In 1941, the battleship USS Arizona sank during the attack on Pearl Harbour, along with nearly 5,000 tonnes of oil in its fuel tanks.
This has been slowly leaking out over the past 84 years, and the tanks are still half full.
While this is the longest duration man-made spill, it’s dwarfed both in volume and duration by the Coal Oil Point seep field off the coast of California.
This natural leak from an undersea oilfield releases about 17 tonnes of oil into the sea every day and has been active for at least half a million years!
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Joshua Hughes, via email) 'What's the world's longest oil spill?'
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