Oil spills

Oil spills have tremendous effects on the ecosystem. Birds are covered in oil and the coast can be polluted for a long time. In the North Sea, every form of oil discharges have been forbidden since 1999, but there are still many places in the world where it is still allowed. Most of the oil comes from cleaning the tanks from tankers and dumping oil-polluted ballast water. Sometimes, oil is discharged during a collision at sea. It is mostly mineral oil although remnants of vegetable or animal oils are also discharged with similar consequences. The number of oil discharges has declined drastically since the 1990s due to stricter policy.

Causes of oil discharges

Oil ends up in the water when ships clean their tanks and discharge polluted ballast water. The ships used to be allowed to rinse their tanks with seawater outside of the twelve-mile zone, which meant 1000 to 1500 tons of oil was legally dumped every year. Drilling rigs were also allowed to dump the oil-bearing cuttings and drilling mud in sea.

There are strict rules nowadays. The MARPOL treaty has designated the North Sea as an 'exceptional area', thereby forbidding oil discharges. Ships must deliver their waste to the Port Reception Facilities. However, there are still captains that let their oil run into the sea during storms and holidays, when there is less supervision. One of the reasons why illegal discharges occur is because it costs money to get rid of the waste. The North Sea Foundation lobbies for making the fees free by raising the harbour fees by a few percent.

Certain large cargo ships are allowed to dump their oil remnants overboard as long as it is very thinned out. The exact conditions are in the Decision to Prevent Oil Pollution by ships. New oil tankers are built with double walls in order to prevent spills during accidents. Mineral oil, vegetable oils and paraffin are also dangerous for animals.

Consequences of oil dumps

Birds smeared in oil (oil birds) used to be found on beaches up till several years ago. A group of bird-lovers count these victims for years by walking along a large part of the Dutch coast every two weeks. The numbers of victims has drastically declined thanks to new policy. Large groups of birds are only covered in oil when there is a major accident or a ship sinks.

Reported discharges in the Dutch North Sea

The number of reported oil discharges per year has declined from more than 600 in the 1990s to around 300 in 2006. The amount of oil dumped was around 160 cubic meters, whlie now only 50 cubic meters is dumped. The composition of the oil is usually unknown. Most reports are made by patrol planes from the Coastguard.

For a long time, it was cheaper to dump oil at sea and sometimes have to pay a fine. But since 2005, the fines for dumping oil in the EC are much higher, maximally 1.5 million euros. Fines that have actually been given varying from 2000 to 1 million euros for merchant vessels and from 3000 to 25,000 euros for pleasure boats and fishing vessels. It is difficult to give punishments because it is not always clear which ships dumped the oil and other countries are often involved by the judicial procedures. A successful example is the 200,000 euro fine for a ship that dumped oil in 2004, trying to disguise it as oil remnants from the Tricolour. The Belgium coastguard had video tapes that showed the ship had left its own track behind and the owner was convicted by a French court in 2007. In a different case, a Belgium summons led to sentencing in Sweden.

The last oil discharge with major consequences occurred in 2005. Hundreds of guillemots and razorbills were covered in oil, left to die along the Wadden and North Sea coast.

Oil disasters at sea

Accidents with oil tankers, such as with the Prestige off the coast of Spain, cause only a fraction of the total amount of oil in the sea. But the consequences for the coast are often disastrous. It takes years for nature to recover and sometimes it never recovers. In order to prevent such disasters, new double-hulled oil tankers must be built. As of 2010, single-hulled ships will no longer be allowed in European seas. In addition, sea-going tankers older than 50 years will be regularly inspected.

Oil discharges from drilling rigs

In addition to shipping, offshore activities used to be an important oil discharger. In particular, the oil-holding drilling cuttings and mud contributed large amounts of pollution. Spilling oil via drilling cuttings is practically over and it is forbidden to discharge oil-holding mud since 1993.

