This morning, we woke up to news about another major Pacific Rim oil spill.   This time, it appears as though a barge with a crane struck an oil tanker off the coast of South Korea in the Yellow Sea, spilling over 10,000 tons of oil.  This is the third major oil spill we have seen in a month – in San Francisco Bay, in the Black Sea, and now in the Yellow Sea.

Time will tell how bad the damage will be from this latest spill, though given the amount of oil spilled, and the likelihood that less than 20% of the oil will be recovered, we can expect the impacts to be severe.  Earlier this year, I attended an oil spill workshop in Japan and met colleagues in Korea working to prevent oil spills.  They were particularly worried about the growth in shipping of oil – symbolized by new tankers coming from Sakhalin along the coast of Korea – and the likelihood of accidents.  Up until then, their worst catastrophe had been the Sea Prince spill in 1995.  Today’s spill involves twice as much oil as the Sea Prince.

Here’s an article that details the fact that this was a single-hulled tanker – a dinosaur that long ago should have been retired in favor of double-hulled tankers.  This area in the Yellow Sea is a very busy region for shipping.  Given growth of shipping around the Pacific Rim, I hope this will be a wake-up call for the International Maritime Organization and governments to address the dire need to improve shipping safety.

Meanwhile, here in San Francisco Bay, more details are coming out about the bar pilot’s mishandling of the Cosco Busan, leading to our spill.  It seems clear that the pilot made numerous mistakes that led to the spill, including leaving port in such heavy fog without electronic equipment that either was working properly or that he understood and ordering the ship to full speed in heavy fog when he didn’t understand his location.  A terrible, preventable tragedy.  We need legislative action in Congress to make sure that such accidents around the Pacific Rim are prevented in the future.