OIL companies are unprepared to deal with spills in ice-bearing sea. That鈥檚 the warning from experts who say that efforts to develop machines that can mop up these spills are falling behind the growth in oil exploration, which will lead to more spills.
One flash point is the Gulf of Finland, the main route into the North Sea for Russian tankers. Environmentalists say that as the largest area of brackish water in the world, the gulf is a unique habitat and acts as an important stop-off for migrating birds in summer. Only good fortune has saved the area from a disastrous spill already, says Pentii V盲lipakka, head of research at the Southeast Finland Regional Environment Centre, in Kouvola.
With tanker traffic increasing rapidly, it is only a matter of time before there is a serious accident. Even a medium-sized spill would be beyond the capability of Russia, Finland and Estonia, admits Kalervo Joma, head of the Environmental Emergency Response Unit in Helsinki.
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That鈥檚 why oil companies should have to demonstrate that they have the ability to clean up a spill before they do the oil exploration, says Joseph Mullin at the US Minerals Management Service in Herndon, Virginia.
Oil spills in icy seas are particularly difficult to clear up as the ice tends to block equipment that lifts oil from the water surface. The machinery currently available for cleaning up oil mixed with broken ice needs to be improved he says. His team has developed a prototype which combines the features of several machines into one device (Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol 47, p 453).
Christened MORICE (Mechanical Oil Recovery in Ice Infested Waters), the machine is dragged between two ships at the apex of booms that collect the slick (see Diagram). A spiked conveyer belt lifts the largest ice chunks, those weighing more than 350 kilograms, out of the water and passes them under a high-pressure spray which flushes oil into a collecting trough. Two sets of revolving brushes mop up any oil in the water.
MORICE is designed to demonstrate the components needed to tackle a major spill. It is only a proof-of-concept device, which is not yet capable of tackling real spills.
In the meantime, environmentalists monitoring the Gulf of Finland must keep their fingers crossed. Russia ferries 70 million tonnes of oil through the gulf and this is predicted to triple by 2015.