Word: spills
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with a policy and calculated the appropriate premium. But disasters have a way of defying the laws of probability. Recent years have witnessed an extraordinary string: the Piper Alpha oil-rig blowout in the North Sea, the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and America's Hurricane Hugo. Last week Lloyd's announced that it would post a $980 million deficit for 1988 -- the most recent year on which books can be closed, since they are kept open for three years to allow for claims to be filed. And worse is to come...
...soon became a Rolling Stone regular. Several books followed, among them Holidays in Hell, an outrageous account of his world travels, and Republican Party Reptile, an uneven collection of essays that includes his infamous "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." From there, he has become a member of what passes for Washington's political literati...
Thus Exxon's oil slick, which holds the North American record for volume (11 million gal.), cleanup costs ($2.5 billion) and bad publicity, has now set a new high mark for penalty payouts -- almost 40 times as great as any previous spill. Nonetheless, one critic denounced the settlement as an inadequate "back-room deal," while company chairman Lawrence G. Rawl declared that it "will not have a noticeable effect" on Exxon's financial results. But Attorney General Dick Thornburgh said it "sends a very important signal that there are criminal consequences for this kind of activity...
...spill off the shores of Kuwait, which was widely reported to be the largest in history -- some 11 million bbl. -- is now estimated to be one- quarter to one-twentieth that size, making it smaller than the 1979-80 Gulf of Mexico spill at the offshore drilling rig known as Ixtoc I. Similarly, Carl Sagan's well-publicized prediction that smoke from the oil fires could rise 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) to the stratosphere and blanket the globe has not yet come to pass. So far, the smoke clouds are hugging the ground, drifting...
...waters of the gulf, the oil spill now estimated by the Saudi government at 0.5 million to 3 million bbl. has been partially contained, but not cleaned up. Although the thickening sludge has killed thousands of seabirds, debilitated the Saudi shrimp industry and threatened plants and coral reefs along the coast of Kuwait and northern Saudi Arabia, favorable winds have so far kept it well north of the rich marine ecosystems in the bay of Bahrain. These marshy flats are the breeding grounds of large numbers of fish and shrimp and the favorite habitat of the rare dugong, the cousin...