the year 2008 revealed one of the risks of continued reliance on oil when
Financial crisis of 2007–2008 Rapid increases in a number of commodity prices followed the collapse in the housing bubble. The price of oil nearly tripled from $50 to $147 from early 2007 to 2008, before plunging as the financial crisis began to take hold in late 2008.[162] Experts debate the causes, with some attributing it to speculative flow of money from housing and other investments into commodities, some to monetary policy,[163] and some to the increasing feeling of raw materials scarcity in a fast-growing world, leading to long positions taken on those markets, such as Chinese increasing presence in Africa. An increase in oil prices tends to divert a larger share of consumer spending into gasoline, which creates downward pressure on economic growth in oil importing countries, as wealth flows to oil-producing states.[164] A pattern of spiking instability in the price of oil over the decade leading up to the price high of 2008 has been recently identified.[165] The destabilizing effects of this price variance has been proposed as a contributory factor in the financial crisis.
Deepwater Horizon oil spill The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the BP oil disaster, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo blowout) is an industrial disaster that began on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. Killing eleven people,[6][7][8][9] it is considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8% to 31% larger in volume than the previous largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill. The U.S. government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 m3).[3] After several failed efforts to contain the flow, the well was declared sealed on September 19, 2010.[10] Reports in early 2012 indicated that the well site was still leaking.[11][12]