News

Massive tanker phase-out threatens new environmental disaster

Brussels, 8 December 2004 - A new analysis, released today by Greenpeace, warns of serious environmental contamination of Asian beaches as a result of a global phase-out of single-hull oil tankers. Greenpeace is calling on the European Union, which is responsible for one-third of such tankers, to take urgent action to protect human health and the environment in the world's shipbreaking yards.

"The EU successfully achieved the global phase-out of single-hull oil tankers. It now needs to ensure proper follow-up, so that the problem is not simply exported to vulnerable workers in developing world shipyards," said Marietta Harjono of Greenpeace International.

The EU and then the International Maritime Organisation moved to phase out single-hull oil tankers in the wake of the Erika and Prestige disasters. According to the Greenpeace analysis, 'Destination Unknown: European single hull oil tankers... No place to go', over 2,000 such tankers will be removed from the water and scrapped within five years. Some 1,120 will need to be scrapped in the next 13 months, a figure that dwarfs previous estimates. According to the analysis, some 334 tankers are either owned by European companies or registered - "flagged" - in Europe.

Over the next two days, EU transport ministers meeting in Brussels will discuss maritime safety, while a Commission task force will begin work to address the lack of shipbreaking yards capable of scrapping ships in an environmentally clean way.

The investigation also reveals the staggering collective oil cargo onboard the ships that will be banned by the end of 2005 - 130 million litres - equal to more than two Prestige disasters. The ships are also laden with asbestos and the toxic organic tin compound tributyl tin - TBT - for which regulations in industrialised countries require mandatory eye, skin and lung protection for any contact work.

Under the Basel Convention, ships can be considered as hazardous waste and, unless decontaminated, are forbidden from being exported by OECD to non-OECD countries. Yet the shipping industry promotes and exploits confusion and a lack of regulatory enforcement; and ships flagged or owned by OECD countries are routinely transferred to non-OECD breaking yards.

Greenpeace activists today confronted EU delegations in Ankara (Turkey), and Mumbai (India), to express the repeated demand from these countries not to become the global waste dump for rotting and polluted tankers.

"Chaos and confusion reign supreme when it comes to shipbreaking and its toxic burden. That is just the way the shipping industry likes to keep it. The world banned dangerous single hull oil tankers to prevent accidents and environmental contamination; Asian beaches must not become sacrifice zones," said Harjono.

The EU has an opportunity to bring the scandal of shipbreaking under control. Based on its findings, Greenpeace urges:

• EU institutions to take urgent action on EU controlled single-hull oil tankers, by enforcing the EU Waste Shipment Regulation.
• EU institutions to fight the lack of transparency in shipping and to develop a definitive and consolidated list of single-hull oil tankers subject to phase-out regulations.
• An immediate commitment from EU transport ministers and the European Commission that the toxic burden of Europe's single-hull oil tankers will not end up on Asian beaches.

Report

Download a copy of 'Destination Unknown: European single hull oil tankers... No place to go' (pdf)

* An oil spill caused by an EU single-hull tanker on 26 November is currently devastating a vast section of the Delaware River in New Jersey and Philadelphia, USA. The Greek-owned, Cyprus-registered Athos I (which features on the Greenpeace list) has reportedly lost up to 1.8 million litres of crude oil after colliding with an obstacle.