CRUDE oil is the single largest commodity traded in ships. Accidents involving tankers usually attract media attention, but when the largest-ever spill occurred in July 1979, when Atlantic Express and the Aegean Captain collided in the Caribbean spilling 270,000 tonnes of crude, the event passed virtually unnoticed in the Western media.

In stark contrast, the much smaller spill off the Alaskan coast from the tanker Exxon Valdez got such wide coverage in the US media, it led to legislation in USA requiring all new tankers to be double-hulled.

The first major spill of 1992 occurred at the tip of the Shetland Islands just north of Scotland, when the tanker Braer ran aground and spilled 85,000 tonnes of oil.

The earliest oil spill on record took place in March 1967 when the Torrey Canyon foundered off England, spewing 120,000 tonnes of crude on British and French beaches. In August 1974, the Metula spilled 50,000 tonnes of oil off the southern coast of Chile and four years later, the Amoco Cadiz stained the beaches of Brittany, France, with 220,000 tonnes of crude.