Pacific Spirit Marine Institute

Hebei Spirit; Another Oil Tanker Accident!

Friday, December 7, 2007

The South China morning press is reporting a crane-carrying vessel slammed into a Hong Kong-registered oil tanker causing it to lose 66,000 barrels of crude oil.

The cause of the accident at this time is as varied as the location of the. Yonhap News Agency has the tanker hitting a piece of loading equipment on a dock in the port of Taenan south of Seoul and has leaked 15,000 tonnes of crude oil. Bloomberg is reporting the tanker, Hebei Spirit as actually 'at anchor' when the accident happened.

The Hebei Spirit is a single hull oil tanker. A law requiring all tankers have double hulls will go into effect in 2010.

In the mean time the debate rages on over the real value of double hulled vessels as opposed to single hulled, just as the debate over the 'real' cause of global warming rages on. One has to wonder how an additional layer of protection would be deleterious in any case. Just as abstaining is safer than having protection during sex, the absences of accidents would be safer for our environment. Realistically neither is ever going to happen so for now another layer of protection seems to definetely in order.

There are 3 holes in the side of the Hebei Spirit. At this time we don't know if the crane was on a barge or on a dock, but the tanker has leaked a tremendous amount of crude oil causing yet another environmental tragedy.

If the 66,000 barrel spill is a correct amount and no more oil will be lost, this is about 1/3 the size of the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989.

Labels: Hebei Spirit, oil spill, oil tanker