This spill never happened. It is a scenario: a collision at the Wandelaar pilot station off Zeebrugge tears open a bunker tank, and 1,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil escapes in six hours. NOAA's PyGNOME oil spill model follows the oil with the real currents and winds of 7 to 10 November 2007, a week with strong west to north-west winds and storm Tilo. In this run the first oil reaches the beach about 13 hours after the collision. Within a day three quarters of the oil is ashore, most of it between Zeebrugge and Knokke, and by 9 November 98% of the oil is ashore and 2% has evaporated. A second oil model, OpenDrift, run with the same settings, gives a similar picture. The 7 km ocean model barely resolves the Westerschelde, so currents inside the estuary are missing. With other winds the oil would go elsewhere.
Source: Oil model: NOAA PyGNOME, IFO 380 fuel oil from NOAA's oil database. Currents: E.U. Copernicus Marine Service, North-West Shelf reanalysis (NWSHELF_MULTIYEAR_PHY_004_009), hourly at 7 km. Winds: Copernicus satellite winds (WIND_GLO_PHY_L4_MY_012_006), hourly at 0.25°. Coastline: Rijkswaterstaat DCSM-FM 100 m model grid. Scenario and simulation by The Moving Sea
Free for personal and educational use with credit to The Moving Sea. For commercial use, contact [email protected].