Ship leaks more fuel off Mauritius as calls for answers grow

Only a couple of thousand tons of oil in the ship. It is a local problem, but nothing even remotely on the scale of a tanker accident. Often, perspective is missing in articles like this.

Only a couple of thousand tons of oil in the ship. It is a local problem, but nothing even remotely on the scale of a tanker accident. Often, perspective is missing in articles like this.

A "couple of thousand tons" of fuel can do enormous damage. I still vividly remember the mess we had when someone in the engineering spaces of our ship operated valves incorrectly and dumped about 40 gallons of diesel fuel into Le Harve Harbor. When it hits the water is spreads out fast! Only 40 gallons? Spread out a few micrometers thick on the surface of the water it goes a long way and does so with surprising speed. Our first day in port was spent cleaning up our mess instead of a nice day of liberty in a French seaside town. I can barely imagine trying to surround and clean up thousands of tons of oil.

I don't even want to be in water with a couple of liters of oil, much less thousands of tonnes of it.

The sooner we get off oil dependence, the sooner the world can start to recuperate.

Tens of thousands of years of human civilization, and every single oil spill humanity has ever had has been in the past 50 or 100 years.

Desert Tortoise

A "couple of thousand tons" of fuel can do enormous damage. 

Sure, but local damage that can be dealt with. Just for reference, the Torrey Canyon spilt 120,000 tons.

Strangerland

 every single oil spill humanity has ever had has been in the past 50 or 100 years.

Surely you do know that there are NATURAL oil leaks, for example in the Mexico Gulf, and there is a whole slew of bacterial life adapted to them, which is one of the reasons we do not hear anything about the Deepwater Horizon accident anymore. Or is that news to you?

Surely you do know that there are NATURAL oil leaks, for example in the Mexico Gulf, and there is a whole slew of bacterial life adapted to them, which is one of the reasons we do not hear anything about the Deepwater Horizon accident anymore. Or is that news to you?

It is. Thank you for letting us know of this reason you feel that there is nothing wrong with human oil spills.