Singapore oil spill

Not too long ago, there was an oil spill off the eastern coast of Singapore. The oil spill was a result of a collision between two ships. The collision occurred at around 6.10 pm and spilled approximately 2000 tonnes of crude oil into sea.

Despite the advancement of technology, we are still extremely reliant on crude oil as a source of energy. Thus, crude oil transportation is very common and this increases the number of oil spills around the world too. For example, there has been a recent oil spill also along the gulf of Mexico. However, there are possible solutions to these oil spills.

Firstly, oil tankers with double hulls are available in the markets. This oil tankers have two hulls and thus even if the oil tanker comes into a collision, the second hull would prevent the oil from spilling out into the sea. However, these tankers are much more costly. Therefore some of the tankers used by some companies are still single hulled.

Oil spills can be prevented if people are careful enough. When an oil spill happens, immediate action is required to contain and clean up the oil spill. If the oil spill is not cleaned up as soon as possible, it would lead to environmental problems. Oil spills would lead to the death of many marine animals or even marine birds. For example, we can see this in the Valdez Exxon oil spill. It is considered to be the most serious oil spill in history. It had caused the death of approximately 250,000 sea birds and also billions of salmon and herring eggs. Although this oil spill had happened 21 years ago, the effects of the oil spill is still felt today.