January 14 - TAIWAN - Taiwan is racing against time to avert an ecological disaster and a major setback to its tourism industry, following the island's worst oil spill. Some 1,150 tonnes of fuel oil gushed out of a Greece-registered ship carrying 60,000 tonnes of iron ore, after it ran aground off the Kenting National Park. Marine mammals in the area, such as dolphins, are highly endangered by the spill. The crisis also threatens the operation of a nearby nuclear power plant, and risks cross-strait disputes if the spillage spreads to the Chinese coast.
January 15 - NORWAY - One of the largest oil spills ever from a land based oil storage facility in Norway, was detected when at least 750 tons of sludge had leaked from Norcem's facilities at Brevik. By the afternoon, some 100 tons had been recovered within the containment area around the tank, whilst another 190 tons had been recovered from the sea. The recovery operations are continuing, under close scrutiny from the Norwegian Pollution Control Authority.
January 16 - ECUADOR - A boat carrying fuel to Ecuador's Galapagos Islands is leaking oil into the ecologically sensitive waters near the famous islands. The boat, named "Jessica", was carrying 160,000 gallons of diesel and about 80,000 gallons of IFO 120.The spill has already affected animals including sea lions and pelicans, and volunteers are on standby to clean up and rescue them. Source Wikipédia org
February 16 - INDONESIA - The Coast Guard authorities are working to re-float an oil tanker that ran aground in rough seas off Indonesia's Java island. The Honduras-registered Steadfast partially sank in shallow waters, when it was battered by massive waves and winds off Tegal, some 250 km east of Jakarta. Roughly 40 per cent of an estimated 800 tonnes of sump oil had leaked from the ship and reached the shore, and a joint clean-up operation involving local vessels, Coast Guard and police authorities is underway.
March 20 - BRAZIL - Up to 316,000 gallons of diesel has leaked after the world's largest offshore platform sank five days after a failed rescue effort. A huge diesel slick appeared on the surface when the platform sank to bottom of the ocean floor, almost a mile down. This was just another in a series of oil spills that have plagued the state owned Petrobras in recent months.
March 25 - DENMARK - More than 764,000 gallons of oil spilled after a double-hulled tanker carrying 9.7 million gallons of oil, and a freighter crashed in international waters between eastern Denmark and northwest Germany. A slick about 9.3 miles long and 161/2-feet wide slipped into the narrow Groensund strait between the Danish islands of Moen, Bogoe and Falster, while the bulk of the oil remained in the Baltic Sea off southern Denmark. As ships from three countries worked to contain the oil spill, an international conservation group said that a sanctuary home to thousands of ducks, swans and other water fowl was under threat by the oil slick, the largest ever in Denmark.
April 6 - UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Workers have started to clean a 12-kilometer-radius oil spill reaching the reserved island of Sir Bou Neair, about 70 nautical miles off the coast of the Emirate of Sharjah. The spill was caused by the Iraqi fuel tanker Zainab, suspected of smuggling around 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil from Iraq, as it ran into trouble on its way to a holding area in international waters. The emirate of Sharjah said it had temporarily shut down a desalination plant as a precautionary measure, after the spill neared pumping stations. The spill is said to be the emirate's worst environmental disaster in years.
May 24 - BRAZIL - Petrobras, infamous for a series of spills over the past two years, shut 12 oil rigs, responsible for nearly 9 percent of Brazil's oil output, Thursday night after detecting an oil slick on the ocean surface. There were two oil slicks some 90 km off the coast, one of approximately 110,000 liters and another of some 10,000 liters of crude. The source of the spill has yet to be determined, but officials are ruling out any relation to the huge oil rig that sank in March.
May 25 - CHILE - An oil tanker that ran aground in a remote southern Chilean fjord has spilled some 350,528 litres of crude, leaving an oil slick 70 miles (112 km) long and damaging wildlife and a salmon farm, the Chilean Navy has admitted. Maritime authorities initially dismissed the incident, saying the leak had been negligible and had caused no damage to the environment. But the Navy later admitted the spill was worse than initially announced.
May 28 - MALAYSIA - An oil tanker with some 67 tonnes of fuel, including diesel and 1,500 tonnes of bitumen, sunk after it was crashed from behind by a super tanker about 7.5 nautical miles off Pulau Undan, near Malacca. Officials said the crash caused MT Singapura Timur to take in water, and remained half-submerged in the sea floating southwards. Diesel and bitumen have started to spill into the sea, and is spreading to about one nautical mile from the collision spot.
May 30 - BRAZIL- Oil giant Petrobras said a break in its Paulinia pipeline dumped 220,000 liters of fuel oil in a residential neighborhood. The spill, which occurred 30 kilometers from the city of Sao Paulo, follows two unexplained and unclaimed oil spills in the Campos Basin off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state.