Policy and norms

The Dutch legislation is based on the MARPOL treaty and contains zones where oil discharges are forbidden. There is a discharge ban for oil and oil mixtures originating from oil tankers within a distance of 50 sea miles from the coast. The same kind of ban is operative within the 12-mile zone for other ships weighing a minimum of 400 tons. It is allowed outside this area: the MARPOL treaty permits discharges in open sea. The discharge of several materials, including vegetable oil, is also permitted in coastal waters.

The MARPOL treaty also includes the opportunity to declare certain sections of the sea as a 'special area', whereby on-the-spot discharges are illegal. The whole Baltic Sea is an example of such a special area, and the amount of discharged oil has greatly decreased since its enforcement. The North Sea does not yet have the special area status. The North Sea Ministerial Conference in Esbjerg (Denmark, 1995) decided to declare the North Sea as a special area however it takes several years before it is actually put in force, since every North Sea country must integrate the decision into their own legislation.

The IMO decided in 1997 to declare the North Sea (and the waters to the west of England and Ireland) as special area in the framework of the MARPOL appendix 1. In reality, this means that ships larger than 400 brT are prohibited from discharging oil or oil-bearing materials in the North Sea as of 1 January 1999.

Enforcement and legal action

The small oil discharges are the most important sources for oil pollution in the North Sea. From all of the oil released in the sea by ships, 90% is purposely dumped overboard. The accidents with oil tankers, such as near La Coruna in Spain and the British Shetland Islands, only caused a fraction of the total amount of oil in sea. After an accident, nature usually has the chance to recover.

Vegetable oil

Vegetable oil discharges are generally as harmful to sea life as mineral oil discharges. Birds that are covered in palm oil are just as vulnerable as other oil victims. However, there is an extra risk connected to these discharges: the tanks are often cleaned with heavily toxic solvents. The most toxic is nonylphenol, a substance that caused massive deaths in 1988 among waders. Discharging this material is strictly forbidden.

Paraffin

Paraffin is transported in tankers as bulk material. Candles are one of the products made from paraffin. Paraffin is also an element of raw oil and can stick to the walls of the tanks and in the pumping hoses. When cleaning the ships or the installations, remnants and cleansing agents are sometimes washed overboard.

Seabirds become victims of the paraffin discharges.The symptoms are similar to damage from mineral oil. The plumage sticks together so that cold seawater reaches the skin. The birds can barely remain floating. They die from exhaustion or hypothermia. In addition, the clumps of paraffin often contain toxic solvents used to clean the ships.

Various accidents with paraffin have occurred in past years. The most recent incident was in 2007, when 4 cubic meters of paraffin washed ashore, spreading over the beaches between Egmond and Texel. The coast between Zandvoort and Petten was polluted in February 2000 by a discharge of a mixture of paraffin and heavy fuel oil. At the end of 1998, the beach of Goeree was seriously polluted with paraffin.

Paraffin has the same effect on birds as mineral oil: the plumage sticks together, allowing the cold seawater to penetrate to the skin. The birds are hardly able to stay afloat, and die from exhaustion and/or hypothermia.

In early 1995, a massive number of small yellow balls of badly smelling fat washed ashore on the coast of Texel, Vlieland and Ameland. The balls were as large as a pingpong ball and did not appear to be damaging to the environment. They were only directly cleaned up by Rijkswaterstaat on Vlieland. However, a few days later, tens of dead birds washed ashore on Ameland. They appeared to have died from internal infections after swallowing the paraffin-like material.

In February 1994, several hundred seabirds, particularly guillemots, died along the coast of North Holland from gastric haemorrhaging and intestinal problems. A number of birds were covered in an oily substance. The gastric haemorrhaging and intestinal problems were probably from using toxic dissolvents. In February 1993, thousands of seabirds died from similar symptons. At that time, there was no doubt that it concerned a large discharge of paraffin.

There are no regulations outside of the 12-mile zone for dumping paraffin. Up till 2004, the material was not considered dangerous. Since 2004, paraffin has been added to the International Maritime Organization's list of environmentally dangerous materials (the so-called Y-catergory from the MARPOL Treaty). Since then, the material can only be transported in double-hulled tankers. Paraffin is not yet on the list of materials that are generally banned from being discharged (the X-category).

Source: de Vleet, Ecomare