Here's a summary of the major oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico in the last 30 years or so. These are from drilling, shipping and on-shore infrastructure. You lay down with dogs, you get fleas. You invite the oil industry in, you get..................oil.
1979
· June 3, Gulf of Mexico: Exploratory well Ixtoc 1 blows out, spilling some 140 million gallons of crude into the open sea.
1990
· June 8, off Galveston: Mega Borg releases 5.1 million gallons of oil some 60 nautical miles south-southeast of Galveston after a pump room explosion and fire.
2000
· Nov. 28, Mississippi River south of New Orleans: Tanker Westchester loses power and runs aground, dumping 567,000 gallons of crude oil. The spill was largest in U.S. waters since Exxon Valdez in 1989.
2005
· August-September, New Orleans: The Coast Guard estimates that more than 7 million gallons of oil spilled from various sources during Hurricane Katrina.
2006
· June 19, Calcasieu River, La.: Some 71,000 barrels of waste oil are released from the CITGO refinery during a violent storm.
2008
· July 25, New Orleans: A 61-foot barge, carrying 419,000 gallons of heavy fuel, collides with a 600-foot tanker in the Mississippi River. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel leak from the barge, halting all river traffic.
2009
· September, Houston Ship Channel: An oil spill prompted a three-day closure to accommodate cleanup efforts. A 458-foot vessel was trying to turn around when it struck a barge, gouging a hole in the vessel's fuel tank and leaking 10,500 gallons of oil.
· October, 40 miles offshore of Galveston, Texas: a supply vessel crashed against a Liberian-flagged oil tanker, resulting in an 18,000 gallon oil spill.
2010
· January 23, Port Arthur, Texas: About 462,000 gallons of oil spilled when an 800-foot tanker headed for an Exxon Mobil Corp. refinery in Beaumont collided with a vessel pushing two barges.
Sources:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6833095.html
