Oil spill hazard assessment for the Arabian Gulf

Oil spills pose a major environmental risk in the Arabian Gulf, a region characterized by intense oil shipping and extensive offshore oil infrastructure. Understanding how spilled oil is transported across the basin under seasonally varying atmospheric and oceanographic forcing is therefore essential for effective contingency planning. This study presents a basin-scale oil spill hazard assessment for the Arabian Gulf over 2018-2022, resolving seasonal variability using a high-resolution three-dimensional hydrodynamic and Lagrangian modeling framework. Oil transport and fate were simulated with MEDSLIK-II, driven by validated regional ocean circulation, atmospheric, and wave datasets. A basin-wide scenario was constructed by distributing hypothetical sources across the Gulf and weighting them according to five years of vessel density data, enriched with offshore oil infrastructure, thereby providing a spatially varying proxy for relative spill occurrence likelihood. A targeted scenario near Kharg island was also simulated to evaluate the basin-wide consequences of localized releases. The results reveal strong seasonal and spatial variability in coastal and seabed contamination across the Gulf. Winter conditions tend to increase exposure along the western and central Gulf coasts, whereas summer circulation shifts contamination toward the Iranian coastline. Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE remain consistently vulnerable due to their connectivity to multiple spill sources. The Kharg island scenario reveals how localized chronic releases can evolve into basin-wide hazards under favorable seasonal circulation. These findings provide a quantitative framework for identifying high-risk coastlines and highlight the importance of seasonal circulation in shaping spill impacts thereby supporting improved spill preparedness and coordinated environmental protection efforts in the Arabian Gulf.