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Our Next Environmental Disaster Is Floating in Plain Sight
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The U.S., Canada and many European countries are being ravaged by wildfires after a summer characterized by multiple heatwaves and scant rainfall. Blazes like this, and the terrifying images they produce, are a vivid reminder of the environmental challenges the world faces today.
There is, however, another challenge we must confront. It is far quieter and less visually arresting than wildfires, but its potential to wreak environmental and economic havoc on countries the world over cannot be understated.
Take a look at the Khuriya Muriya Islands about 25 miles off the south coast of Oman, and you’ll find an example.
The Caroline Bezengi, a Suezmax oil tanker almost the size of three football fields, currently under sanctions for operating as part of Russia ’s "shadow fleet," appears to have run aground. And it's leaking.
Right now, the leak is minor, according to analyses of satellite imagery by maritime intelligence firm SynMax. But a tanker of this size could be carrying up to a million barrels of oil—enough to utterly devastate Oman’s coastline and the Arabian Sea.
Russia and Iran both operate hundreds of uninsured, poorly maintained vessels like this, shipping oil around the world to prop up their economies. Due to sanctions, the ships can’t be sold off for scrap or undergo repairs, so the prospect of a catastrophic oil spill grows more likely by the day.
What the U.S., Europe and international partners have unintentionally created via their sanctions , then, is a global network of seaborne dirty bombs—and every country with a coastline is liable to pay if one goes off.
The U.S. has seen what a major oil spill can do. In 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig suffered an explosion and sank, releasing about 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days as part of one of the most environmentally damaging events in American history.
The spill affected more than 43,000 square miles of the Gulf. It killed all kinds of marine life, destroyed fisheries and other businesses reliant on the waters, and left the ecosystem irrevocably contaminated.
Though they couldn’t reverse the damage, BP was held responsible for the cleanup. The energy giant faced a record $5.5 billion Clean Water Act penalty and up to $8.8 billion in natural-resource damages, on top of other criminal and civil costs tied to the disaster. That’s because BP is a public company with assets, executives, and a clear and obvious liability.
Herein lies one of the most perverse consequences of Western sanctions on Russian and Iranian shadow fleet vessels, according to Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin, a maritime sanctions expert and research fellow at the RUSI think tank's Sanctions and Illicit Finance Monitoring and Analysis Network.
If a shadow fleet tanker were to suffer a major oil spill off a country’s coastline, the affected country would not only have to deal with the environmental fallout, but it would also likely have to pay for it.
"If the vessel in question is uninsured or falsely flagged, the full weight of responsibility for cleaning up and paying for the spill will lie on the affected coastal state, because the ship and its owner are not covered,” Erausquin told Newsweek .
"While shadow fleet vessels continue to operate, every coastal state is running a serious risk of being liable for an ecological disaster.
"Of course, they would go in pursuit of compensation, primarily from the ship owner of the vessel at hand and their insurer. But the challenge with shadow fleet vessels is that the owner will often not be disclosed and will sit behind a web of intermediaries and shell companies to complicate their identification, and their insurance will be insufficient or simply non-existent.”
Sanctions constitute an indispensable tool with which the U.S., Europe and its allies can apply pressure to their adversaries. It is also true that sanctions shaped the conditions from which the menace of a shadow tanker oil spill has materialized.
Typically, tankers aged between 20 and 25 years are sold off for scrap, because they are simply too old and worn to operate safely.
A Newsweek analysis of data compiled by TankerTracker found that more than 60 percent of all sanctioned vessels entered service before 2006. The Caroline Bezengi, lying partially submerged off Oman, first took to the seas a quarter century ago ( you can explore a database of sanctioned vessels here ).
What results is a dangerous paradox in which Russia and Iran keep using old, decrepit vessels to keep their sputtering economies afloat, but the countries exposed to a spill may never be able to force them to foot the bill.
"Tankers themselves that have been sanctioned can't be sold off for scrap or decommissioned, which is one of the reasons why they continue to sail well beyond their service life,” Erausquin said.
"If we say the average age of Russia's shadow fleet is above 20 years old, the chances of these aged and poorly maintained vessels encountering an issue that could lead to a devastating oil spill are mounting by the day.”
"The problem is, even if the vessel is eligible for sale, its owner can’t receive payment if they are also subject to sanctions,” Erausquin said. "It's unlikely that any owner of a shadow fleet vessel would sell their assets off for scrap or decommissioning for free,” Erausquin said.
One possible solution would be to create a narrow off-ramp for owners whose only sanctions exposure comes from owning a sanctioned vessel. In those cases, regulators could allow the owner to sell the tanker for scrap, receive payment under strict supervision and then be removed from the sanctions list once the vessel is permanently taken out of service.
That would not amount to a broad sanctions rollback, and may help to remove some dangerous ships from the water...
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