Transportation of chemicals by tankers in
RISK MANAGEMENT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT
The Baltic Sea has some of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Around 2,000 sizeable ships are normally
at sea at any time in the Baltic, including large oil tankers, ships carrying dangerous and potentially polluting
cargoes, and many large passenger ferries. The exchange of water in the Baltic Sea is very slow, and if harmful
substances are introduced they will remain there for a very long time.
I
Figure1.
16
seatec 2007
n 2004, VTT published a study on Oil
transportation and terminal development in the Gulf of Finland. The report
covers statistics on oil transport in the
area and discusses future terminal development. During the project, question
about chemical transportations came up
several times. The report on Transportation of chemicals by tankers in the Baltic
Sea area was published in the beginning
of 2006 and it was funded by the Finnish
Ministry of the Environment, Finnish Environment Institute and Finnish Maritime
Administration.
In this study, the statistics concerning
chemicals transported in liquid bulk along
the Baltic Sea area were gathered and the
most important substances were chosen
for further examination. According to the
answers given by 46 ports (Figure 1), the
total amount of liquid bulk chemicals handled in the Baltic ports in 2004 was over
nine million tons (Table 1). A great deal of
this traffic takes place within the Baltic i.e.
is “handled” twice. The real amount of
liquid chemicals transported in the Baltic
Sea is around five million tons annually.
The cargoes carried by chemical tankers often present tremendous challenges
and difficulties from a safety point of view,
and many chemicals are a far greater pollution threat than for example crude oil.
When analysing the possible impacts of
leaked chemicals, it became clear that
large-scale analyses and impact modelling
should be made. Even though there is a
great deal of information on the possible
impacts and fate of chemicals in aquatic
conditions, it is also clear that this data is
usually based on micro-scale laboratory