SKorea to tighten rules against spill-prone oil tankers

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2007

SEOUL (AFP) — South Korea plans to bring forward a ban on visits by single-hulled tankers following the country's worst oil spill, a maritime official said Friday.

A drifting barge smashed into the 147,000-ton Hong Kong-registered supertanker Hebei Spirit on December 7 in the Yellow Sea, holing it in three places.

The single-hulled tanker spilt 12,547 kiloliters (10,900 tonnes) of crude oil into the Yellow Sea, some 20 percent more than the initial estimate, maritime authorities said.

Scores of fish farms and miles of beaches along a section of the west coast were fouled.

"Following the accident, we plan to advance the timetable to phase out singled-hulled vessels," Lee Ki-Sang, deputy director of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, told...