How fast does oil in a spill spread?
Oil can spread very rapidly unless it is quickly contained by a boom (a large floating barrier that can round up and lift the oil out of the water) or other mechanism. The lighter the oil is, the faster it can spread — so gasoline would spread faster than thicker, black oils, such as the crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon. But even heavy oil can spread quickly in a major spill, spreading out as thin as a layer of paint on a wall in just a few hours, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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