Three separate oil spills are spreading through the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, and the risk of additional oil spills continues to rise as the conflict surrounding the Strait of Hormuz widens, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Oil tankers are typically equipped with advanced navigation equipment and transponders to reduce collisions and spills.
Turning the systems off, or going dark, has, until the US-Iran war, been relatively rare, limited to ships under sanctions or carrying illegal cargo. However, since March 1, there have been 1,514 dark crossings in and out of the Persian Gulf, NYT cited maritime data firm Kpler as stating.
“When more ships become invisible, situational awareness declines,” Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, told NYT.
“In a narrow and strategically congested waterway such as the Strait of Hormuz, reduced transparency adds another layer of environmental risk,” Madani said.
One oil spill has already reached Iran's Qeshm Island and its mangrove ecosystems.
The Qeshm Island slick likely stemmed from a leak from the Minoan Pioneer, a Liberia-flagged dry bulk ship, according to Samir Madani, co-founder of monitoring service TankerTrackers.com.
The Minoan Pioneer was hit by an unknown projectile close to Oman’s coast in a suspected Iranian attack while sailing through the Strait of Hormuz on August 3, and one seafarer went missing, maritime security sources said.
A source involved in the salvage operation for the Minoan Pioneer, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters earlier in the month that a tugboat dispatched to secure the grounded vessel could not approach it due to issues related to obtaining permission from Iranian authorities.
The spill had been about 80 percent contained by Wednesday, Ahmadreza Lahijanzadeh, a deputy at Iran’s Department of Environment, said in a statement.
Oil spill reaches nature reserve
Another oil spill resulted from an attack on the Caroline Bezengi tanker and spread around a nature reserve, reaching Oman's coastline.
The response included salvage vessels, aircraft, and specialists using 100 metric tons of equipment, according to risk management firm Ambrey
The Caroline Bezengi, carrying an estimated 800,000 barrels of Russian oil and under international sanctions, ran aground on June 30 near an Omani marine nature reserve that is home to wildlife including humpback whales, green sea turtles, endangered hawksbill, thriving coral reefs, and Socotra cormorants.
No party has claimed an attack, but the vessel, part of Russia's aging shadow fleet, was navigating two separate wars on its journey from Russia to India.
The oil slick now covers an estimated 400 to 500 square miles, has begun seeping into the nature reserve, and has begun washing up on an area known as the Turtle Coast on the mainland, NYT reported.
A third slick was seen near an oil and gas hub in the center of the Gulf, the island of Sirri. The origin has not been verified, according to NYT.
While none of these spills have been found to be a direct result of a vessel going dark to avoid Iranian strikes, experts warn that the risks are increased by more ships resorting to unsafe tactics used by illicit vessels as they try to navigate wartime survival, according to the report.
Unsafe navigation practices will likely continue until Gulf oil-producing nations have the infrastructure to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, Karen E. Young, a senior research scholar at Columbia University focusing on the Middle East, told the NYT.
Transponders essential technology for modern captains
The risks are further exacerbated by the way ship captains have come to rely on the technology they are now turning off.
Ship-identifying systems have been mandated by the UN on international cargo ships since 2004.
“They have done this manual way of crossing the seas only as a lesson in their classes,” Dimitris Ampatzidis, a senior risk and compliance analyst at Kpler, told the NYT.
“It means we are turning back to the technologies we were having on the vessels 20-something years ago, and we do have increased exposures to collisions,” he said.
Robin Mills, the chief executive of Qamar Energy, a consultancy, told the NYT that the region was already suffering from overfishing, desalination, and climate change.
“Another major spill would be a disaster,” he said.