United States offshore drilling debate recently, Russia has begun drilling in the black sea with a Chinese-made oil rig, Scarabeo 9. Since the rig wasn't built in the U.S. and was agreed to before the imposition of additional sanctions by the E.U. in 2014, Russia has been able to avoid sanctions and operate the rig. Offshore facilities pose an environmental risk of oil spills. On April 20, 2010, an underwater blowout and subsequent explosion and fire destroyed the "Deepwater Horizon" rig owned by Transocean Ltd. and operating in the Gulf of Mexico under lease to energy giant BP, resulting in the largest oil spill in
Oil spill volume is a limited measure of damage or impact. Smaller spills have already proven to have a great impact on ecosystems, such as the "Exxon Valdez" oil spill because of the remoteness of the site or the difficulty of an emergency environmental response. Since 2004, between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been leaking from the site of an oil-production platform 12 miles off the Louisiana coast which sank in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan. The oil spill, which officials estimate could continue throughout the 21st century, will eventually overtake the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizion disaster as