Ready (or not) for oil spills – EU waters mapped for risk

Date:18/09/03

By Karen Carstens

THE Black Sea is more likely than any other stretch of water in Europe to live up to its name.

It tops the list of seas most at risk from an oil spill, according to a survey that has compared how well each region is prepared to deal with a crisis.

"Other areas in danger include havens of biodiversity such as the Red Sea and the pristine coral islands of the western Indian Ocean," science and technology news service NewScientist.com reports.

The "at risk" map, created by the London-based International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF), plots routes used to transport oil in 2001, locations of spills since 1974 and the causes of past spills. Technical advisors at ITOPF rate each region on a scale of one to three, with one representing a low risk.

In initial findings published this month, the highest-ranked regions included the waters around the UK, the Mediterranean and the north-west Pacific.

A second stage in the process involved assessing whether countries in each region are ready to tackle an oil spill, by checking which nations have ratified international agreements such as the oil pollution preparedness, response and cooperation convention. This analysis showed, for example, that long stretches of Africa's coastline have no adequate disaster recovery plans.

Combining the two sets of data yielded a composite map that showed where the risk was high compared with low preparedness. Turkey has been warning of the risk facing the Black Sea since 1998, following 150 oil-related accidents in the region in a decade.

In one of the most serious, in 1994, an oil tanker collided with another vessel, resulting in the death of 28 seamen and a 15,000-tonne spillage that caught fire.

"The Black Sea is already considered to be the most degraded marine environment in Europe," according to NewScientist.com.

Helen Thomas, who coordinated the first phase of the ITOPF map project, said: "These results are preliminary, and there's a lot more in-depth work to do, but in time we hope to publish the work to help organizations such as the International Maritime Organization and UN Environment Programme's Regional Seas programme to prioritize their resources."

The Spanish government disclosed last month that the oil spill from the tanker Prestige, which sank off Spain in November 2002, was far worse than previously thought.

More than 80% of the tanker's 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil is now believed to have been spilled off Spain's north-east coast.

The government initially said just 17,000 tonnes had been lost, adding that another 60,000 tonnes would freezeand not leak from the sunken tanker.

But earlier this year it announced that half of the oil had been lost, and now that figure has risen to about 63,000 tonnes.

Environmentalists are comparing the damage caused to that of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.

"The environmental devastation caused is at least on a par, if not worse, than the Exxon Valdez," says Simon Walmsley, World Wide Fund for Nature's senior policy officer for shipping. "The amount of oil spilled is more than the Valdez and the toxicity is higher, because of the higher temperature."

The Exxon Valdez spill occurred in extremely cold water, and this also meant it was slower to disperse.

Experts predict marine life will suffer from the effects of the Prestige for at least ten years due to the type of oil spilt, which contains polyaromatic-hydrocarbons.

These chemicals poison plankton, fish eggs and crustaceans, leading to cancer in fish and other animals higher up the food chain.

The London-based International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF) has created an 'at risk' map which plots routes used to transport oil in 2001, locations of spills since 1974 and the causes of past spills. Each region is given a risk rating and the Black Sea tops the list as the sea most at risk from an oil spill. Other high risk regions include the waters around the United Kingdom and the Mediterranean Sea.

http://www.itopf.com/ http://www.itopf.com/

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