homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Researchers want to clean up oil spills with laser-treated cork

Scientists just uncorked a very useful new material.

Oil spill from Syria is close to hitting Cyprus' shores

Hopefully, everyone will be banding together and doing their utmost best to tackle this spill.

A French town is using human hair to clean oil pollution from the ocean

Hairdressers are putting our old hair to good use.

Oil spill update: Mauritius pumps out almost all the fuel from the Japanese cargo ship

The country is already dealing with more than 1,000 tons of fuel that leaked into the water

Fuel tank collapses in Russia, leaking 20,000 tons of diesel in Arctic river

It's considered the second largest environmental accident in modern Russian history.

Sponge based on common mattress foam could clean up oil spills

A coated polyurethane foam could become an indispensible tool in our oil cleanup kit.

Chile oil spill: 40,000 liters spilled in pristine Patagonia

Oil spills strike again.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was 8 years ago. The ocean is still struggling to recover

The damage is still going.

Revolutionary material can absorb 90 times its weight in spilled oil. It can be squeezed like a sponge and then reused

Oil spills are never a pretty sight but an innovative sponge-like material could make these events far less disastrous.

New oil spill spews 90,000 gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico

An offshore of Royal Dutch Shell is responsible for a new oil spill which covered a 13- by 2-mile sheen of oil on the waves.

BP to pay US government $20.8 billion fine for Gulf oil disaster

A federal judge has approved the $20.8 bn settlement for BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This fine will account for civil claims against the company set forth by the Department of Justice and five Gulf states. US Attorney General Loretta Lynch previously called the settlement “the largest with a single entity in American […]

Two oil spills in the course of one month wreck havoc in the Amazon

Two major oil spills in the course of only one month are threatening Amazonian wildlife and local communities. Peru’s General Directorate of Environmental Health issued a water quality emergency last Wednesday, but critics voice that this is a tad late -- more than three weeks since the first spill spewed more than 2,000 barrels in the regions of Amazonas and Loreto. Shockingly, a third spill has been reported by the local media in Peru, but this has been refuted by the the oil company responsible for the pipelines.

Disperstants used by BP for oil spill didn't do much

The oil company used dispersants, but the technique was actually counter productive, just creating the appearance of the oil going away

British Petroleum fined a record $20.8 billion for oil spill

In a monumental decision, British Petroleum (BP) was fined $20.8 billion for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; this upgrades the initial deal from the $18.7 that were previously discussed and represents the largest corporate settlement in US history. This money is additional to the reported $28 billion spent on cleanup and compensation.

By 98 to 1, U.S. Senate passes amendment saying climate change is real

It's hilarious and sad at the same time: the US Senate had to vote whether or not climate change is real, and not a hoax. Thankfully, the vast majority of the Senators agreed with science, and by 98 to 1, they voted that climate change is indeed real.

BP's fine for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill will be lower than expected

A federal judge decided this week that British Petroleum will pay a maximum of $13.7 billion for its 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, saying that the oil spill was not as extensive as United States officials claimed. The sum is several billions lower than all parties involved were expecting - except for BP, of course.

Children are cleaning up an oil spill in Bangladesh - with their bare hands

On 9 December 2014 an oil spill occurred at the Sela river of Sundarbans, Bangladesh, a UNESCO World Heritage site. An oil tanker named Southern Star VII, carrying 350,000 litres of oil was sunk in the river after it had been hit by a cargo vessel. Neither the state owned oil company (Padma Oil Company) nor the […]

Massive oil spill floods nature reserve in Israel - possibly the country's worst environment disaster

More than 80 people were hospitalized after inhaling noxious fumes after a pipeline failure caused some 600,000 gallons of oil to spill into a nature reserve in the desert near Eilat, a southern Israel city. The city with a population of about 50,000 people was not directly affected, however local fauna and flora was severely damaged, according […]

BP fined $17.6 billion following 2010's "reckless" oil spill

A federal judge has called major oil company BP (British Petroleum) “reckless”, and Transocean and Halliburton “negligent” following the major oil spill of 2010. The US District Judge Carl Barbier has ruled that BP’s “gross negligence” was the main culprit for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which is considered to be the biggest marine disaster in […]

Duke Energy Spilled At Least 5,000 Gallons Of Diesel Into The Ohio River On Monday

Between 5,000 and 8,000 gallons of diesel were spilled into the Ohio River on Monday, but officials say drinking water in the area is safe. Duke Energy is responsible for the spill, which happened during a “routine transfer”. While the company is still investigating, Duke spokeswoman Sally Thelen told the Inquirer that the spill may […]

One of the most devastating oil spills 25 years later

By the time the oil stopped flowing, nearly 11 million gallons had leaked out, contaminating 1,300 miles of shoreline and stretching over 470 miles from the crash site. Photo: Bettmann / Corbis Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez, a mile off-course in an attempt to avoid icebergs, ran aground on Bligh […]

Ecuador plans to move ahead controversial drilling efforts in the Amazon

Yasuni National Park to be one of the world’s richest biological hotspots, home to one of the densest biodiversity in the world. The region has been under threat, however, from oil drilling efforts for many years now, and a recent announcement from behalf of the Ecuador government further tightens the knot on the Amazon basin.  President Rafael […]

New Chevron oil spill in Utah - bird refuge threatened

It’s Chevron’s third oil spill in three years in Utah alone; a June 2010 spill involved more than 30,000 gallons of crude oil near Red Butte Gardens in Salt Lake City, while a December 2010 leak near the same site involved about 21,000 gallons. This time, the spill was originally thought to be 27,000 gallons, […]

Minor oil spills are underreported most of the time by oil companies

Oil spills, especially the big ones, can cause irremediable damage to the local ecosystem. Unfortunately once in a while, there’s a catastrophic disaster either from an oil rig or oil tanker leak, but these are the big ones  – the ones you hear about on TV, since frankly anyone today with an internet connection can […]

BP to pay record fine in case of oil spill

Remember the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? It is one of the biggest environmental disasters in the human history, and it just couldn’t fade away, despite what big oil companies expected. According to three sources, the company will plead guilty to criminal misconduct, paying a record $7.8 billion. They will […]

Sponge polymer soaks up oil and turns it into gel - viable option for cleaning oil spills

Oil spills are one of the most devastating man-made ecological disasters out there. During such an outbreak, millions of gallons of oil can end up in the ocean, killing countless marine life, as well as harming the ecosystem. Handling such disasters, beyond pointing fingers which comes to no avail to the marine life, has become […]

BP and Halliburton point fingers at each other in the oil spill trial

British Petroleum (BP) accused Halliburton, one of the biggest oil service companies in the world, of destroying evidence which showed they did faulty cement work in the huge oil spill which took place last year in the Gulf of Mexico. The accusation was launched during a BP court filing and it brought even more mystery […]

No, what you're seeing isn't a road

When I saw this picture, it was morning, my eyes hadn’t opened up quite yet, and I thought “what’s so special of a picture of a road?”. But then it hit me. It wasn’t a road. It’s a Louisiana waterway literally covered with dead fish, crabs, stingray, eel, and there have been reports of even […]