THE MV Braer remains Scotland's biggest marine oil spills, however the biggest to happen in UK waters was the Torrey Canyon disaster in 1967.

The Supertanker ran aground between the Isles of Scilly and Land’s End in Cornwall, spilling 119,000 tonnes of crude oil.

It contaminated 120 miles of the Cornish coast, 50 miles of French coastlines and killed some 15,000 sea birds.

In 2011, a leaking pipeline at Shell’s Gannett Alpha platform contaminated around 100 miles east of Aberdeen, causing the UK’s worst oil spill for a decade.

Another notable UK spill includes the Sea Empress tanker which ran aground off the Welsh coast in 1996, spewing 73,000 tonnes of oil and an estimated clena-up cost of £60m.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in 2010, which took place 40 miles off the Louisiana coastline, is considered the largest accidental spill in history.

It caused the death of 11 workers and some 627,000 tonnes of crude oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days.

It is second to the largest ever oil spill occurred in Kuwait during the Gulf war on 19 January 1991, which was a deliberate act by Iraqi forces.

It opened oil valves to slow down the advance of American troops, spilling an estimated 820,000 tonnes.

The third largest spill is the Ixtoc I oil spill, when an oil well in the Bay of Campeche, Mexico, collapsed after a pressure buildup sparked an accidental explosion.

It spilled around 480,000 tonnes into the Gulf of Mexico.