History, Sources and Volumes of Oil Pollution in the Mediterranean Sea

This chapter presents a brief review of history, sources and volumes of oil pollu-tion in the Mediterranean Sea. Historical records show 16 major oil spills oc-curred between May 1966 and September 2017, and resulted in oil spills ranging between 6,000 and 144,000 tonnes; the largest spill came from the MT Haven tanker after an explosion on board on April 11, 1991. Sources of oil pollution are typical for other seas and include shipping, oil and gas platforms, ports and oil terminals, land-based sources, military conflicts, natural oil seeps, and even at-mospheric inputs. Shipping activities are the main cause for oil pollution in the Mediterranean Sea because oil and gas production and exploration is not so im-portant, unlike in the Gulf of Mexico or the Caspian Sea. If we exclude major oil spill accidents from ships, which are very rare events in the Mediterranean, dif-ferent expert reports and estimates provide total volumes of oil pollution ranging from 1,600 to 1,000,000 tonnes per year. The 625 times difference in values means that we still do not know the real volume of oil pollution entering the Mediterranean Sea and this is a big problem that should be addressed.