OIL SPILLS

Oil spills of over 100,000 tonnes or 30 million US gallons, ordered by tonnes^[a]

Spill / Tanker	Location	Date	*Tons of crude oil	Reference
Gulf War oil spill	Persian Gulf	January 21, 1991	1,360,000–1,500,000 (9,968,800-10,995,000 barrels)	[22][23]
Ixtoc I oil wells	Gulf of Mexico	June 3, 1979–March 23, 1980	454,000–480,000 (3,328,000–3,518,000 barrels)	[24]
Atlantic Empress / Aegean Captain	Trinidad and Tobago	July 19, 1979	287,000 (2,104,000 barrels)	[25][26]
Fergana Valley	Uzbekistan	March 2, 1992	285,000 (2,089,000 barrels)	[23]
Nowruz oil field	Persian Gulf	February 1983	260,000 (1,906,000 barrels)	[27]
ABT Summer	700 nautical miles (1,300 km) off Angola	1991	260,000 (1,906,000 barrels)	[25]
Castillo de Bellver	Saldanha Bay, South Africa	August 6, 1983	252,000 (1,847,000 barrels)	[25]
Amoco Cadiz	Brittany, France	March 16, 1978	223,000 (1,635,000 barrels)	[23][25]
Amoco Haven tanker disaster	Mediterranean Sea near Genoa, Italy	1991	144,000 (1,056,000 barrels)	[25]
Odyssey	700 nautical miles (1,300 km) off Nova Scotia, Canada	1988	132,000 (968,000 barrels)	[25]
Sea Star	Gulf of Oman	December 19, 1972	115,000 (843,000 barrels)	[23][25]
Torrey Canyon	Scilly Isles, UK	March 18, 1967	80,000–119,000 (586,000–872,000 barrels)	[23][25]
Irenes Serenade	Navarino Bay, Greece	1980	100,000 (733,000 barrels)	[25]
Urquiola	A Coruña, Spain	May 12, 1976	100,000 (733,000 barrels)	[25]

^a One tonne of crude oil is roughly equal to 308 US gallons or 7.33 barrels and 1 oil barrel is equal to 42 US gallons approx.

• The BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill flow rate has not been reliably established. Based on estimates of experts,^{[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]} it has reached at least 55,660 tonnes of oil leaked by May 24, 2010 but the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico may be 20 times the size of BP's earlier claims of 5000 barrels per day (2.4 million gallons spilled as of May 24, 2010), according to an exclusive analysis conducted for NPR.^[37]