Spotlight on Maritime
| | When Two Hulls Are Better Than One | By : Dan Bernard
Special Consultant
| The 1999 Erika oil spill is continuing to spawn tighter regulations for marine oil transport. If the fallout from the Exxon Valdez is a guide, it will mean fewer spills, higher costs, and maybe a shortage of ships.
In the inherently international business of marine transport, traumatic events involving individual ships anywhere can trigger restrictions that affect fleets everywhere. So it is for single-hull oil tankers, whose phase-out was accelerated in the US after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, then sped up internationally after the 1999 Erika spill off France. The UN''s maritime safety board, the IMO, affirmed in late April of this year that most single-hull oil tankers must be eliminated by 2015 or earlier.
But it may not be a quiet ride into the sunset. The post-Valdez law in the US could create the potential unforeseen consequence of a ship shortage because not enough double-hulled vessels are being constructed to replace single-hull ships. That means transport firms will continue debating with regulators over the right to convert single-hull ships into double-hull ships. Meanwhile, industry is trumpeting its record in avoiding spills at sea and minimizing pollution when they do occur. While the sinking of the chemical tanker Ievoli Sun off France in late 2000 prompted fears of “another Erika,” Shell recently touted its reaction to the mishap as a model of environmental damage control.
After Erika
It was in 1978 that single-hull ships were put on the execution block: The United Nations convention called Marpol 73/78 (an abbreviation for Marine Pollution) scheduled single-hulls for phase-out by the year 2025. With 1990 legislation, the US accelerated the phase-out to between 2010 and 2015 as it pertained to ships entering US ports. The 1990 law was in reaction to March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez struck a reef and spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil in a bay in Alaska. It was not one of the worst spills by worldwide standards, but it was the worst to occur off of US territory and endangered many birds and sea mammals. The image of crude-encrusted waterfowl galvanized public outrage against ‘big oil,’ and the US Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. All new oil tankers built since 1996 are required to have double hulls. In ensuing years, European countries too, tried to ban single-hull tankers trading in Europe and place tighter age limits on all tankers. Those efforts fell short until the sinking in December 1999 of the Erika.
The Maltese tanker Erika, chartered by TotalFinaElf, was carrying 31,000 tons of heavy fuel from France to Livorno during its last voyage. In rough sea conditions on December 11, 1999, the crew detected structural problems, sent an alert, and began to transfer fuel between tanks, but later said the problem was under control and headed at low speed to a nearby port. Then on the morning of December 12, the ship master sent a mayday that the ship was breaking apart. Two hours later, after a rescue team had airlifted the crew to safety, Erika split in two in international waters off of the northwest French coast. Some 19,800 tons of oil spilled.
Clean-up operations occurred along 400 kilometers of coastline, while pumping was undertaken from June to September 2000 to get the remaining fuel to the surface. Between the shipowner''s insurance and the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund, created in 1992, a liability fund of $156 million was available for claims. There were recriminations all around. The Erika was built in 1975, but the Italian ship classification service RINA had inspected the ship and declared it seaworthy in August 1999. French investigators said structural weakness, including possible corrosion, was to blame for the breakup, with age and insufficient maintenance aggravating factors. In the year following the accident, RINA sent its employees to be re-trained, re-inspected and withdrew classification for 155 ships, and denied classification to 29 ships. The agency restructured itself, separating its marine division from its industry certification programs.
In the maritime world, there was a consensus that added international efforts were needed to root out substandard oil tankers. Marpol 73/78 was revised. In October 2000, the UN-controlled IMO, raised the liability for oil spill damages, increasing by 50% the maximum compensation payable to victims of pollution from oil tankers under international conventions. In April 2001, the IMO sped up the phase-out of single hulls around the globe. Delegates from 158 member countries agreed to scrap most single-hull oil tankers by 2015 or sooner. So-called ‘Pre-Marpol’ tankers, which lack protectively located segregated ballast tanks, could not operate past 2005 unless they pass a condition assessment with more stringent verification of structural soundness. The same assessment hurdle applies in 2010 for ‘Marpol tankers’ that do have the segregated ballast. Both cutoffs apply to tankers of 20,000 tons of deadweight or more that carry crude, fuel oil, heavy diesel, or lubricating oil, plus tankers of 30,000 tons deadweight or more that carry other oils. The new regulations will enter into force in September 2002. There are limited exceptions. The country in which the vessel is flagged may allow for some newer single-hull ships that conform to certain technical specifications to continue operating past 2015 until they''re 25 years old. However, any country can refuse to let such vessels to enter port after notifying IMO; European Community countries intend to exercise this clause to bar ‘grandfathered’ single-hulls, as do the European Community Member States, together with Cyprus and Malta. In June 2001, the European Parliament approved creating a European Maritime Safety Agency that would ensure ships meet EU safety rules. The ‘Erika II’ proposals also would set up a new industry-supported fund to provide compensation for oil spill damage; each of the proposals need the support of member EU governments.
