Gulf oil spill ‘would rival Exxon Valdez disaster’

• Ageing tankers heighten spill risk
• Slicks detected off Iran coast
• Blockade threatens environment

An environmental catastrophe in the Gulf could rival the Exxon Valdez disaster, shipping analysts warned, as ageing tankers and a double blockade threaten the region’s fragile marine network.

Attention has focused primarily on the impact of the US-Israel-Iran war on oil exports, freight disruption and energy prices.

But vessel-tracking experts warned ecological risks are mounting as older tankers remain anchored for prolonged periods around Iranian waters, often operating with degraded tracking visibility and reduced regulatory scrutiny.

Videos published by The New York Times this week showed oil washing onto the protected island of Shidvar – known as the “Maldives of Iran” for its coral reefs and turtle nesting grounds. Another unexplained slick has recently been detected near Kharg Island, the Islamic Republic’s main oil export centre.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska released 11 million gallons of crude, devastated fisheries and wildlife habitats, polluted more than 1,000 miles of coastline and cost billions of dollars in clean-up operations and legal settlements.

Arsenio Longo, the Berlin-based founder of HUAX Energy Intelligence, said the environmental danger in and around the Strait of Hormuz remained “underweighted” relative to wider geopolitical concerns.

“Hormuz is being discussed primarily as an energy-price and shipping-disruption event,” Longo told AGBI. “It is also increasingly an environmental-risk event.”

He said the areas of greatest concern included the approaches to Lavan Island, a mile east of Shidvar, and waiting areas around Larak and Qeshm in Hormuz where older vessels were remaining for extended periods.

Longo said the threat stemmed from ageing tankers being repurposed as floating storage, irregular vessel-tracking signals and ships waiting in areas where normal traffic management “no longer fully applies”.

“That operating environment increases the probability of low-speed collision, machinery failure, bunker leakage, unsafe lightering [transferring cargo] and delayed emergency response,” he said.

Shipping patterns have already been reshaped by overlapping US and Iranian restrictions on Gulf traffic, forcing more vessels into extended anchorage, rerouting and opaque operating arrangements.

Research published shortly before the war in February warned that Iran-linked “dark fleet” tankers posed a “clear and present danger to marine ecosystems”.

The report, authored by Saleem Khan of Pole Star Global, analysed 29 Iranian-flagged crude tankers suspected of operating within the shadow fleet trade and found an average vessel age of 22 years, with more than 60 percent of the fleet older than 20 years.

The marine intelligence firm said 11 vessels were more than 25 years old, placing them in what it described as an “extreme risk category” because of degraded hull integrity, corroded tanks, outdated safety systems and higher structural failure probabilities.

Khan warned that sanctions restrictions limited access to maintenance facilities, certified replacement parts and international insurance coverage.

“With 6.75 million tonnes deadweight capacity, a single large vessel incident could release cargo equivalent to multiple Exxon Valdez disasters,” Khan wrote.

Longo said the Gulf’s geography made any spill potentially more severe than in open-ocean environments. “The Gulf is shallow, warm, highly saline and semi-enclosed, so a spill does not occur in a neutral open-ocean environment,” he said.

“It hits an ecosystem that is already operating under heat, salinity and pollution stress.”

He warned that vessel-tracking systems become less reliable precisely when monitoring is most needed.

Further reading:

• The new energy lexicon of the Hormuz era
• The Strait of Hormuz may never truly reopen
• Safety a bigger concern than insurance for Hormuz shipowners

Around Iranian waters, maritime analysts are dealing with “routine gaps, deliberate switch-offs, spoofing, security-driven behaviour and degraded positional visibility”.

That makes it difficult to distinguish between ordinary waiting patterns, floating storage operations, sanctions-sensitive movements or genuine environmental incidents.

The maritime visibility problem is also widening. According to Lloyd’s List, one in every six Strait of Hormuz transits is being conducted using fraudulent flag documentation.

The shipping news outlet reported that 92 falsely flagged ships were operating in the Middle East out of 513 identified globally, aided by fake registries and forged insurance and classification paperwork.