Tanker spills and oil-bedraggled seabirds have not made the front pages for quite a few years but the risk has not disappeared.
Although the incidence of major casualties has fallen sharply, with the amount of oil pollution also markedly down, there are still more than 7,000 large tankers afloat. Crude prices are down but, despite worries about the world economy, the volume of oil shipped by sea remains resilient at about 1.5
