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.