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Pete Bevington
26 November, 2009
AN INVESTIGATION is looking into the second minor oil spill
during a ship to ship transfer inside one month at Sullom
Voe oil terminal, in Shetland.
Around five litres of gas condensate was spilt when the
tanker Perseverance was offloading her cargo onto the
Eternal Pride on Thursday morning.
The incident has incurred the wrath of the port authority,
which had been assured that a similar incident involving one
of the vessels earlier this month was “a one off”.
A Sullom Voe pilot boat and a pollution response vessel from
terminal operators BP were both sent to look into the spill,
which has been reported to the Maritime and Coastguard
Agency and environmental watchdog SEPA. |
Harbourmaster Roger Moore
said: “We are not very happy about this at all because we
were assured by the company involved that procedures had
been put in place to make sure that this didn’t happen
again. We are taking quite a hard line on this.”
The incident is embarrassing for the port which is trying
desperately hard to attract new ship to ship business to
help replace the dwindling tanker traffic transporting North
Sea crude.
The Perseverance, a Russian vessel, was involved in
the previous spill when between two and five litres of gas
condensate entered the harbour on 10 November. The oil is so
light that it evaporates almost instantly.
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