Amoco Cadiz oil spill Amoco Cadiz oil spill The oil tanker "Amoco Cadiz" ran aground on Portsall Rocks, from the coast of Brittany, France, on 16 March 1978, and ultimately split in three and sank, all together resulting in the largest oil spill of its kind in history to that date. NOAA estimates that the total oil spill amounted to 220,880 metric tonnes of oil. En route from the Persian Gulf to Rotterdam, Netherlands, via a scheduled stop at Lyme Bay, Great Britain, the ship encountered stormy weather with gale conditions and high seas while in the English Channel. At around 09:45, a heavy
Lake tanker Lake tanker Lake tankers were small (up to 5,000 ton) specially designed shallow-draft tanker ships that carried the crude oil, pumped from beneath Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, to the three off-shore refineries located on the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curaçao. The crude obtained from Lake Maracaibo was processed at refineries located at Aruba and Curaçao, Netherlands West Indies. Aruba had two refineries, Lago Oil and Transport Company, owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey and Eagle, owned by Royal Dutch Shell. There was also a Royal Dutch Shell refinery on the island of Curaçao. The Lago refinery housed the