In June of 1996, oil began to wash up on the North Sea coastline
of Germany near the Frisian Islands and Cuxhaven.
Oil from the “mystery spill” formed hard, granular balls
which were fairly easily removed from the sandy beaches
with extensive and aggressive mechanical
and manual shoreline cleanup operations.
There were reports of oiled birds,
as well as reports of impacts on fishing and tourism in
the area connected with this incident.
From the oil recovery figures by German authorities,
it appears that at least 764 tonnes (225,000 gallons) of oil were spilled.
German government officials investigated
the source of the “mystery spill” and
eventually named the Russian-flagged tanker Kuzzbass
(150,500 DWT; 88,692 GT) as the responsible party
based on oil sample and drift analyses.
The suspicion against the tanker was based
on information that the tanker had
spent 53 hours on its good-weather passage from the
German Bight to the Dover passage in a trip
that normally takes about 30 hours
with a normal speed of 14 knots.
The investigators suspected that the
tanker was engaging in tank washing in
violation of MARPOL 73/78 Annex I Regulation 9.
The recovered oil was eventually fingerprinted as
Libyan crude oil from the tanker Kuzzbass.