Land-based oil spills add up, too -USA Today (as much as 630 million bbls / yr)

NOte to Calif Air Resources Board: "Ignore this!" (and note that Ethanol is biodegradable)


http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-06-29-land-spills_N.htm

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Although massive blowouts receive the most attention, the largest human-caused source of oil into the environment is the byproduct of millions of autos and other oil-powered devices.

Oil that drips from a car's crankcase or gasoline that spills at a gas station eventually washes down gutters and storm drains into rivers that drain into the sea, the report said. Other significant sources include recreational boating, commercial ships and tankers, and oil production.

Because the government and industry do not track these spills, the totals could be much higher, the study concluded. Scientists estimated that human spills in North America could be as high as 6.3 billion gallons a decade.

Alex Horne, University of California-Berkeley professor emeritus of ecological engineering, says he has frequently encountered the smell of dumped fuel or the rainbow sheen of oil while working on wetlands pollution.
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decade all over the place to 71 days in one spot, with the weasel words "could be" is totally outrageous. Anecdotal evidence from an emeritus professor is still anecdotal evidence.

Spilled gasoline evaporates, it doesn't just lay there waiting to run down the drain, if it was stable your car wouldn't run.

year (or decade) which does end up in the sea (not all constituents of refined oil are highly volatile).

The article is based on data from scientists, such as The National Academy of Sciences (see graphic from article), and is hardly "apologist bullshit". Whether measured by the year or the decade they are talking about a massive amount of oil, spilled every year, year after year (remember, the Oil industry points out that these big spills happen very rarely (last big spill in Gulf, near Yucatan peninsula, was what, 20 or 30 yrs ago?), so looking at land based spills over a decade is actually not irrelavant).





Here is a telling quote from the Nat. Academy of Sciences report, Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effects (2003)

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10388&page=3

Petroleum Consumption

"Releases that occur during the consumption of petroleum, whether by individual car and boat owners, non-tank vessels, or runoff from increasingly paved urban areas, contribute the vast majority of petroleum introduced to the environment through human activity.(my emphasis__JW) On average, an estimated 84,000 tonnes (25,000,000 gallons) of petroleum are input to North American waters, and 480,000 tonnes (140,000,000 gallons) are input worldwide, each year from these diffuse sources. "Therefore, releases associated with the consumption of petroleum make up nearly 70 percent of the petroleum introduced to the world’s oceans from anthropogenic sources and nearly 85 percent of the total petroleum input from anthropogenic sources to North American waters.--(their emphasis_JW) Unlike other sources, inputs from consumption occur almost exclusively as slow, chronic releases. Furthermore, because the vast majority of the consumption of petroleum occurs on land, rivers and waste- and stormwater streams represent the most significant source of petroleum to the marine environment."



The point of the article is not to minimize the Deep Water Horizon spill, but to point out - if you think the Deep Horizon Oil spill is bad take a look at all the land based spills which don't get much attention but nonetheless end up in the ocean. These too, are a cost of using oil.(apologies to the California Air Resources Board)

(BTW, my OP title was incorrect, the annual amount spilled on land is 140 million gallons, world-wide)