Positive progress on oil tanker shipping safety in jeopardy for the remainder of the 2020s? The number of oil spills and the quantity of oil spilled from tankers has fallen substantially in recent decades, but the 2020s could see a break of that trend. However, not all oil spills come from tankers. They can also come from other sites, such as offshore oil rigs and damaged pipelines. The world’s largest (and most well-known) event was Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. An explosion in a drilling rig caused this disaster. The U.S. Government estimates that 4.9 million barrels of oil were released (equivalent to around 700,000 tonnes).