Ship To Shortage?
If the post-Valdez law is a guide, the post-Erika reforms will yield greater safety and greater costs for the industry. On the 10-year anniversary of the Alaska spill in March 1999, US Coast Guard Commandant James Loy said the number of major spills had dropped by two-thirds since the passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, or OPA 90. Thomas Moore, President of Chevron Shipping Co. complained that the law''s strict criminal liability provisions were so strict that oil companies would try to distance themselves from tanker operations. The down side: In November 2001, the US Coast Guard released a study estimating that the single-hull phase-out deadlines of OPA 90 will take off-line as much as 18 million barrels of tank capacity in all US domestic trades by 2005. And, that vessel capacity gap will grow “far greater” with additional steps of the phase-out between 2005 and 2015. The Shipbuilders Council of America warned that the US could face a “severe” vessel shortage unless builders accelerate construction of double-hulled vessels, Marine Digest reported. The shipbuilders group estimated that demand for vessels would exceed supply by 24% at the end of 2006 and by 34% at the end of 2009. That will be especially pronounced on US coasts, where vessels were already in short supply to carry heating oil last winter. An existing ship can be double-hulled at half the cost of building a new one. But it''s a tough sell for regulators: The Coast Guard recently ruled that double-hull conversions will not extend the usable life of a former single-hull unless the conversion was completed before OPA 90 took effect in August 1990.
Where and How Spills Happen
North America leads the world in large oil spills, but the Mediterranean Sea is not far behind. Analysts at Cutter Information Corporation tabulated oil spills of at least 10,000 gallons (34 tons) between 1960 and 1997 and found that 267 spills occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, 140 off the northeastern US coast, 127 in the Mediterranean Sea, and 108 in the Persian Gulf. Oil tankers are usually not the biggest source of oil spills.
Looking at spills of 10,000 gallons or more in a single year, 1999, Cutter found 257 incidents in water and on land, totaling about 32 million gallons of oil. Of those, only 11 incidents and 6.6 million gallons were spills from tankers, while 25 incidents and 1.5 million gallons were from barges and other vessels. The largest categories were spills from pipeline and fixed-location facilities. But tankers are the cause of the largest oil spills – 48 of the 66 spills in which at least 10 million gallons (34,000 tons) of oil were lost each time, Cutter''s researchers found. The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Ltd. (ITOPF) argues that the meager spills are decreasing significantly when viewed in the context of several decades. Counting spills of at least 205,000 gallons (700 tons), the average number of large spills per year during the 1990s was about a third of that during the 1970s. ITOPF says most spills from tankers are small, “operational” spills occurring during routine operations at port such as loading and unloading, spilling less than 7 tons in 92% of cases. The larger spills occur mostly during collisions and groundings and are much more rare.
And the transport industry is giving itself credit for learning how to cope when the worst happens. It was off the coast of France again and under inclement weather conditions when another tanker met Erika''s fate. Out of the UK and headed for Italy, the Ievoli Sun bore 6,000 tons of chemicals, 4,000 of it styrene monomer for Shell. In rough seas on October 30, 2000, the ship began to take on water. Another mayday call and another rescue squad lifting the crew to safety. The tanker was towed but sank not far from an island in the English Channel. In its third quarter 2001 magazine, Shell Chemicals described how its experts assembled in London, then sent environmental monitoring specialists to the island. “Our monitoring team was on hand straight away to establish whether there was any risk to the local population and to explain the situation to the residents,” Shell Chemicals'' Richard Stephenson said. “We also did some (computer) modeling work to try to understand the potential risks, and we considered there was no significant risk to human health or the likelihood of long-term damage to the environment.” The Shell officials told French authorities that they recommended trying to recover the styrene monomer from the submerged ship''s tanks; the French agreed. Almost 100 Shell employees were involved in the recovery in ensuing weeks.
There were signs of pollution around the site, but no catastrophe or public-relations calamity ensued, and the name Ievoli Sun was not attached to any sweeping reform legislation. Then again, there was some perverse luck at play: French officials were able to spring into action from a command center in Rennes that was still operational because of the ongoing cleanup from Erika.
Still, it seemed possible that the Ievoli Sun''s dramatic demise would lead to further restrictions on tankers operating around Europe. France''s transport minister reacted by saying that vessels carrying hazardous cargo should face new restrictions upon leaving port during extreme weather conditions. Industry group INTERTANKO said it would be reasonable to discuss the idea, and a European Union commissioner said she would look into it. “It is quite evident that European legislators, like their colleagues in Washington ten years before them, have lost confidence in this industry''s ability to regulate itself,” Robert Somerville, President of the American Bureau of Shipping, said during a February speech in Dubai. “The tolerance of governments and of the general public for shipping incidents that merely threaten pollution has evaporated.” It''s clear that while Erika remains fresh in memory, tanker operators can expect the policymakers of the international waters to give them heavy attention and probably more regulation.
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