Tanker collision off China

How should I know? They just refer to their earlier report which I couldn’t find so I obviously assumed that report contains the analysis.

As for fire in the double hull, it’s true that a fire can start if there’s both air and fuel (e.g. gas or condensate), but if the double bottom tanks are flooded with condensate (or, more likely, water-condensate mix), they’ll only burn at the surface.

1 Like

Condensate is different from most crudes. I have inspected cargo tanks that had been loaded with condensate and … no problem. Tanks were clean and dry. Air was fresh but it seemed the condensate had accelerated the rusting/corrosion of the tank. So there was a layer - tons! - of rust at the bottom of the tanks. When shifting the layer of rust to see what the bottom looked like the gas meter went off. Benzen! Very heavy. And explosive. But I had inhaled plenty hydrocarbons in my days, so we just went on. Inspecting oil cargo tanks is quite interesting.
I hate to inspect ballast tanks which have been subject to cracks so they have been contaminated with cargo oil. After having emptied the tank to have a look where the leak was, everything was slippery so … you could not inspect at all. It took months for some poor soldiers to clean it.

nice work and visualisation from Reuters here:

An unforeseen result of unilateral US sanctions against Iran has shown up with the sinking of the Sanchi off China.
From Fairplay yesterday:

1 Like

another good and related visualisation from Reuters on oil spilled at sea

And all of it dwarfed by the spills caused by the Iran-Iraq War and the first Gulf War, into the relatively confined waters of the Gulf.

Surprisingly enough the shrimp fisheries off Kuwait was never better than the year after the major spills there.
A year of no fisheries made wonders.

Was the “alleged” Saudi Arabian oil spill in 1993 ever been validated as actually having occurred? Supposedly, they used supertanker scoopers to clean up. Found various online sources but they varied in credibility.

No comment perse, just wondering, seeking more info.

The Sanchi may have been on the bottom of the China Sea for 11 months, but she is still being carried on the newly issued US sanctions list against Iranian assets:

A post was split to a new topic: One year on, families of the Sanchi crew await answers -