Oil spills are the harmful release of oil into the environment, usually in the water, sometimes killing area flora and fauna. Oil is the most common pollutant in the oceans. More than 3 million metric tons of oil contaminates the sea every year. The majority of oil pollution in the oceans comes from land. Runoff and waste from cities, industry, and rivers carries oil into the ocean. Ships cause about a third of the oil pollution in the oceans when they wash out their tanks or dump their bilge water. It is an unfortunate by-product of the storage and transportation of oil and petroleum is the occasional spill. Oil spills are very difficult to clean up.

The kind of oil spill we usually think about is the accidental or intentional release of petroleum products into the environment as result of human activity (drilling, manufacturing, storing, transporting, waste management), that floats on the surface of water bodies as a discrete mass and is carried by the wind, currents and tides. Oil spills can be partially controlled by chemical dispersion, combustion, mechanical containment and adsorption. They have destructive effects on coastal ecosystems.

Examples of an oil spill would be things like well blowouts, pipeline breaks, ship collisions or groundings, overfilling of gas tanks and bilge pumping from ships, leaking underground storage tanks, and oil-contaminated water runoff from streets and parking lots during rain storms. Marine oil spill is a serious consequence of off-shore oil drilling and its oceanic transportation. Spill control firms specialize in the prevention, containment and cleanup of industrial oil spills.

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