# Oil tanker snaps in half. Countries wouldn't let them to port?!? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 19, 2002, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516 "2002-11-19T13:45:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cubsfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Cubsfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cubsfan)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/1 "2002-11-19T13:45:11Z")
What the fuck is the deal here? This oil tanker cracks in half off the coast of Spain and Portugal. It’s carrying 20million gallons of oil. This is what kind of assistance they got! > [@](#): > > Both Portugal and Spain had barred salvagers from towing the ship to any of their ports to protect their fishing and tourism industries. What the fuck were these countries thinking? Isn’t this a little selfish? They should be fined or some shit. Maybe GWB will threaten them with war or something if they don’t get thier asses out there and pull those boat chunks back to shore. Man helping Man. This is what I like to see :rolleyes: > **[MSNBC News - Breaking News and News Today | Latest News](https://www.msnbc.com/)** > > MSNBC breaking news and the latest news for today. Get daily news from local news reporters and world news updates with live audio & video from our team. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/2 "2002-11-19T13:55:17Z")
Why is it selfish? Why should they endanger their beaches and fishing industry just to protect some foreign oil investment? Sorry, they have no duty to do that. Of course, it looks like they are screwed anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/3 "2002-11-19T13:56:52Z")
Ah, fuck. It broke. They were hoping they’d emtpy it before it did. You’re right, no port would take it, so the Smit Tak salvaging company decided to tow it away from land to easier water, so they could empty the tanker. Looks like they weren’t succesful. Well, all that oil sitting in intact tanks at the bottom of the sea is still better than it being spilled over the beaches of Portugal and Spain, I suppose. And the REAL problem here is of course these fucking “flag nations” that allow complete heaps of rust to sail under their flag. The Bahamas is notorious for this shit, and so are Panama and Belize, IIRC. They cash the annual registration fee, and inflict almost no rules on the ships. They can do this because they have sufficient voting power in the UN body (forget the name) which legislates international waters. It’s fucked up, and must change. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/4 "2002-11-19T14:03:30Z")
Oh No! I’ve been following this for the last couple of days. Shit. The Spanish are blaming the Brits for not checking the ship when it docked in Gibraltar. Whatever. But they’re saying “Worse than the Exxon Valdez”, but this time in a populated place, if you can imagine that. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/5 "2002-11-19T14:11:02Z")
Not just a populated place - the fishing coast of Galicia, that thousands depend on for their livelihood, complete with serene pelagic wilderness, coral, sharks, birds, the whole nine yards. ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/6 "2002-11-19T14:36:02Z")
Not to hijack this, but I’ve always wondered what the fuck is up with “Liberian-registered”. ---
**Author:** ![Cubsfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Cubsfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cubsfan)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/7 "2002-11-19T14:41:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Neurotik \* > \*\*Why is it selfish? Why should they endanger their beaches and fishing industry just to protect some foreign oil investment? Sorry, they have no duty to do that. > > Of course, it looks like they are screwed anyway. \*\* That’s not the way I was looking at it. I was looking at it more along the line of maybe they could have done something with it at port to contain the mess or empty the tanker or some shit. I mean, I don’t know shit about these oil tankers, but couldn’t they have pulled the thing into a little bay or something that would contain the sloppy mess? Now its gonna look like a sea of oil when that chunk that sank lets its load go. When you spill a quart of oil on the floor it LOOKS like a gallon. Imagine what this 20 million is gonna look like. Instaed they just set the fucker out to sea to let King Neptune and Charlie-fucking-Tuna deal with it! Maybe the Sub-Marniner can use a giant blow fish to suck it all up or something. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/8 "2002-11-19T15:01:39Z")
I don’t think they can…the Tanker is really big and so it needs deep water. And there would be just SO MUCH oil that it would probably overflow anyway. And, to be honest, I’d rather have the oil wait out far in deep water where the amount of life affected would be relatively less than if that tanker had gone kablooie on coastal waters. Again, they might have been able to do something, but I don’t know anything about ship repair so I don’t know just how risky it was to tow it in. And since they towed it to deep water to repair it and it failed…well, maybe a dock wouldn’t have done much good and just made the devastation that much worse. ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/9 "2002-11-19T15:08:25Z")
> [@](#): > > Not to hijack this, but I’ve always wondered what the fuck is up with “Liberian-registered”. Read Coldfire’s post above you. Liberia is a “flag nation.” ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/10 "2002-11-19T16:03:35Z")
Yeah I was just hoping for a quick expansion on that. Off to Google! ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/11 "2002-11-19T16:48:15Z")
There are a number of nations that make money by registering basically any ship whose owner can pay the fee, in exchange for lax-to-nonexistent regulation. The Bahamas are such a country, as are Belize, Panama, and the infamous Liberia. If you happen to see a ship flagged from one of those countries, chances are very poor that it is actually from there. ---
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/12 "2002-11-19T16:56:41Z")
