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
Architecture of the oil tanker a mid-deck design overcomes this by eliminating the double-bottom compartments that are void with air. Since the density of seawater is greater than that of oil, water comes into the tanks instead of oil escaping out, and rather than spilling, oil is vented upwards into overflow tanks. If the "Exxon Valdez" had been a Mid-Deck ship, she would have spilled very little oil. A variation on the Mid-Deck Tanker is the Coulombi Egg Tanker, which was approved by IMO as an alternative to the double hull concept. The design consists of a series of centre and wing tanks that are