How safe is the Bosphorus?

Jon Gorvett
Middle East, Issue 289, Apr 1999


Abstract:

Too many vessels are using the Bosphorus, but instead of a reduction in
traffic through the busy waterway an increase is anticipated as competition
for shipment of Central Asian oil to the West heats up.
Copyright International Communications Apr 1999

Full Text:

Too many vessels are using the Bosporus, but instead of a reduction in
traffic through the busy waterway, an increase is anticipated as competition
for shipment of Central Asian oil to the West hots up, writes Jon Gorvett.

I've been dealing with maritime accidents for a long, long time," said
Hucum Tulgar, the general director of Turkey's Coastal Security and Ship
Rescue Management authority. "In 20 years I have not known two accidents
to occur on the same day, but last week there were three separate incidents."


He was talking at the end of a seven-day period which saw one Turkish-registered
tanker explode in the Marmara Sea, just off Istanbul, and three other vessels
run aground in the Bosphorus - the narrow 17-milelong channel that separates
Europe from Asia and runs right through the heart of Istanbul, a city of
over 10 million people.

Last year this channel saw some 26 accidents, a high tally for a major
international waterway and one which now has an added significance as competition
over transit corndors for the shipment of Central Asian oil to Western
markets hots up. With the first "early" oil arriving at the Georgian Black
Sea port of Supsa last December from Baku on the Caspian, the possibility
that much of this new oil and gas will end up being shipped by tanker through
the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles has had the Turkish government and Turkish
environmentalists -- highly concerned.

The nightmare scenario of a major accident in the Bosphorus involving tankers
has been given wide publicity here. One big disaster, and the blast could
have dire consequences for the people living along the Bosphorus' crowded
shores.

Part of the problem, Turkey insists, is the nature of the international
agreements governing the use of the waterway, which together with the Marmara
Sea and the Dardanelles are known as the Turkish Straits. Under the 1936
Montreux Convention which governs their use, merchant vessels in peace
time "shall enjoy complete freedom of transit and navigation in the Straits
under any flag and with any kind of cargo". The Turkish government has
no powers to regulate traffic or exact tolls. In addition "pilotage and
towage remain optional". Some 4,000-5,000 vessels pass through the Straits
every month, yet of these only around a quarter submit any kind of sail
plan to the authorities.

"When the Convention was drawn up," says Professor Nejat Ince, the director
of the project office for the Turkish Straits Association (TURBO), "the
population of Istanbul was around half a million, 17 vessels a day transited
and their average weight was around 13 tons. Now, there are 140 vessels
a day of up to 200,000 tons."

Captioned as: The Bosphorus runs through the heart of
Istanbul, a city of more than 10 million people

The problem of having no enforceable rules is further added to by some
quirks of the Bosphorus itself. The channel contains some 12 turns, four
of them blind, and is a jumble of different currents. The Black Sea, at
the northern end, is higher than the Aegean at the southern end.

This creates a gravitational current on the surface flowing north to south.
However, with four major fresh water rivers flowing into the Black Sea,
a strong difference in levels of salinity means a strong undercurrent going
in the opposite direction. Between the two, a number of cross-currents
and vortexes are created, some as strong as seven knots. "A ship needs
to maintain at least a five-knot speed with respect to the water in order
to steer," says Ince. Take a slow-moving old tanker suddenly hitting one
of these cross currents and the natural reaction of the captain is to slow
down. The result is a loss of steerage and often the ship going aground.


The narrowness of the channel - in some places it closes to only 700 metres
also poses problems. The Bosphorus is divided into an up lane and a down
lane, and with International Maritime Organisation regulations over minimum
distances for ships to turn, the passage of a large tanker necessitates
the closure of one or other of these lanes while the ship passes. This
causes delays and bottlenecks, which the Turks argue are going to get worse
if tanker traffic increases. As ships can pass at any time they wish, it
is not possible to enforce a coherent queuing system, leading sometimes
to the strange spectacle of approaching ships chasing each other in order
to try and get to the mouth of the Straits first.

Add into this the normal vagaries of human error, and the Turkish authorities
claim they have a strong case for a revision of procedures. Designed by
Professor Ince, a new high-tech Vessel Traffic System (VTS) was put out
to tender at the end of 1998. This envisages an interlocking system of
radar towers and undersea sensors to provide ships with all the information
they need. However, Ince stresses that "although you have to have VTS,
you also have to have rules."

The issue is also highly political. Turkey, with the support of the US,
has been advocating that instead of transporting Central Asian oil via
the Straits, a pipeline should be constructed from Baku to the Turkish
Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. There are also proposals to ship the oil
to Bulgarian or Romanian ports and then via pipelines to the Adriatic or
the Aegean, bypassing the Straits altogether. February saw the Turkish,
Georgian and Azeri governments meet with the Azerbaijan International Operating
Company (AIOC), the BP Amoco-led conglomerate of multinational oil companies
charged with developing the Azeri fields, to make a final decision on this.


Nonetheless, Ince insists that whatever the decision on the pipeline, the
Bosphorus safety issue will not go away. "People ask me how much traffic
can pass through the Straits," he says, "which is a bit like asking how
long is a piece of string." His conviction, though, is that "there are
already too many ships". Under a set of regulations proposed by the Turkish
government in 1994, he calculates that around 3,000 ships a month should
be the maximum.

The Montreux Convention grants "free passage", but Ince would like to modify
that. "It's not free passage that's needed, but safe free passage," he
says. A sentiment that many in Istanbul would agree with.

Captioned as: The narrowness of the channel also causes
problems