Grounded Tanker Blocks Suez Canal for Hours
Photo of a big red oil tanker. There is long oil pipeline and cargo crane on deck of this ship. Vessel is steaming in blue, calm water to skyline under blue sky with smooth white clouds.
*As Chief Engineer is jailed for oily waste discharge
(TME) An Aframax tanker heading southbound this afternoon in the Suez Canal lost steering control and became wedged across the navigational channel of the canal south of Little Bitter Lake blocking all traffic. The Suez Canal Authority is reporting that it was successful in refloating and repositioning the vessel back into the channel.
AIS data shows the vessel surrounded by tugs making intermittent progress with at least six more vessels also southbound caught directly behind the disabled tanker. The incident is happening near the southern terminus of the canal in the area with single traffic not far from where the Ever Given became stranded in 2021.
The tanker is the 114,600 dwt Affinity V registered in Singapore. The six-year-old vessel had offloaded its cargo in Portugal so it was transiting the canal with only ballast returning to Saudi Arabia to load its next cargo. The vessel is 828 feet long and currently reported to be operating with a 36.7-foot draft.
According to Lieutenant-General Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, the tanker had “a technical malfunction at the ship’s rudder, which caused the loss of the ability to steer and strand the ship.” It was at the 143 kilometer mark in the channel which places the vessel approximately halfway between Little Bitter Lake and the southern terminus at Suez.
The Suez Canal Authority received reports at approximately 5 p.m. local time that the tanker was disabled and immediately dispatched five tugs for a rescue attempt. They found the vessel diagonally across the channel and it took nearly five hours for the vessel to be pulled free of the bank and repositioned into the channel. An SCA tug now has the lead tow line guiding the tanker south while three Svitzer tugs remain attached by lines at the stern.
The vessel is expected to continue to make slow progress and it could be several more hours before it clears the channel. The canal authority however is seeking to reassure the shipping industry that they were able to recover from the grounding and that operations are proceeding in the Suez.
In another development, the chief engineer of a bulker has been sentenced to a year in prison for ordering the discharge of about 10,000 gallons of oily bilge water over the side off the coast of Louisiana.
Chief engineer Kirill Kompaniets was in charge of the engine department aboard the Gannet Bulker during a voyage in early 2021. On March 13, the vessel was anchored in Southwest Pass, within U.S. waters. The ballast water treatment system (BWTS) had been giving the crew some trouble, and the engineers used the time to replace some faulty valves on the equipment. One of the valves failed when the crew opened it partially to inspect it, spilling water into the engine room where it mixed with oily waste in the bilges.
Kompaniets did not report this incident to the U.S. Coast Guard, and that night, he and a subordinate crewmember discharged about 10,000 gallons of untreated bilge water over the side using an emergency fire pump. He did not record the incident in the oil record book.
A crewmember of the Gannet Bulker notified the U.S. Coast Guard of the discharge. Before marine inspectors came to interview the crew and examine the ship, Kompaniets instructed his subordinates to give them a false story and to clean the bilges. He also ordered the destruction of the alarm printout for automatically logged equipment alarms for the time of the discharge, and he created a false oil record book entry which did not disclose the extent of the valve failure incident. He also asserted that the illegal discharge was conducted at the request of the master.
Kompaniets pleaded guilty to two felony pollution charges in May and admitted to an account of the events aboard ship.
“The intentional pollution of U.S. waters and the deliberate effort to cover up the crime are extremely serious criminal offenses that will not be tolerated,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “Prosecutions such as this one should send a clear message to those that would violate the law and endanger our precious natural resources.”
On Wednesday, Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown sentenced Kompaniets to serve a year and a day in prison, pay a $5,000 fine and serve six months of supervised release. The federal investigation into the incident is under way.
*Culled from The Maritime Executive
(TME) An Aframax tanker heading southbound this afternoon in the Suez Canal lost steering control and became wedged across the navigational channel of the canal south of Little Bitter Lake blocking all traffic. The Suez Canal Authority is reporting that it was successful in refloating and repositioning the vessel back into the channel.
AIS data shows the vessel surrounded by tugs making intermittent progress with at least six more vessels also southbound caught directly behind the disabled tanker. The incident is happening near the southern terminus of the canal in the area with single traffic not far from where the Ever Given became stranded in 2021.
The tanker is the 114,600 dwt Affinity V registered in Singapore. The six-year-old vessel had offloaded its cargo in Portugal so it was transiting the canal with only ballast returning to Saudi Arabia to load its next cargo. The vessel is 828 feet long and currently reported to be operating with a 36.7-foot draft.
According to Lieutenant-General Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, the tanker had “a technical malfunction at the ship’s rudder, which caused the loss of the ability to steer and strand the ship.” It was at the 143 kilometer mark in the channel which places the vessel approximately halfway between Little Bitter Lake and the southern terminus at Suez.
The Suez Canal Authority received reports at approximately 5 p.m. local time that the tanker was disabled and immediately dispatched five tugs for a rescue attempt. They found the vessel diagonally across the channel and it took nearly five hours for the vessel to be pulled free of the bank and repositioned into the channel. An SCA tug now has the lead tow line guiding the tanker south while three Svitzer tugs remain attached by lines at the stern.
The vessel is expected to continue to make slow progress and it could be several more hours before it clears the channel. The canal authority however is seeking to reassure the shipping industry that they were able to recover from the grounding and that operations are proceeding in the Suez.
In another development, the chief engineer of a bulker has been sentenced to a year in prison for ordering the discharge of about 10,000 gallons of oily bilge water over the side off the coast of Louisiana.
Chief engineer Kirill Kompaniets was in charge of the engine department aboard the Gannet Bulker during a voyage in early 2021. On March 13, the vessel was anchored in Southwest Pass, within U.S. waters. The ballast water treatment system (BWTS) had been giving the crew some trouble, and the engineers used the time to replace some faulty valves on the equipment. One of the valves failed when the crew opened it partially to inspect it, spilling water into the engine room where it mixed with oily waste in the bilges.
Kompaniets did not report this incident to the U.S. Coast Guard, and that night, he and a subordinate crewmember discharged about 10,000 gallons of untreated bilge water over the side using an emergency fire pump. He did not record the incident in the oil record book.
A crewmember of the Gannet Bulker notified the U.S. Coast Guard of the discharge. Before marine inspectors came to interview the crew and examine the ship, Kompaniets instructed his subordinates to give them a false story and to clean the bilges. He also ordered the destruction of the alarm printout for automatically logged equipment alarms for the time of the discharge, and he created a false oil record book entry which did not disclose the extent of the valve failure incident. He also asserted that the illegal discharge was conducted at the request of the master.
Kompaniets pleaded guilty to two felony pollution charges in May and admitted to an account of the events aboard ship.
“The intentional pollution of U.S. waters and the deliberate effort to cover up the crime are extremely serious criminal offenses that will not be tolerated,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “Prosecutions such as this one should send a clear message to those that would violate the law and endanger our precious natural resources.”
On Wednesday, Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown sentenced Kompaniets to serve a year and a day in prison, pay a $5,000 fine and serve six months of supervised release. The federal investigation into the incident is under way.
*Culled from The Maritime Executive
FOLLOW US
About Post Author
