China may or (may not) have overtaken the United States this year as the world’s No. 1 consumer of energy, but America is still winning the contest for the year’s worst energy-related environmental disaster. An oil pipeline explosion and accompanying spill this past Friday in the port city of Dalian produced an oil slick now estimated at 165 square miles .
By comparison, the capped-for-now BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in 2,700 square miles of visible oil slick, with much more oil trapped below the surface thanks to BP’s policy of bombing the underwater leak with dispersant.
