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
History of the oil tanker the English Channel. "Seawise Giant" was renamed "Happy Giant" in 1989, "Jahre Viking" in 1991. From 1979 to 2004 she was owned by Loki Stream, at which point she was bought by First Olsen Tankers, renamed "Knock Nevis" and converted into a permanently moored storage tanker. The Batillus class supertankers are the biggest ships ever constructed by gross tonnage. Although the tanker fleet increased around 12 percent annually around 1970, a shortage on tonnage remained. In 1973 this resulted in an enormous increase in new building orders, especially from oil majors that wanted to gain on the quicker deciding independents,