Black Magic.....
(oil)

One of twelve off-shore drilling
rigs in the Cook Inlet.

Crude oil can be very dangerous! It contains sulfur,which when burned gives off sulfur dioxide. This gas can hurt plants,animals human life and pollute our water and air. Sulphur must always be removed from oil. It's usually removed a long with other foul compounds during the refining. There is a lot being done to make sure that no pollution, especially from oil, is harming others. Laws are being made to stop pollution, and most companies are using anti-polluting equipment. Major oil companies invented a system, called Load-a-top, to stop oil spills. Today tankers put water that is washed up on the tank with the oil so they don't have to throw it back in the sea causing it to become oily. When they get back to the refinery it is easy to separate the oil and water.

First oil well drilled on the
Kenai Peninsula.
(Scanned photo from the archives of the
Anchorage Museum of History and Art, B89.43.2
 Photo by Ward Wells, WWS 1814)

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When the oil arrives at Valdez what happens to the oil? Well tankers carry Alaska oil to its coast main market ports on the West and East coasts. Then the rest of the oil is shipped to the Gulf of Mexico and in the Carribean. Tankers deliver crude oil to the United States 365 days a year. Only seventy tankers are filled with oil each month,but each ship spends about 22 hours loading oil.