combination of human error and equipment failure.
Shipping Oil on Land
- Shipping oil on land, usually by pipeline, can also lead to oil disasters of various kinds. A pipeline explosion in China in 2010 near the city of Dalian, for example, killed at least one person, caused a massive fireball and spread oil on land and into the ocean. Damage to infrastructure such as pipelines can also cause supply shortages, especially if they occur at bottlenecks within the oil distribution system.
Refinement
- Slow-moving oil disasters also exist. The Canadian tar sands in the province of Alberta, for instance, have been criticized as an inherently dirty form of oil extraction that have negative impacts on the surrounding environment. Chevron is guilty, according to the Ecuadorian courts, of polluting the environment while extracting oil. The courts ordered that Chevron pay $18.1 billion to locals affected by the spill, though, at the time of publication, the case is not settled.

Nature