How does this incident compare with the Exxon Valdez oil spill?
So far this oil rig explosion is on a much smaller scale than the Exxon Valdez disaster, which is one of the biggest human-caused environmental disasters in history. The oil that has spilled into the Gulf so far this week is from the initial rig explosion and the rig’s sinking. And there doesn’t seem to be any oil seeping up from the seafloor drilling hole, experts say. If oil did start seeping up from that hole, it could cause some 336,000 gallons a day to spill into the ocean, according to news reports. In comparison, when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground on the Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, it spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into the sea, covering 1,300 square miles (3,366 square kilometers). It would take months for the broken oil rig to reach that amount.
