The industry warns of the risk of a large-scale oil spill, comparable to the largest maritime disasters in history.
A significant part of the sanctioned oil tankers are operated much longer than their standard service life and should have been scrapped long ago due to wear and tear and corrosion.
As USM reports, this was stated in an interview with the Financial Times by Anil Sharma, the head of the world’s largest ship recycling company GMS Partnership.
“At least a third of these ships need to be scrapped, and possibly more. Frankly, I think it’s more than half of the fleet,” he noted.
According to shipbroker Clarksons, the “shadow fleet” has about 1,800 ships, of which about 1,500 are oil or food tankers. Most of them are more than 20 years old, the age at which cargo ships are usually scrapped.
Sharma compared the potential disaster to the 1979 disaster, when the collision of the tankers SS Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain caused the spillage of more than 2 million barrels of oil into the ocean.
Alexander Saveris, the head of the shipping company CMB Tech, called the situation a “time bomb” and said that the disaster “will happen sooner or later.” According to him, some of these ships do not have proper insurance, are poorly maintained and operate with insufficiently trained crews.
The situation is further complicated by the crisis in the Persian Gulf. Due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, some of the old tankers have been converted into floating oil storage facilities, which has slowed the pace of recycling. Sharma predicts that after the resumption of shipping through the strait, demand for recycling will increase sharply.
