Frequency and Causes of Oil Spill Accidents from Ships and Storage Tanks in Quanzhou, China

Abstract

With the rapid development of Quanzhou, the risk of offshore oil spill accidents has increased. Once a spill accident takes place, the spilled oil causes decades or even hundreds of years of continuous pollution to the marine environment. The direct economic loss may be as high as hundreds of millions of yuan, while the natural resources that are almost impossible to fully recover after such pollution may generate inestimable indirect economic losses in the long term. Therefore, predicting the accident probability, analyzing the causes of risk and putting forward suggestions for improvement have important practical guiding significance for reducing the risk and improving the emergency prevention and ability to control offshore oil spill accidents. Based on the statistical data of cargo throughput, the number of ships entering and leaving the port, and maritime pollution accidents in Quanzhou from 2011 to 2020, the frequency of oil spills during the 14th Five-Year Plan could be predicted by using the direct calculation method and fault tree analysis (FAT). The results show that the frequency of operational and average oil spills from ships are once in 4.92 years and once in 2.41 years, respectively, while the frequency of oil spills from storage tanks is once in 7.28 years. The main causes are anthropic factors, which are manifested as irregular operation, misoperation, unfamiliar equipment, disorganization of the emergency response and failure of the emergency facilities. Therefore, the suggestions put forward for reducing accidents in the future include enhancing the inspection of crew member qualifications as well as the offshore supervision of engineering operation vessels and fishing vessels, increasing the proportion of terminal emergency equipment and personnel and participation in emergency actions, clarifying the division of responsibilities between the terminal and cleanup company, and revising the relevant standards for the evaluation of the terminal's ability to cope with the emergency of offshore oil spill accidents.