Explosion risk curbs search, rescue efforts
BEIJING — 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 Monday, as authorities from three countries struggled to find its 32 missing crew members and contain oil spewing from the blazing wreck.
State broadcaster China Central Television, citing Chinese officials, reported Monday that none of the 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis who have been missing since the collision late Saturday have been found. Search and cleanup efforts have been hampered by fierce fires and poisonous gases that have engulfed the tanker and surrounding waters, CCTV reported.
The Panama-registered tanker Sanchi was sailing from Iran to South Korea when it collided with the Hong Kong-registered 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 U.S. have sent ships and planes to search for the Sanchi’s crew, all of whom remain missing. The U.S. Navy sent a P-8A aircraft from Okinawa, Japan, to aid the search.
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 wasn’t immediately clear what caused the collision.
Kwon Yong-deok, a Korea Coast Guard official, said thick black smoke was still billowing from the ship on Monday and bad weather worsened visibility at the scene.
The Sanchi was carrying 150,000 tons, or nearly 1 million barrels of condensate, a type of ultra-light oil, according to Chinese authorities, who have dispatched 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 scale 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.