Captains of tankers in Singapore oil spill arrested
Captains of tankers in Singapore oil spill arrested
SINGAPORE (Agencies): The captains of two tankers which collided and caused the worst oil spill in Singapore's history have been arrested, officials said yesterday.
Officials declined to give details about the charges against the Polish skipper of the Thai-registered crude carrier Orapin Global, Jan Sokolowski, and the Cyprus-flagged oil tanker Evoikos' Greek captain, Micheal Chalkitis.
"The masters of both vessels have been arrested as the MPA has reasons to believe that they have committed sizable offenses," said Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) director- general Chen Tze Penn.
He also told a news conference some of the estimated 25,000 tons of marine fuel oil spilled from the badly-damaged Evoikos had drifted to Malaysian and Indonesian waters, and that the two governments had been informed.
The Orapin Global was empty at the time of last Wednesday's accident.
The two ships acknowledged emergency warnings issued minutes before the collision, the Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) of Singapore said yesterday.
"Both ships acknowledged the (warning) signals," an MPA official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
"It looks like one of them at the last minute moved into the path of the other. We can't tell which one yet, but the official investigation will show us," he said.
Both vessels were being tracked by a hi-tech radar-based Port Operations Control Center (POCC) and its Vessel Traffic Information System (VTIS), which warned the ships of their impending impact six minutes before it occurred.
The owners of Cyprus-registered tanker Evoikos and Thai supertanker Orapin Global have traded charges over the blame for last Wednesday's collision, which spilled 25,000 tons of fuel oil into the Singapore Strait about 13 kilometers off the Singapore coast.
The collision left Evoikos, laden with 120,000 tons of marine fuel oil, with a huge hole in its port side and spilling oil from two ruptured tanks. Contractors estimate that 90,000 tons to 100,000 tons remain onboard and salvageable.
A furious clean-up operation has since been under way to contain the pollution in the Strait, which insurance sources reckon could cost US$100 million.
At least 45 vessels, one helicopter and experts from Japan and Australia have been brought in to fight the spill.
A witness said yesterday that many of the oil slicks seemed to have broken up, while others had moved further away from Singapore's main island.
He added, however, that oil was visible on the beaches of a number of smaller islands and he did not see any clean-up effort there.
The VTIS aimed at avoiding such calamities tracks ships within port waters in a way similar to air traffic control systems.
But while air traffic controllers instruct airline pilots to maneuver to avoid collision and supply flight co-ordinates, at sea the onus is on ship captains to plan their own evasive action.
"It is left to them to take action. Shipmasters should know what to do. We give them all the information. There are international conventions about this sort of thing," the MPA official said.
The MPA said yesterday it was spending Singapore $21 million (US$13.5 million) to upgrade its marine traffic surveillance and search and rescue systems.
Chua Lian Ho, MPA training director, said at a seminar that about S$16 million would be spent on a state-of-the-art radar- based POCC and VTIS to be built at Singapore's new Pasir Panjang container terminal.