This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter

The drama and terror is in the photographs and footage: the clouds of black, billowing smoke, arcs of water from rescue vessels, the red glow of a raging fire.

The full story behind this crash in the Humber estuary is yet to come out, and immediate thoughts are for the crew of the vessels their families, and especially those of the one person declared still missing, presumed dead. Then there are the questions around why it happened.

But in the backdrop of this is also the worry over how much oil may leak into the surrounding North Sea and whether this may turn out to be an environmental disaster for life in that stretch of the North Sea.

Th MV Stena Immaculate tanker was at anchor, carrying the 220,000 barrels of jet fuel it was transporting on behalf of the US military when the Portuguese flagged cargo ship, the Solong, hit its side, travelling at 16 knots from Grangemouth towards Rotterdam.

Latest reports, at time of writing, state that the fires have not yet been contained, though the blaze on the Stena Immaculate is much diminished. The master of the Solong, we learn, has been arrested.

Initial news stories claimed that the Solong was carrying toxic sodium cyanide, but a statement from Ernst Russ, the shipping company that chartered the vessel, is that there were “no containers on board ladened with sodium cyanide”.

“There are four empty containers that have previously contained the hazardous chemical, and these containers will continue to be monitored

But the threat from oil leakage........

© Herald Scotland