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Most of the developed world today has built the use of oil into its economy in some way, with over twenty countries consuming over one million barrels per day according to 2010 estimates. The infrastructure that has been built around this consumption is massive, and with it comes the inevitability of accidents. In this industry, the most infamous accidents are oil spills.
An Extensive History
Oil spills from tankers, wells, and piping have unfortunately been quite prevalent in the past. Infoplease.com has a list of major spills between 1967 and 2010. A majority of these spills are the result of damages to ships transporting oil, while some others stem from wells and drilling rigs.
The two biggest names in terms of oils spills are Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon. In the case of the Exxon Valdez (seen right) oil spill in 1989, anywhere between 11 and 32 million U.S. gallons of oil were released into the Prince William Sound in Alaska, after the ship ran aground on Bligh Reef. Until Deepwater Horizon, it was the largest oil spill by volume in U.S. waters. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (better known as the BP oil spill) occurred as a result of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April 2010. This accident (still a very recent memory) seeped over 4.9 million barrels of crude oil from a wellhead over the course of 3 months. It was the largest accidental marine oil spill in history.
 <-- The Exxon Valdez
Who Is To Blame?
I normally hate the word 'blame', because when disaster strikes, people are often quicker at pointing fingers than they are at taking action to solve the problem. But blame and consequence are ultimately essential for keeping people accountable, and engineers are no exception.
While many oil spills (such as the Exxon Valdez) have little to do with engineering failure, other accidents like the BP oil spill are due largely to deficiencies in engineering design. Design solutions, such as implementing double walls on tanker storage vessels and backup blowout preventers on drilling rigs and piping, could have mitigated or prevented many oil spills of the past. Engineers have the responsibility to stand up for higher-cost fixes for minor issues that could become large problems or disasters. In the midst of new projects, engineers should be certain that all failure scenarios have been recognized, evaluated, and addressed before a tanker or rig design is actually used.
The engineers responsible for reviewing and permitting are also responsible for the designs they review. In order to ensure safety and minimize risk, permitting processes for projects such as deepwater drilling are essential. They typically involve extensive review of the calculations and drawings of the project by government engineering and technical professionals. Permits are extensive and expensive, but for a reason. Approving a design essentially means that the government reviewers are accepting as much responsibility for the effectiveness of the design as the original engineers. Unfortunately, this form of responsibility is often overlooked or ignored, especially in highly politicized cases such as the BP oil spill.
Of course, the nature of engineering work in the corporate environment may also be at fault. There is constant pressure on engineers to produce designs within strict time constraints and with a limited number of resources, in order to create the most profit for a company. In addition, important decisions are often made in pieces by different levels of management and by different departments, further complicating the whole process.
The Impact
The consequences of oil spills are not always what they may seem. Accidents put the lives and health of people at risk and also cost companies millions (or sometimes billions) of dollars in losses and cleanup expenses. And in regards to cleanup, some experts say the chemical dispersants and other unnatural cleaning methods do more harm than the spills themselves.
In the short term, oil spills do have noticeable effects on wildlife and in some cases, can cause severe damage to the marine environment and ecology. Just type in "oil spill" on Google images, and you get some pretty awful pictures like this:
(Image Credit: Florida Conservation Network)
However, past studies have shown that the long term effects of oil spills may be negligible in comparison to oil from urban runoff, industrial waste, and human activities (e.g. motor boats). There are strong natural mechanisms in place to allow ecosystems to recover from most spills over time.
The important question, regardless of consequences, is this: do we consider oil spills to be failures that can be mitigated by safer practices, better engineering, and more effective cleanup; or are these accidents just necessary evils in the course of harvesting this fossil fuel? Hopefully engineers can help each other cling and strive to the former, even in the midst of mixed agendas and influences.
Of course, talk of oil spills may be moot 100 years from now if consumption rates continue to climb and all our oil reserves run dry  . But that's a different discussion.
Resources
Bowdoin College - Ten-Year Study of Shoreline Conditions
ENR.com - The Gulf Oil-Spill Is Engineering's Shame
RadioViceOnline - An Environmental Engineer's Perspective on the BP Oil Spill
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