1969 Santa Barbara oil spill 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill The Santa Barbara oil spill occurred in January and February 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, near the city of Santa Barbara in Southern California. It was the largest oil spill in United States waters by that time, and now ranks third after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. It remains the largest oil spill to have occurred in the waters off California. The source of the spill was a blow-out on January 28, 1969, from the coast on Union Oil's Platform A in the Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field. Within a
Oil Spill Response Limited Oil Spill Response Limited Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) is a British firm specializing in the global fight against oil spills. The company was founded in 1985 and employs about 300 people at nine locations. Shareholders are all major oil companies such as BHP Billiton, Chevron Corporation, Eni, ExxonMobil, Petronas, Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and Total. OSRL is the largest industry-developed and co-financed by the cooperative for emergency response. As such, the company's focus is not on the generation of profits. Funding is provided by the annual contributions of its 44 stakeholders and 118 extraordinary members, as well