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An attack by Yemeni Houthi rebels on a Belize-flagged ship earlier this month caused an 18-mile (29-kilometer) oil slick, the U.S. military said Saturday. It also warned of the danger of a spill from the vessel’s cargo of fertilizer. The Rubymar, a British-registered, Lebanese-operated cargo vessel, was attacked on Feb. 18 while sailing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, U.S. Central Command said. The missile attack forced the crew to abandon the vessel, which had been on its way to Bulgaria after leaving Khorfakkan in the United Arab Emirates. It was...

Emergency workers in Trinidad and Tobago are racing to clean up a massive oil spill after a mystery vessel ran aground near the Caribbean island, casting a pall over Carnival tourism. The spill was "not under control" as of Sunday, said Prime Minister Keith Rowley, who added that the country is grappling with a national emergency. The mystery vessel capsized Wednesday in waters off the Caribbean island, having made no emergency calls, with no sign of crew, and no clear sign of ownership.

PAXTON [Illinois] — When a wind turbine collapsed last Thursday east of Paxton, a substantial amount of oil spilled from the turbine hub into the ground. Ford County Emergency Management Agency Coordinator Terry Whitebird said Austin, Texas-based RWE Renewables, which operates the Prairie Trail Wind Farm, where the turbine collapsed, filed a report with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency about the spillage, and he received a copy of the report. Whitebird has been on site and said a crew is ready to begin dismantling the turbine but has to wait until the area dries out from Wednesday’s rains.

Investigators believe a 1,200-foot (366-meter) cargo ship dragging anchor in rough seas caught an underwater oil pipeline and pulled it across the seafloor, months before a leak from the line fouled the Southern California coastline with crude. A team of federal investigators trying to chase down the cause of the spill boarded the Panama-registered MSC DANIT just hours after the massive ship arrived this weekend off the Port of Long Beach... ...The DANIT's operator, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, is headquartered in Switzerland and has a fleet of 600 vessels and more than 100,000 workers, according to the company....

There was an oil spill on off the coast of California. 144,000 gallons of oil were spilled. You also might note that there is now suddenly little interest in the story and there is a reason for that. Oil has been leaking since about October 3 and officials set about to determine the cause. It was noted that the pipeline was moved more than 100 feet along the ocean floor. The pipeline also suffered a 13 inch tear. It was most likely caused by an anchor. Why did this happen? Well, it was pretty much inevitable as there is a...

The slick, which was first reported on Saturday afternoon, is thought to come from a pipeline leak connected to an offshore oil platform known as Elly and seeped into nearby Huntington Beach, including in Talbert Marsh, which is home to about 90 species of birds, according to the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy. Officials on Sunday said they’ve measured a 5.8-mile oil plume running from the Huntington Beach Pier to Newport Beach, and was reported to be “approximately 13 square miles in size.” Authorities are urging people to avoid the beach areas around Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. The oil spill...

SEATTLE — A second defendant has been convicted of sabotaging railroad tracks near the U.S.-Canada border in Washington state just before a train carrying crude oil was due to pass through — apparently part of a campaign to protest construction of a pipeline across British Columbia.Following a two-day trial and three hours of deliberation, a federal jury in Seattle on Thursday convicted Ellen Brennan Reiche, 28, of Bellingham, of violence against a railroad carrier. Her co-defendant, Samantha Frances Brooks, 24, pleaded guilty in July.

Venezuela is in the midst of a massive oil spill covering a pristine national park, in what's the world's second-biggest oil spill of 2020 and nobody's saying a thing. The pristine Morrocoy national park in western Venezuela will likely take 50 years to recover. Here's what the news was last August 12, from a Canadian news agency, and there's been little said since: An oil spill in Venezuela has coated a stretch of the crisis-wracked nation’s Caribbean coastline, treasured for its white sand beaches, clusters of small islands and wildlife. Fisherman and locals living around Morrocoy National Park began reporting oil washing ashore last...

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Yellowstone National Park administrators say a trailer hauling gasoline spilled about 3,000 gallons of gasoline after overturning in the park while en route to a delivery. The tandem trailer being hauled by a tanker overturned Thursday morning between Fishing Bridge and Mud Volcano in an area where the Grand Loop Road runs near the Yellowstone River, park officials said.

RUSH: Here’s another thing. Do you remember the Gulf oil spill? What is the main thing you remember, aside from the actual spill in the news, what’s the main thing that you remember about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? That’s right, they couldn’t find the oil. It was the biggest oil spill in the history of oil spills — they couldn’t find the oil. Do you remember they even had field trips? They had little schoolkids from grade school, and they put ’em on buses and drove ’em down to the Gulf Coast and they gave...

