Press Release - Massive Oil Spill at India’s “Best Shipbreaking Yard” Raises Serious Concerns Over Hong Kong Convention Certification. NGOs call for a global ban on beaching

Press Release – Massive Oil Spill at India’s “Best Shipbreaking Yard” Raises Serious Concerns Over Hong Kong Convention Certification. NGOs call for a global ban on beaching

Published in July 02nd, 2026

A massive oil spill at Priya Blue’s shipbreaking yard plot V1/V2 in Alang-Sosiya, Gujarat, India, raises serious concerns over safety and environmental standards at one of the country’s most heavily promoted shipbreaking facilities, and is a stark reminder of the inherent flaws of the beaching method [1]. Environmental and human rights organisations have for years urged global policy makers and industry stakeholders to phase out this dangerous and polluting method of scrapping ships and now call on urgent action to ban beaching.

The spill occurred on the afternoon of 13 June. According to Priya Blue, an “extremely high tide wave” destabilised the LNG vessel SOHAR (IMO 9210816) which had been beached at their plot only a few days earlier. The vessel then supposedly crashed into the floating crane barge stationed at the yard, reportedly causing severe damage to the SOHAR’s forward fuel tank and releasing large amounts of heavy fuel oil into the sea.

While Priya Blue published an Incident Investigation and Environmental Response Report on 26 June claiming that remediation began immediately, workers in full PPE were mobilised, and containment measures were deployed close to the source of pollution, available evidence tells a very different story.

Local media reports on the environmental disaster and testimonies from affected communities also point to major discrepancies in Priya Blue’s account. The company’s report – which only includes pictures from several days after the incident and no pictures of the impact on the SOHAR – appears to downplay the scale and spread of pollution, while independent documentation shows contamination far beyond the immediate area of the yard. Oil was reported washing ashore along a large stretch of the coastline, including fishing village Mithi Virdi, around 10 kilometres from Priya Blue, directly contradicting any suggestion that the spill remained contained close to the facility.

Two days after the incident, Gujarati TV channel TV9 reported from the site, and according to their sources, more than 30 hours after the massive oil spill, responsible authorities, including the Gujarat Maritime Board and Gujarat Pollution Control Board, appeared not to have taken any action. While public outrage grew after videos of heavy fuel oil washing ashore began circulating on social media, little information about the origins of the spill was available, showcasing a serious lack of transparency, enforcement, and accountability in the Alang-Sosiya shipbreaking region. According to a Gujarati-language newspaper, Gujarat Samachar, the Gujarat Pollution Control Board collected liquid and sediment samples along a 200–300 meter stretch of coastline only three days after the spill.

Priya Blue is not a marginal operator in Alang-Sosiya, and is linked to cash buyer Best Oasis. Widely promoted as one of India’s most advanced shipbreaking yards, Priya Blue has operated for 40 years and its yard at plot V1/V2 is one of the first to have obtained a certificate from Indian authorities as being compliant with the IMO’s Hong Kong Convention. Priya Blue has also sought inclusion on the European List of approved ship recycling facilities under the EU Ship Recycling Regulation — a framework intended to reflect high standards on worker safety, environmental protection, and downstream waste management. Vocal at international maritime conferences and highlighted by shipping stakeholders as evidence that beaching yards can meet global standards, Priya Blue was recently presented in the Sustainable Shipping Initiative’s Alang in Transition: From Compliance to Capability report as a showcase for improvements in Indian shipbreaking. The incident, and subsequent management of the oil spill by Priya Blue, now casts serious doubt on those claims.

Many issues surrounding the oil spill remain unclear, including why the LNG SOHAR was carrying 1.800 tonnes of fuel. The NGO Shipbreaking Platform has sent several questions to Priya Blue of which it so far has not received a response. [3] The LNG SOHAR was sold for scrapping in Alang by Japanese MOL and Oman’s Asyad Shipping who jointly owned the vessel. Vessels owned by Japanese NYK (LNG JAMAL – IMO 9200316) and offshore drilling contractor Transocean (DISCOVER LUANDA – IMO 9456068) were also present at Priya Blue when the incident occurred.

Having informed global policy makers about the oil spill on 23 June at a UNEP Basel Convention meeting, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform calls for a ban on the beaching method, also under the IMO’s Hong Kong Convention which currently is under review. Ship recycling must take place in facilities capable of controlling spills, protecting workers, and preventing toxic releases from reaching coastal communities and the sea. When vessels are dismantled on tidal flats, no infrastructure can contain spills of toxic substances.

In light of the above, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform calls on:

- The Gujarat Maritime Board and the Gujarat Pollution Control Board to conduct a fully transparent investigation, publish all sampling results, and disclose the volume of oil released and the full extent of contamination;

- The European Commission to take this serious incident into account in its assessment of beaching yards that have applied for inclusion on the European List, and clearly recognize that the beaching method does not guarantee the requirements for containment under the EU Ship Recycling Regulation;

- Shipowners, including MOL, NYK and Transocean,to immediately cease sending vessels to beaching yards and instead use only facilities that provide impermeable surfaces and engineered containment provided by industrial platforms, including adequate drainage;

- The International Maritime Organization to recognize the inherent risks and structural flaws of beaching and ban the beaching method under the Hong Kong Convention.

"A Hong Kong Convention certificate is not proof that a yard is preventing harm across the full chain of dismantling and disposal. Not a single yard in Alang-Sosiya would be allowed to clone its activities on a beach in the EU. That’s why the beaching method must never be rubberstamped by the EU. The method is already banned in all large ship-owning countries - it’s high time that the shipping industry stops defending a method they would never allow on their own shores."

Ingvild Jenssen - Executive Director and Founder - NGO Shipbreaking Platform

NOTES

[1] Beaching remains the dominant ship dismantling method in South Asia where end-of-life vessels are deliberately run aground on mudflats and cut apart without containment, all while exposed to massive tidal differences. Beaching inevitably causes pollution: debris, heavy metal laden paint flakes, plastics, oil residues, and other hazardous materials can escape directly into the surrounding coastal zone as there is no infrastructure to contain spills, exposing workers, local communities, and fragile coastal ecosystems to unacceptable risks. This recent oil spill at Priya Blue directly counters the claim that beaching can deliver safe and environmentally sound ship recycling.

[2] While Priya Blue omitted information and pictures of the initial response to the oil spill in their report dated 26 June, they later admitted to the NGO Shipbreaking Platform that workers carried out emergency clean-up activities “without safety footwear” but claimed that these were employees of a third-party contractor engaged to conduct emergency operations and stated that they have implemented measures to strengthen contractor management during future emergency response activities. It is not the first time a serious incident has occurred at Priya Blue. In 2022, a fatal accident occurred at their yard V1 while a BW Offshore vessel was being dismantled.

[3] To establish the circumstances of the oil spill, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform has requested a detailed incident timeline from the first indication of loss of containment through source control, containment, recovery, clean-up, and regulatory notification. We also asked for a hydrocarbon mass balance reconciling the reported 63 tonnes spilled, 32 tonnes recovered, tank transfer volumes, contaminated waste quantities, dispersed oil, and any residual or unaccounted quantity, together with documentation on the disposal of recovered contaminated waste. In addition, we requested the third-party marine survey report, or a technical summary, including photos of the damage, damage dimensions, tank identification, contents, and structural findings, as well as the SOHAR’s General Arrangement and Fuel Oil System drawings.

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