Oil tanker ‘at risk of exploding’ after collision with freighter
● Search goes on for 32 missing crew ● Efforts to contain oil hindered by fire
An oil tanker that caught fire after colliding with a freighter off China’s east coast is at risk of exploding and sinking, Chinese state media reported yesterday.
The reports came as authorities from three countries struggled to find the vessel’s 32 missing crew members and contain oil spewing from the blazing wreck.
State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), citing Chinese officials, said none of the 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis who have been missing since the collision late on Saturday had been found as of 8am yesterday. Search and clean-up efforts have been hampered by fierce fires and poisonous gases that have engulfed the tanker and surrounding waters, CCTV reported.
The Panama-registered tankers an chi was sailing from Iran to South Korea when it collided with the Hong Kongregistered freighter CF Crystal in the East China Sea, 160 miles off the coast of Shanghai, China’s ministry of transport said.
China, South Korea and the US have sent ships and planes to search for the Sanchi’s crew, all of whom remain missing. The US navy, which sent a P-8A aircraft from Okinawa, Japan, to aid the search, said late on Sunday that none of the missing crew had been found.
All 21 crew members of the Crystal, which was carrying grain from the United States to China, were rescued, the Chinese ministry said. The Crystal’s crew members were all Chinese nationals.
It was not immediately clear what caused the collision.
Kwon Yong-deok, a Korea Coast Guard official, said thick black smoke was still billowing from the ship yesterday afternoon and bad weather was worsening visibility at the scene.
The Sanchi was carrying nearly one million barrels of condensate, a type of ultralight oil, according to Chinese authorities, who have disscale patched three ships to clean the spill.
By comparison, the Exxon Valdez was carrying 1.26 million barrels of crude oil when it spilled 260,000 barrels into Prince William Sound off Alaska in 1989, badly damaging local ecology and the area’s fishing-based economy.
But the size of the oil slick from the Sanchi – and the of the environmental toll – may be smaller. Unlike the thick crude that gushed out of the Valdez, much of the light, gassy condensate from the Sanchi may have evaporated or burned immediately, Kwon said.
The Sanchi’s own fuel that leaked during the collision will be more difficult to clean, officials said.
South Korean petrochemical company Hanwha Total Company, a partnership between the Seoul-based Hanwha Group and French oil giant Total, said in an e-mail that it had contracted the Sanchi, owned by the National Iranian Tanker Co, to import Iranian condensate to South Korea.
A Hanwha Total spokesman, who asked not to be named citing office policies, said there was “little possibility” that condensate would leave traces in the ocean after it burned.
The Sanchi’s cargo was estimated to be worth more than $60 million (£44.2m).