Itâ??s official: The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has surpassed the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in scale. The Valdez tanker spill, which dumped 11 million gallons of crude into Alaskaâ??s Prince William Sound, has long been seen as one of the U.S.â??s worst environmental disasters. But U.S. government officials have confirmed that the shattered Deepwater Horizon drilling rig has already released an estimated 20 to 40 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
The two spills could hardly be more different. Consider:
Finite vs. Indefinite. The Valdez spill was finite, with a known amount of oil contained in the tanker. The Deepwater spill is ongoing and its full volume is still uncertain, entirely dependent on whether or not this weekâ??s effort to contain the oil in a pipe and shuttle it to a collecting tanker is successful.
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