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Oil is a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds, which are the decayed remains of marine animals and plants that lived in shallow inland seas, died, and drifted to the bottom. For the past 600 million years, under intense pressure and temperatures, these remains changed into the complicated hydrocarbons called petroleum. Crude oil is a mixture of gas, naphtha, kerosene, light gas, and residuals, which have different health effects.Since the 1960s there have been about twenty oil spills of more than 20 million gallons. Major oil spills have occurred off the coast of Mexico, the Middle East, off South Africa, in the North Pacific, and in Alaska, as well as in the pipeline in Usink, Russia. The largest oil spill to date resulted from the Gulf War in 1991, when over 240 million gallons of oil poured into the Persian Gulf, most of it deliberately. The next largest oil spill, from the Ixtox-1 well off Mexico, involved a blowout of 140 million gallons.The largest spills do not necessarily receive the most media coverage, either because of their location, the lack of human health or ecological effects, the lack of documentation of these effects, or a lack of media interest. For example the 1980 Nowruz field spill in Arabia (80 million gallons) and the 1992 Fergana Valley spill in Uzbekistan (80 million gallons) barely received any attention. In contrast, two smaller spills received enormous media attention: the oil tanker Amoco Cadiz released 68.7 million gallons off the coast of France in 1978, and the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons into Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989.