SINGAPORE — Almost overlooked amid BP’s debacle in the Gulf of Mexico was an oil spill in the Singapore Strait, where in late May two tankers collided and disgorged the equivalent of 18,000 barrels of oil into one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

The Singapore incident was small compared with the 87-day catastrophe bubbling away in the gulf, and the Singapore authorities, responding with characteristic efficiency, mopped up the mess with booms and chemical dispersants in just six days.

But the accident served as a reminder that Asia is not invulnerable to an environmental disaster on the scale of the BP spill. Singapore is a major refining center and transshipment point for crude oil shipments between markets in East Asia and the other oil-rich Gulf region. The quest for more plentiful and less expensive oil for fast-growing Asian economies has also brought a wave of offshore drilling from India and the Gulf of Thailand, to Vietnam and Bohai Bay, on the northeast coast of China.

In considering this risk and the increasing evidence of the toll that rapid economic development is already taking on Asia’s environment, economists and other experts in Asia have taken up the call to re-examine the prominence of economic growth as a measure of policy success, particularly the use of gross domestic product.