The 15 Biggest Oil Spills

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Where’s the Exxon Valdez on the map of biggest oil spills, you might be wondering? Well, at 262,000 barrels spilled, it doesn’t make the cut. Not even close. The smallest spill pictured below was 871,000 barrels. The Deepwater Horizon, even using BP-provided estimates, is now the world’s second-largest spill of all time, right after the oil that Saddam Hussein intentionally dumped in 1991. This map does not account for chronic spills, as in the Niger Delta, polluted by at least 13 million barrels. And it shows the problem of identifying the culprits: In three instances, the responsible party is still unknown.

Illustration: Nicholas Felton