Ways to Control Oils Spills from Tankers: A Proactive Approach

When an oil spill occurs in the ocean, some of the major concerns involve the extent of ecological damage, cleanup methods and cost. What if it was possible to stop the spill from ever occuring? In previous blogs I looked at  the effects oil spills had on the fish population. However in this blog I shed light on some approaches used to limit oil spills from oil tankers to protect fish. 

Many would agree that a price cannot be placed on ecological loss, as its recovery after a spill takes many years. For this reason the transport of oil across the ocean is a risky task. To conduct activities on tankers that facilitate this transport, a capable staff must be available. Capable or not there are laws against the release of oil and to ensure compliance with these laws there are policies that contain monitoring and penalties that seek to help reduce oil spills. In regard to the laws the Coast guard and the Environmental Protection Agency are example of those that have the power to enforce them (Cohen, 2009).

Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong or so I would like to believe. There is a saying that “one does the correct thing when supervised”. I believe this is the main reason for monitoring of oil vessels. It is said that a crew working on an oil vessel, does so with more integrity when they know they are being watched. To avoid consequences such as penalties mentioned earlier, they comply with the law. Beside skill the morals of the crew must also be questioned as some oil spills are deliberate. This is done to save expenses on proper methods of cleaning ships. A report by (Parker, 2016) indicated that two engineers on an Italian oil tanker received felony charges for the dumping of oil into the ocean. They attempted to hide the spill from the coast guard but were unsuccessful. The charge each received carried a maximum penalty of $250,000 and 5 years prison time. Monitoring is expensive so it is done in the most efficient manner. Low risk ships or those less likely to cause spill are monitored less, while those that pose more risk are highly monitored. This is done based on the vessel history as it relates to oil spill events.  History can also determine penalties; a ship with a record of low compliance is likely to be subject to higher penalties. Also ships that do not report spills pay higher penalties as well.

Self reporting is an approach taken to cut government spending on monitoring. There is a list for ships that have been found to be out of compliance. The operators of such vessels tend to make a greater effort to self report, after being caught, in an attempt to regain the trust of the government and be removed from the list.

Figure 2: Alaska Oil Spill Civil Penalty Schedule
Environment	Freshwater	Marine	Public Land
Critical	US$10.00/gal US$2,940/tonne	US$2.50/gal US$735/tonne	US$1.00/gal US$294/tonne
Very sensitive	N/A	N/A	US$0.75/gal US$221/tonne
Sensitive	US$5.00/gal US$1,470/tonne	US$2.00/gal US$588/tonne	US$0.50/gal US$147/tonne
Without significant resources	US$1.00/gal US$294/tonne	US$1.00/gal US$294/tonne	US$0.25/gal US$74/tonne
The civil penalties are multiplied by the oil property factors as per figure 3.

Figure 3; Alaska Oil Property Penalty Modifying Factors
Property	Degree	Factor
Toxicity	Highly toxic	1.0
	Moderately toxic	0.75
	Less toxic	0.50
	Relatively nontoxic	0.25
Degradability	Low degradability	1.0
	Moderate degradability	0.5
	High degradability	0.25
Dispensability	High dispersibility	0.15
	Moderate dispersibility	0.50
	Low dispersibilty	1.0

Tables taken from A Worlwide Review of Marine Oil Spill Fines and Penalties 2003.

How would you decide the size of the penalty to be paid? Well, one of the methods used is to charge a price per liter/s or gallon/s of oil in an oil spill (Etkin, 2003). For a company like British petroleum that has paid billions in penalties one could only imagine the size of their spills.

Apart from legal deterrence of oil spills there is also a technical approach involving the designing of oil tankers to limit the chance of spills. One such design is the double hull oil tanker. As the name implies it has two hulls and a space separating both. The outer hull is on the sea, if this hull is breached no spill occurs as opposed to a single hull vessel. In 1992 the MARPOL Convention was amended so that all newly constructed ships would have a double hull (NOAA, 2016). In my opinion such a design should have been used from the inception of oil transport over the ocean.  

image taken from NOAA

An  illustration of damage done to the outer hull of an  vessel

Overall these approaches have proven to be effective in the reduction of oil spills, so much, that one can say that we have a good grasp of the concept of sustainable development.

References 

Mark A.Cohen. 2009, Oil Spills: The Deterrent Effects of Monitoring, Enforcement, Public Information, Resources for the future, 

Retrieved from  http://www.rff.org/blog/2009/oil-spills-deterrent-effects-monitoring-enforcement-and-public-information

Stan, Parker August 2016," Tanker Engineers Admit Hiding Oil dump From Coast Guard". Law 360, Retireved from  http://www.law360.com/articles/827716/tanker-engineers-admit-hiding-oil-dump-from-coast-guard

Dagmar, Schmidt Etkin. 2003, A Worlwide Review of Marine Oil Spill Fines and Penalties, Retrieved from  http://www.environmental-research.com/erc_papers/ERC_paper_10.pdf

NOAA 2016. A Final Farewell to Oil Tankers with Single Hulls, Office of Response and Restoration, Retrieved from http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/final-farewell-oil-tankers-single-hulls.html