Sunken Philippine tanker leaking ‘minimal’ oil
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An oil slick in Manila Bay on July 29. A sunken tanker off Manila leaves the Philippines facing the possibility of its worst oil spill ever.
PHOTO: AFP
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MANILA – A sunken tanker off Manila was leaking “minimal” oil, the Philippine Coast Guard said on July 29, as a salvage company prepared to offload the vessel’s 1.4 million litres of industrial fuel cargo.
The tanker sank in bad weather off Manila early on July 25,
Divers began sealing the vessel’s leaking valves on July 27, reducing the amount of oil flowing into the water to one litre per hour from 7.5 litres per minute.
The leaking is now “minimal scale” and “very controllable”, said Lieutenant-Commander Michael John Encina from Bataan Coast Guard Station.
The tanker went down as heavy rains fuelled by Typhoon Gaemi and the seasonal monsoon lashed Manila and surrounding regions in recent days.
An aerial inspection of Manila Bay on July 29 found the oil slick from the tanker had dramatically reduced in size to 3.2 to 6.4km.
On July 27 it had been 12 to 14km, Lt-Cdr Encina told reporters.
Offloading the 1.4 million litres of industrial fuel oil from the tanker, which was resting on the sea floor under 34mof water, was expected to start on July 30 and would take around 10 days to complete.
Lt-Cdr Encina said the contracted salvage company would initially transfer 300,000 litres of industrial fuel oil to two other vessels.
That should be sufficient for the tanker to float and be towed to a site where the rest of the cargo can be removed.
The leaking valves of a second tanker that sank in Manila Bay have also been sealed, the coast guard said.
The Philippines has struggled to contain serious oil spills in the past.
It took months to clean up after a tanker carrying 800,000 litres of industrial fuel oil sank off the central island of Mindoro last year,
