Sri Lanka navy plugs fuel leak on fire-stricken tanker

Sri Lankan army divers fastened a gas leak from the engine of a fire-damaged oil tanker off the island’s east coast, the army stated Saturday, in a salvage operation after the large week-long blaze.

Whilst the army says no crude oil has escaped the shipment of the New Diamond, leaked diesel gas had created a two-kilometre-long slick within the Indian Ocean that was once visual from the air.

The gas was once seeping into the water via broken pipes attached to a ballast water consumption at the send’s starboard aspect, in line with a army observation.

That leak was once plugged on Friday at the side of an inlet at the port aspect of the Panama-registered tanker, it stated.

Dutch salvage corporate SMIT stated its professionals had boarded the crippled vessel and located the 270,000-tonne crude oil shipment unaffected by means of the fire.

“The shipment tanks with the crude are intact,” the company advised AFP in The Hague on Friday. “Discussions are ongoing at the vacation spot of the vessel to switch the crude.”

Sri Lanka’s environmental government concern a marine crisis if the tanker is permitted to switch its oil to every other send within the nation’s waters.

The fire was once utterly doused on Wednesday, however an unspecified quantity of the send’s 1,700 tonnes of gas leaked when garage tanks ruptured within the blaze that destroyed the engine room and far of the vessel’s super-structure.

“The Sri Lankan army, the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) and tug boats that had been serious about fire-fighting are nonetheless within the house,” the army stated.

It added that an Indian plane used to spray chemical compounds to disperse the diesel slick previously two days was once on standby.

Sri Lanka has requested the send’s house owners to tow it clear of the rustic’s unique financial zone, or 370 kilometres (231 miles) from its coast.

The New Diamond issued a misery sign every week in the past whilst passing Sri Lanka on its solution to the northeast Indian port of Paradip when a boiler exploded, killing a Filipino crewman.

The remainder 22 staff had been rescued.

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