The Washington Post is wailing about the environmental ruination of that great ecological wonder, the Canadian tar sands. Canada's Athabasca Basin holds more hydrocarbons (oil) than anyplace else in the world. It has a huge patch of tarry goo, the remains of a once-vast inland lake, spotted amongst 40,000 square miles of jack pine and black spruce growing amid mosquito-rich swamps. The same evergreen-and-swamp vista extends in a broad band for more than 2000 miles, from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the shores of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast. The Athabasca's population density is less...

Plains All American Pipeline, the company which owns the pipeline at the centre of an oil spill off the coast of California, on Monday downgraded the amount of oil it says spilled in a worst-case scenario. The company said the estimate of the worst-case volume of oil released was up to 101,000 gallons – about 4,200 gallons less than previously believed. Plains All American is still cleaning up the spill along the Santa Barbara County coastline and recovering oil from the pipeline, so the calculations are not final.

An oil spill was reported Tuesday at Refugio State Beach, about 20 miles west of Santa Barbara, spanning about four miles along the coastline. A citizen reported the leak coming from a ruptured pipeline off the 101 Freeway to authorities at about noon. The pipeline, owned by Santa Maria-based Plains All-American Pipeline, was on land, and the oil flowed from land into the ocean.

Five years ago this week, a blowout of BPÂ’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig 40 miles from the Gulf Coast tragically claimed eleven lives and spilled 3 million barrels of oil from the damaged wellhead into the Gulf. ItÂ’s hard to forget the video images of thick oil gushing, day after day, into the regionÂ’s waters. It was a horrific accident that caused substantial damage to the ecology and commerce of the region. Gulf-area wildlife, portions of the shoreline, tourism, fishers and shrimpers, and energy-sector workers suffered large losses in the aftermath of the spill. BP has paid close to $27...

Officials in Montana say they have detected traces of oil in the water supply of the town of Glendive, days after up to 50,000 gallons of oil spilled from a break in a pipeline along the Yellowstone River. NPR's Kirk Siegler is reporting on the story for our Newscast unit. He says: "The EPA and other emergency responders are having bottled water shipped to ... Glendive. Preliminary tests have indicated that some traces of oil have entered Glendive's water supply. There have been no reports yet of injuries, but the damage assessment is ongoing and everything is being hampered by...

The Environmental Protection Ministry called the oil spill from the Tran-Israel pipeline in southern Israel one of the worst pollution events in the history of Israel on Thursday and said the clean up will cause landscape damage and could take many months. ...

The Los Angeles Fire Department reports a ruptured oil pipe near Glendale has spilled about 50,000 gallons of crude oil onto streets. According to a Fire Department release, the leak from a 20-inch pipe was reported around 12:15 a.m. and the oil line was remotely shut off. No injuries were reported. Oil spilled over approximately half a mile and is knee high in some areas. A handful of commercial businesses are affected.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Halliburton Co pleaded guilty on Thursday to federal charges of destroying evidence, stemming from its role in the 2010 BP oil disaster that killed 11 men and sent more than 4 million barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. A former Halliburton cementing technology director in Texas also was charged on Thursday with destroying evidence. U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo in New Orleans accepted the company's guilty plea from Halliburton legal counsel Marc Mukasey, imposed the agreed-upon maximum fine of $200,000 and placed the company on a three-year probation term. Mukasey did not...

Leica DM4000M microscopySuper sucker. Copper needles could help remove oil from the ocean. Researchers looking for a better way to clean up oil spills are taking a cue from the humble cactus. A new study shows that synthetic needles based on those of the desert plant can take up oil droplets from the ocean much as the cactus takes up water from the air.Cactus needles have a curious effect on water. When tiny water droplets in the air land on them, the needlesÂ’ conical shape distorts them, nudging them into a clamlike shape. Because water droplets like to be circular,...

Previewing an upcoming story for NBC's Rock Center on Friday's Today, correspondent Ann Curry warned that tribes of the Amazon rain forest "are sharpening their spears and preparing their blow guns to fight Ecuador's new plan to auction as much as 8 million acres of the rain forest for oil drilling." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] She then cited Boston University biology professor Kelly Swing arguing that "America, a top importer of oil from Ecuador, shares responsibility for this coming conflict....And the toxic legacy of past oil drilling in other parts of the rain...