Oil Spill Environmental Forensics: the Hebei Spirit Oil Spill Case

Abstract

After the Hebei Spirit oil spill (HSOS) in December 2007, mixtures of three types of Middle East crude oil (total 12,547 kL) were stranded along 375 km of coastline in Western Korea. Emergency responses together with 1.3 million volunteers' activity rapidly removed ca. 20% of spilled oil but the lingering oils have been found along the heavily impacted shorelines for more than 4 years. The HSOS was the worst oil spill case in Republic of Korea, and there were many issues and lessons to be shared. In this study, we summarized some of the oil spill environmental forensic issues that were raised after the HSOS. Rapid screening using on-site measurement, long-term monitoring of multimedia, fingerprinting challenges and evaluation of the extent of the submerged oil were introduced, which supported decision making process of oil spill cleanup, mitigation of debates among stakeholders and provided scientific backgrounds for reasonable compensation.

Efficient extraction and detection of aromatic toxicants from crude oil and tar balls using multiple cyclodextrin derivatives

“…Oil collected directly from oil spill sites and oil isolated from tar balls have different physicochemical profiles compared to motor oil, vegetable oil, and vacuum pump oil, as a result of the weathering process that promotes substantial oxidation of the aromatic toxicants. 5 Environmental remediation of oil spill oil and tar ball oil from polluted marine environments is substantially more relevant for environmental disaster efforts than the remediation of commercially available oils, and the results reported herein indicate that using a variety of cyclodextrin derivatives enables the efficient extraction of toxicants from these complex oils.…”

“…5 Current methods used for the skimming or booning of the oil, 6 burning oil on the surface of the water, chemical dispersants to facilitate oil dispersion, 8 and introducing oil-eating bacteria for 9 Many of these methods suffer from potentially serious drawbacks, including the environmental damage from oil burning, 10 the unknown toxicity of and the long-term disruption to the ecosystem from the introduction of non…”

Fe3O4/PS magnetic nanoparticles: Synthesis, characterization and their application as sorbents of oil from waste water

“…At the meantime, the marine oil spill accidents are continuously increased. Especially, the risk of catastrophic oil spill accident to marine ecological environment is also increased [1][2][3]. For example, a gas release and subsequent explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010.…”

Petroleum hydrocarbon contaminations in the intertidal seawater after the Hebei Spirit oil spill – Effect of tidal cycle on the TPH concentrations and the chromatographic characterization of seawater extracts

“…After the Hebei Spirit oil spill, studies were usually limited to toxicological effects on marine organisms or human health (Cheong et al, 2011;Ji et al, 2011;Jung et al, 2011Jung et al, , 2012Hong et al, 2012;Lee et al, 2011) and to oil fingerprinting Yim et al, 2012). The first objective of the current study was to evaluate the spatiotemporal variations and the fate of oil contamination in the water column following the Hebei Sprit oil spill.…”