Welcome to Executive News Bulletin   Volume 3 , Issue 7 Dt - 01-07-2003 Page - 1

A team of representatives from Technical, Crew and Quality departments participated in the seminar held at BP Tower, Singapore, on 11th June. The seminar was conducted by Mr. David Salt of Global Alliance – one of the agencies responsible for the clean up operation of MT Prestige. The seminar was indeed a veritable source of information on the incident and equally educative for anyone in the shipping industry.

Highlights of the incident 

Vessel was not allowed in at the initial damage to the vessel due to strong political pressure by the regional government within Gallicia. The Spanish Authorities would not accept the vessel into any port to permit stabilisation of the vessel or cargo removal. Subsequent events suggest that this may not have been the optimum technical decision. The vessel had to be towed out well to sea, where the ship was exposed to strong winds and waves and subsequently broke into two.
After break up of the vessel, offshore equipment was generally not suited to recover oil of high viscosity. Containment was easy but pumping of oil became bigger issue and heating coils were needed. Local fishermen engaged in clean up did a much better job and collected 32,000 tones of oil in fish boxes.

M.T.PRESTIGE - FINAL MOMENTS 

System could not cope up with waste generation and segregation. Secondary pollution became a major concern. There were insufficient trained operators. The process to train and equip the workers took about two weeks.
There was inevitable log jam in recovery process. Large volumes of materials were collected but refineries were unwilling to take it. Finally it was laid down in storage areas. Waste volumes were huge - about 150,000 tones to date! 

(By Capt.Arun Sundaram,Manager,Quality,Insurance & HSSE dept.)

Seminar On M.T.Prestige

Safety Moment of the month (July)

Steel covers on spurling pipe was not applied and cemented due to which, water entered the chain locker during heavy seas. This water in turn overflowed from chain locker manhole cover which was not shut properly and flooded the entire fore peak store. Fortunately there was little damage to electrical panels of forward machinery.

Lessons Learnt:
1. Spurling pipes must be properly covered with steel closing plates, tightened and cemented off (if required), after departure port to avoid sea water ingress during voyage.
2. Chain locker manhole covers to be tightly shut to avoid any outflow of water into FP store.