The Trouble With Tankers : Massive Shetland Islands Oil Spill Rekindles the Debate Over Safety

Disaster was averted shortly after 5 a.m. on a clear, dark morning last October.

The Kenai, a British Petroleum-chartered oil tanker carrying 35 million gallons of Alaskan crude, developed steering trouble 16 miles from the site of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. The tanker was less than two minutes from running aground on Middle Rock, an old nemesis for ship captains operating in Prince William Sound.

But the Kenai quickly radioed its tug escort, required by the U.S. Coast Guard in these waters since tankers began operating there 15 years earlier. The tug nudged against the Kenai’s right bow, turned 90 degrees and pushed it away from disaster with only 100 yards to spare. Experts say it was the worst near-miss ever in the Sound.

Environmentalists cite this little-publicized incident as one proof that the oil industry could do much more to prevent accidents such as the tanker that ran aground Jan. 5 in a fierce storm off the Shetland Islands in the North Sea.

Oil from the Liberian-registered Braer has already killed hundreds of sea birds, seals, otters and other wildlife.

On Monday, the British government ordered a public inquiry into tanker movements around its coast. British Transport Secretary John MacGregor earlier had announced a probe into the specific circumstances of the spill.

Environmentalists have responded to the spill by renewing their pleas for faster introduction of double-hull tankers, rerouting of tankers around environmentally sensitive areas and expanded use of escort tugs to accompany ships through difficult passages. As the Kenai incident demonstrated, these tugs can quickly maneuver a disabled ship to safety before it runs aground.

But maritime experts counter that the international tanker industry is moving as quickly as possible to enact safety measures to reduce the likelihood of accidents. They note that the number of major oil spills has dropped sharply in recent years.

“The perils of the sea are still with us,” says Arthur McKenzie of the Tanker Advisory Center, a New York-based organization that tracks tanker safety records.

McKenzie favors the use of escort tugs in dangerous seaways. But like double-hull ships, which offer added protection for vessels, tugs are helpful but not a panacea, he says.

“Part of the lesson of these spills,” he says, “is the irrefutable fact that when you move 2 billion tons a year of oil around the world, you are going to have a very difficult time eliminating all tanker tragedies, just as we have been unsuccessful in eliminating airplane accidents.”

Escort tugs are required in only a few tanker passages in the world, under rules set by individual nations. Following the Exxon Valdez disaster off the Alaskan coast, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, requiring escorts not only in the Valdez Narrows, where the Kenai courted disaster, but also in the entire length of Prince William Sound. The bill also requires tanker escorts in Puget Sound near Seattle.

Egypt requires escorts in certain circumstances for oil tankers traversing the Suez Canal. Escorts are also mandated at Sullom Voe, a major tanker port in the northern Shetland Islands.

Yet escorts are not required in narrow passages in international waters, including the English Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Molucca Strait. While nations may regulate tanker passage in their own waters, traditional maritime law has frustrated international attempts, as in recent failed negotiations to require escorts in the Bosporus Strait, near Istanbul, Turkey.

Laws dating from the 1700s protect ordinary passage of ships through coastal waters and straits, “which precludes pilots, let alone escort tugs,” says John Thompson, head of the navigation section of the International Maritime Organization, or IMO, a 173-nation organization that sets international marine safety conventions.

The Shetland Islands spill and a recent spill in a Spanish harbor could prompt European nations to agree on tighter safety practices in European waters, however.

“Especially now that there is a movement to harmonize the laws between many of those countries,” says Richard Golob, an oil-spill expert and publisher of Golob’s Oil Pollution Bulletin. More action could come when the IMO meets next summer to re-evaluate safety rules for tanker traffic.

Meanwhile, U.S. environmentalists are particularly critical of Coast Guard efforts to issue new rules governing U.S. waters, as required under the 1990 law.

“Safety at Bay,” a report released in December by the Natural Resources Defense Council, charges that key regulations “have been delayed, or . . . are too weak to fulfill the mandates of the Oil Pollution Act.”

This includes the introduction of double-hull tankers, which have been found to prevent more than 80% of routine tanker spills. The Oil Pollution Act requires all ships plying U.S. waters to have double hulls by 2015. A similar, though milder, rule has been adopted by the IMO.

“For those of us who believe in double hulls, it’s a victory,” says McKenzie of the Tanker Advisory Center. The world’s first double-hull supertanker was completed in Denmark in December and almost 150 smaller double-hull tankers are now in use. There are an estimated 3,200 tankers worldwide.

But the NRDC and others say the Coast Guard specifications for double-hull tankers are inadequate and the schedule for phasing in the tankers is too slow.

“That phase-in point was based on shipyard availability and the time to deliver ships,” responds Norman W. Lemley, the Coast Guard official in charge of implementing the Oil Pollution Act. “There was recognition that there was a logistic problem in replacing the fleet.”

But other experts say privately that the long phase-in was intended to minimize economic hardship on financially troubled international tanker owners.

Whatever the rationale, Fred Hallett, chief financial officer of National Steel & Shipbuilding Co., a San Diego-based tanker builder, reports that no double-hull vessels have yet been ordered in the United States, though some are being built overseas.

Fewer Spills

The number of major oil spills has decreased to about a third of those that occurred in the 1970s.

Major oil spills (over 200,000 gallons) 1970: 29 1971: 15 1972: 24 1973: 32 1974: 26 1975: 20 1976: 25 1977: 17 1978: 22 1979: 35 1980: 13 1981: 6 1982: 3 1983: 11 1984: 8 1985: 8 1986: 7 1987: 10 1988: 9 1989: 13 1990: 13 1991: 8 1992: 11 Source: International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Ltd.