May 30 - CHINA - Chinese environmental experts are struggling to contain damage from toxic styrene which leaked from a ship, and fishermen along the eastern coast fear their livelihoods could be threatened for years to come. About 700 tonnes of the chemical, which is poisonous to humans, seeped into the waters near Shanghai after a South Korean vessel collided with a Hong Kong. State media said the South Korean freighter Dayong was carrying nearly 2,300 tonnes of styrene when it collided with the Hong Kong vessel in dense fog at the mouth of the Yangtze River, near Jigujiao.
June 10 - PHILIPPINES - An oil spill in Cavite is threatening to contaminate Laguna de Bay, caused by a bursting oil pipeline of an industrial and electronics firm at the People’s Technological Complex in Barangay Maduya, Carmona town. The oil spill has already affected a six-kilometer stretch of Carmona-Biñan River, just a few kilometers away from the Laguna Bay. Aside from the affected river, the spilling bunker oil and industrial fuel oil also affected land base areas surrounding the firm.
June 13 - MALAYSIA - An Indonesian tanker laden with a toxic chemical has capsized off Malaysia's southern Johor state, just across from Singapore. The 533 ton MV Endah Lestari was on its way to East Kalimantan in Indonesia with some 600 tonnes of the poisonous industrial chemical phenol, and 18 tonnes of diesel. Newspaper reports said the toxic spill had killed thousands of fish and cockles reared in 85 offshore cages, and Singapore authorities have also warned its citizens to stay away from nearby waters. Officials said it would be tough to mop up the phenol, as it is soluble in water.
August 4 - USA - A fishing vessel that has sunk and is leaking diesel fuel has caused the biggest spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound since the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, posing a threat to the area's wildlife. The Seattle-based Windy Bay was loaded with about 35,000 gallons (133,000 liters) of diesel fuel when it struck a rock and sank in the northern part of the sound about 40 miles (65 km) southwest of the port of Valdez. Just how much leaked was unknown, but diesel fuel leaking from the ship has created a sheen covering 4 square miles (10 sq km), and cleanup crews has recovered about 9,700 gallons (36,800 liters).
August 10 - MICRONESIA - A sunken World War II ship has been gushing 300 to 500 gallons of oil per hour into the Ulithi Atoll lagoon. The cause of the spill is the USS Mississinewa, a 553-foot Navy oiler sunk in 1944 by a one-man Japanese suicide submarine. Yap State officials said the state's governor has declared a state of emergency for Ulithi and advised the 700 people who live on the atoll not to swim or fish in the lagoon. Questions have been raised who should bear the responsibility for taking relevant action, with focus on getting international assistance to clean-up and minimize the environmental and ecological impacts.
September 7 - VIETNAM - Local residents in small boats used buckets to try to collect thousands of tons of oil from a damaged oil tanker and save the nearby beach resort of Vung Tau, after The Vietnamese Petrolimex 01 tanker, carrying 19,000 tons of diesel oil, was hit by a Liberian-registered oil tanker. But wind and waves drove much of the spilled oil to the beach, which normally attracts thousands of vacationers a day.
September 22 - USA - An oil spill caused by a collision between a ship and a barge closed the ship channel servicing the nation's second largest port. The fuel oil spill occurred at Barbour's Cut in La Porte, Texas, and some 860 barrels of fuel oil leaked into the channel. About 18,000 feet of boom were set up to contain the oil, and skimmers were removing it. Containment and cleanup operations involved more than 70 people.
October 4 - USA - Crews were slowed by explosive vapors as they tried to plug a leak in the trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline that spewed nearly 300,000 gallons of oil into the wilderness. A man who had been drinking caused the leak when he shot the pipeline with a big-game rifle. The pipeline carries about 1 million barrels of oil a day, prompting a halt to almost a fifth of U.S. domestic production.
October 18 - BRAZIL - Brazilian and foreign teams prepared to begin salvaging a tanker that hit underwater rocks, spewing a highly flammable oil product into the sea and forcing closure of the country's primary port for grain shipments. State oil giant Petrobras, which owns the tanker, said about 103,000 gallons (392,000 litres) of naphtha, an oil product lighter than gasoline, spilled into the Paranagua port area, some 380 miles (600 km) southwest of Rio.
November 21 - GERMANY - Almost 2,000 tonnes of nitric acid has spilled into the Rhine river, when motor tank barge Stolt Rotterdam sank during a disastrous discharging operation. The 1988-built chemical tanker was discharging the acid at Erdoelchemie Uerdingen when crew noticed fumes coming from the bottom of the barge. An emergency response was initiated, but a store room caught fire, forcing the crew and everyone in the surrounding area to evacuate as the vessel sank, emptying 1,895 tonnes of nitric acid into the river.
December 11 - FINLAND - Oil from a spill off the country's west coast has washed ashore on some 1.24 miles of Ruissalo island's coastline, and the spill is now three kilometers long and a kilometer wide. 10 vessels are involved in operations to contain and sweep up the oil, but the source of the spill is still unknown.
