Statistical analysis of the oil and HNS spill incidents occurred in the NOWPAP region from 1990 to 2017

Abstract

The Northwest Pacific Region, shared by NOWPAP member states (China, Japan, South Korea and Russia), is a densely populated area of ship traffic due to the rapid economic development of neighboring countries. And NOWPAP region has been continuously considered as a hotspot worldwide for its high level of risk on oil and HNS spill incidents. In this regard, member countries have been building close cooperation at the regional level in order to strengthen their capabilities of preparedness and respond to oil and HNS spill incidents. As a part of it, NOWPAP MERRAC has been updating its information systems annually with the help of Focal Points of MERRAC, such as the list of contact information of competent national authorities, lists of oil and HNS spill incidents occurred in the NOWPAP region, list of spill response equipment/resources, relevant institutions and experts. The data on oil and HNS spill incidents over 10 tones in NOWPAP region (121°E to 145°E longitude, 33°N to 55°N latitude) collected by MERRAC for 27 years since 1990 were analyzed in this study. Total of 302 cases of oil spill and total of 50 cases of HNS spill were collected. When oil spill incidents analyzed by countries, 80 cases of oil spill was occurred in China, 67 cases in Japan, 151 in Korea, four in Russia. When it comes to HNS spill incidents, 11 in China, 26 in Japan and 13 in Korea and none in Russia were analyzed. MERRAC also analyzed the information data by year, incident location, vessel type, incident type, pollution quantity, and pollutant type. The highest results of each category analysis were; in case of oil spill incident, cargo ship (33%, vessel type), collision (48%, incident type), fuel oil (70%, by pollutant type), 50 tones or less (by quantity). In case of HNS spill incident, tanker (72%, by vessel type), year 2009 (10%, year) were recorded. In particular, 34 HNS materials were analyzed out of the 50 incidents, so the all the materials were divided into 5 categories which are solid, liquid, gas, mixture and others. The majority of the pollutant type was liquid (66%). Through this statistical analysis, the overall trend, especially when looking into the quantity of pollution, shows that there is not much of relation between the small-scale spill incident and the total amount of oil spill pollution. And found that it is the large-scale spill incident which greatly affects the quantity of incident. Which means, bigger the spill incident might cause bigger environmental damages. Due to the economic growth and ship building and engineering technology improvement, the shipping density and the size of ships are gradually increasing. In this regard, the large-scale oil spill incident should be managed and developed by establishing a proper prevention, preparedness and response frame through the regional cooperation among member states to mitigate the level of oil spill risks in this region.