Yeah, it always used to do so, I was never sure if it was intended but thought it doesn't hurt the already underused tar.
Actually, until last patch or the one before that, I discovered that both tar and sandstorms would still have overflow damage on destroyed components, so a squid for example with 4 engines down and 3 guns down would get damaged 8 times as much as it should be damaged by the tar/cloud. But I realized that was clearly a bug so I told them about it... it was pretty op though on ships with a lot of components.