Gulf oil spill fast becoming worst in years, agencies warn

LONDON - A vast oil spill in the Gulf is quickly becoming one of the world’s worst in years after being allowed to spread almost unchecked for weeks, according to international agencies, satellite imagery and environmental groups.

The slick off the coast of Oman from a grounded tanker carrying Russian crude had reportedly reached the mainland on Aug 12, the UN’s shipping agency told Reuters.

The slick now covers an area of more than 2,000 sq km, said John Amos, an oil spill specialist who reviewed satellite imagery obtained by Reuters.

The Caroline Bezengi, carrying an estimated 800,000 barrels of Russian oil and under international sanctions, ran aground on June 30 at an Omani island that is part of a marine nature reserve.

The ship first reported difficulties off Yemen on June 8. Maritime sources said a blast appeared to have occurred aboard the Caroline Bezengi.

A satellite image showing the damaged vessel Caroline Bezengi and an oil slick off the Hallaniyat Islands, off the coast of Dhofar Governorate, Oman, on Aug 5. PHOTO: REUTERS

No party has claimed an attack, but the vessel was navigating two separate wars on its journey from Russia to India.

In April it sailed from the port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, a flashpoint in the Russia-Ukraine war. Ukraine has carried out assaults on a so-called shadow fleet carrying Russian oil, which the Caroline Bezengi is part of.

It then passed through the Suez Canal at the end of May, ship-tracking data shows, before sailing past Yemen, where the Iran-aligned Houthi militants have entered a wider regional war between the United States, Israel and Iran.

A web of complex war- and sanctions-related rules governing shipping and oil spills is already hampering efforts to respond and could yet get in the way of halting an impending disaster, insurers and analysts say.

The IOPC Funds, an intergovernmental agency dealing with tanker spills compensation, told Reuters it would not be involved in clean-up costs because the incident was being treated as an “act of war” rather than a simple accident.

The 25-year-old tanker is also not insured by any recognised Western insurance provider.

“A nightmare scenario is there’s no adequate response to keep the worst from happening,” said the oil spills specialist Amos, CEO of SkyTruth, a nonprofit organisation aiming to strengthen environmental conservation through the use of satellite images.

Amos said that in this case, the vessel would “continue to break up under the steady onslaught of wind and waves and to lose the entire cargo and that could be a spill upwards of 40 to 50 million gallons.”

Amos said this would rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in sheer size.

The ship is similar in size and capacity to the Sanchi, an Iranian ship that collided with a freighter off China in 2018 in the world’s worst oil tanker disaster in decades.

Rapidly spreading slick

The spill, first detected by analysts in early July, has begun reaching the Omani mainland, the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) said.

“Oil is drifting offshore to the northeast of (Oman’s) Al-Qibliyyah Island, with some oil reported to be reaching the mainland. Oil spill contingency planning is in place,” an IMO spokesperson told Reuters.

The IMO said that seasonal monsoon conditions had limited access to the tanker and delayed salvage operations.

Satellite imagery shows it grounded at Al-Qibliyyah Island, part of a nature reserve that includes the Hallaniyat Islands, putting wildlife including endangered turtles, humpback whales and coral reefs at risk.

Oman said on Aug 10 the slick covers almost 400 sq km. It has not responded to Reuters requests for further detail or comment on the containment efforts, but said it had used booms to try to stem the spread.

Environmental agencies and oil spill specialists put it at up to several times that size, and say that the spread has accelerated dramatically since the beginning of August.

Greenpeace on Aug 11 reported a quickening spread.

“The affected area went from around 45 sq km by the end of July, to 150 at the beginning of August. And then within two days, it quadrupled to 600 by the 4th or 5th of August,” said Hanen Keskes, political campaigns lead for Greenpeace in the Middle East.

Amos’s assessment of 2,000 sq km means it has swelled by more than 40 times since the beginning of August.

He said that measures required, beyond the use of booms, including stabilising the vessel and transferring whatever crude oil was left onboard to another tanker.

“The longer we wait, the more damaged and decrepit that tanker gets, the more complicated and difficult and potentially dangerous that salvage operation is going to be,” he said. REUTERS