Neurotik > [@](#): > > Again, they might have been able to do something, but I don’t know anything about ship repair so I don’t know just how risky it was to tow it in. I worked at NASSCO (National Steel and Shipbuilding) in San Diego in 1990-91, and actually got to walk underneath the Valdez as it sat in drydock (it was built there). You cannot begin to imagine how massive these tankers are. The hull is 1" thick steel, and the hole in the Valdez was tiny compared to the hole in this tanker. Towing it is a bad idea-the stress on the already-weakened steel tears it violently apart. This was a total no-win situation-any method they could use to move it had almost no hope of doing anything other than what it did. ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/13 "2002-11-19T16:59:46Z")
Maybe they should make the hull 2" thick. What duties are these countries neglecting to perform? ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/14 "2002-11-19T20:04:45Z")
There’s something I’ve always wondered: when there’s an oil spill, since the oil floats on the water, couldn’t they just set it on fire and burn it off? ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/15 "2002-11-19T20:13:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by matt\_mcl \* > \*\*There are a number of nations that make money by registering basically any ship whose owner can pay the fee, in exchange for lax-to-nonexistent regulation. The Bahamas are such a country, as are Belize, Panama, and the infamous Liberia. If you happen to see a ship flagged from one of those countries, chances are very poor that it is actually from there. \*\* Yeah. These are also known as “flags of convience.” I saw a thing on Dateline once about companies doing all their registering through Liberia and avoiding US taxes. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/16 "2002-11-19T20:47:38Z")
> [@](#): > > what . . . is up with “Liberian-registered”. _Now both of these ships, like a great many more Got registered in through Liberian doors Inspections are quick and regulations are few Just sign on the line and go find you a crew, yes_ –Steve Forbert, “The Oil Song” ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/17 "2002-11-19T20:48:47Z")
Um. . “both” were the “Olympic Games” and “Argo Merchant” ---
**Author:** ![CRorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CRorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CRorex)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/18 "2002-11-19T20:48:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by blowero \* > \*\*There’s something I’ve always wondered: when there’s an oil spill, since the oil floats on the water, couldn’t they just set it on fire and burn it off? \*\* Not only are you wasting a MASSIVE financial investment in burning recoverable oil, but you’re also converting a liquid pollutant to an aerosol pollutant. ---
**Author:** ![Scruloose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@Scruloose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scruloose)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/19 "2002-11-19T21:52:44Z")
Currently, I’m in the USCG assigned to a Marine Safety Office, and more specifically, I work for the “Port State Control” division. That is, we track all, and board many foreign flagged vessels that enter our ports. Mostly, we see oil tankers in my port. We are trying to prevent this very thing from happening through frequent inspection. First, the decision not to let them in was the correct one. If some tanker with 20mil gals of oil is in trouble, no Capt of the Port in the world is gonna let them anywhere near their shores. The only ports deep enough to handle these beasts are also very crowded ports- it would be disastrous. Best to let them deal with it at sea, rescue the crew if necessary and go from there. Oil doesn’t do nearly the damage in deepwater as it does on the shores. In this case, they’re getting a little of both. From what little I’ve read so far, this ship, and many like her, are disasters waiting to happen. It’s best those happen off shore if at all possible. They are disasters because of too few inspections, lax or overlooked regulations on the part of various Port States and the oft mentioned Flag of convienence issues. Bribery, in many cases, doesn’t help out either. As for the oil, not all oil floats; it depends on it’s specific gravity. Heavier crudes will sink quickly, or float around near the top, then eventually sink due to the weathering processes. It can be dealt with in many ways, including burning. It’s called “In-Situ” burning, and is an option, if allowed in the area of the spill. The subsequent air pollution is something to consider. There are also dispersants, and submersants. All subject to regional laws and a host of other concerns. It may be of some consolation to some of you to know that many US ports don’t have to deal with ships like this one. Not only because of our PSC program, but also because many of the receiving facilities wont even do business with them. So in a sense, in my port at least, my job is made much easier because of the US industries that want no part of a disaster at their docks. Plus, the cleanup costs would bankrupt them. ---
**Author:** ![Kombucha\_ShroomPerson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7c8e57/32.png) [@Kombucha\_ShroomPerson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kombucha_ShroomPerson)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2002, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516/20 "2002-11-20T00:08:02Z")
I should think that, as has been mentioned already, that no countries really want a tanker spewing oil near their coastlines where it will interfere with their fishing trades. In fact, the further away from the coast the tanker is the better, because then as much of the oil as possible can disperse into the water column before it reaches land, where it can be broken down by bacteria. As for dealing with the oil spill, I’m not sure what they’ll do; seabirds are probably most at risk at the moment, and toxins will accumulate in filter feeding shellfish, if/when it reaches where they grow. However, oil cleanup operations have to be carefully managed, to avoid them doing more damage than the oil spill. Sometimes, more can be done by letting the oil degrade naturally than trying to aggressively clean it up. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tanker-snaps-in-half-countries-wouldnt-let-them-to-port/137516.md?page=2)