Global Phaseout of Older Single Hull Tankers Begins

To prevent oil spills in all oceans of the world, older single hull tankers carrying heavy fuel oil are now required to meet a new set of deadlines for phaseout or conversion to double hulls. Oil tankers transport some 1,800 million metric tons of crude oil around the world by sea, including 50 percent of U.S. oil imports.

A Greenpeace analysis shows that over 2,000 such tankers will be removed from the water and scrapped within five years. More than 1,000 tankers are expected to be scrapped in 2005, a figure that the international environmental organization says “dwarfs previous estimates.”

Environment News Service