One slick appeared off the southern tip of Weshm Island, while a smaller one was spotted near Sirri Island in the center of the Gulf.
Two slicks have appeared in Iranian waters, satellite imagery and video verified by Reuters show, as tit-for-tat attacks on oil tankers and other vessels by Iran and the United States spark concerns about environmental damage to the Gulf. A potential environmental disaster is already unfolding off Oman outside of the Strait of Hormuz, where a grounded tanker, the Caroline Bezengi, is leaking Russian crude oil in a protected marine area and has created a massive slick, some estimates put at 2,000 square km. The Caroline Bezengi incident has not been linked to the war with Iran.
The two latest slicks are inside the Gulf. One slick has appeared off the southern tip of Qeshm Island, the large dolphin-shaped island in the Strait of Hormuz close to Iran’s coast, pictures from Copernicus’s Sentinel-2 satellites showed. Wim Zwijnenburg, an environmental open-source researcher at the Dutch peace organization PAX, said the dark color in parts of the slick indicated heavy fuel oil, while a lighter, diluted slick stretched about 160 km.
A dark, bubbling liquid was spotted washing ashore on the beaches of Suza on Qeshm Island, contrasting with the turquoise water surrounding it, in a video posted on August 11 and verified by Reuters. "This is the biggest one that I've seen in recent months, really since the conflict between Iran and the U.S. began," said John Amos, CEO of SkyTruth, which uses satellite imagery to detect oil spills, calling it "a major incident". Satellite imagery showed a second slick near the smaller Sirri Island in the center of the Gulf, about 100 km southwest of Qeshm and home to some Iranian offshore oil and gas production. (Read More)
