East China Sea oil tanker burns for third
day as winds, high waves lash rescuers
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[January 09, 2018]
By Josephine Mason and Yuna Park
BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - Strong winds,
high waves and toxic gases are hindering dozens of rescue boats
struggling to locate missing sailors from a stricken oil tanker in the
East China Sea and to extinguish a fire that has burned for the past
three days on the ship.
The poor conditions, with rain and waves as high as 3 meters (10 feet),
frustrated efforts to tame the fire and search for the 31 remaining
tanker crew members, China's Ministry of Transport said in a statement
on Tuesday.
The flames were forcing the South Korean Coast Guard's search and rescue
team to stay as far as 3 miles (4.8 km) away from the tanker, two South
Korean officials told Reuters.
The Chinese government said late on Tuesday it had not found a
"large-scale" oil leak, and the ultra light oil, known as condensate,
was burning off or evaporating so quickly it would leave little residue
- less than 1 percent - within five hours of a spill. That reduces the
chances of a crude-style oil slick.
Still, condensate is highly volatile when exposed to air and water and
concerns were growing the tanker could explode and sink while a flotilla
of 13 search and rescue vessels comb a 900-square-nautical-mile (3,100
sq km) area for the crew.
The tanker Sanchi (IMO:9356608), run by Iran's top oil shipping
operator, National Iranian Tanker Co, collided on Saturday with the CF
Crystal (IMO:9497050), carrying grain from the United States, about 160
nautical miles (300 km) off China's coast near Shanghai and the mouth of
the Yangtze River Delta.
The Sanchi was carrying 136,000 tonnes of condensate to South Korea,
equivalent to about 1 million barrels and worth about $60 million.
Chinese state media CCTV showed footage on Monday of boats dousing the
flames with water as plumes of thick dark smoke continued to billow from
the tanker.
The size of the oil spill from the ship and the extent of the
environmental harm were not known, but the disaster has the potential to
be the worst since 1991 when 260,000 tonnes of oil leaked off the
Angolan coast.
"We can't grasp the level of oil contamination at this moment. The cargo
is still on fire, so it is hard to figure out if oil is being spilled,"
Park Sung-dong, an official from South Korea's Ministry of Oceans and
Fisheries, told Reuters.
The body of a crew member was found on Monday in the water near the
tanker, China's transport ministry said. It had been handed over to the
civil affairs bureau.
The crew of the Sanchi are all Iranian nationals except for two
Bangladeshi citizens.
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Smoke is seen from Panama-registered Sanchi tanker carrying Iranian
oil that caught ablaze after it collided with a Chinese freight ship
in the East China Sea, in this January 9, 2018 handout picture
released by China's Ministry of Transport. China's Ministry of
Transport/Handout via REUTERS
TANKER ON THE MOVE
Satellite imagery of the ship showed the blaze has weakened since the
weekend, although the strong winds are dragging the tanker away from the
Chinese coast, according to Greenpeace.
Between Sunday and Monday, the floating inferno traveled some 50
kilometers (31 miles) south east, according to Rashid Kang,
campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia.
Another major concern is damage to the region's rich fish reserves.
The Zhoushan fishing ground where the crash occurred is known as one
of the biggest in the East China Sea, particularly for mackerel and
croaker, according to Greenpeace.
FISHERMEN TO THE RESCUE
The CF Crystal suffered limited damage and the 21 crew members, all
Chinese nationals, were rescued by a passing fishing trawler on
Saturday night, according to a report posted by state-owned Xinhua
News to its Twitter account on Tuesday.
"The fire was so fierce. It kept exploding like bombs. So loud,"
said Zhu Tingwen, a sailor on the fishing boat.
The trawler from Zhejiang province scoured for survivors on the
tanker, but could not get close enough because of the fire, Xinhua
said.
"Anyone will go for a rescue in this case," said the fishing boat
captain Zheng Lei. "It just happened to be me."
The freighter has been taken to a port near Shanghai where
investigators will start work on assessing the cause of the
disaster, the government said.
China's transport ministry warned toxic gas from the tanker was
harmful to the rescue workers and that protective clothing and gas
testing equipment was being dispatched to the emergency teams.
Trying to contain a spill of condensate, which is extremely low in
density, highly toxic and much more explosive than normal crude oil,
may be difficult.
"We're not going to see a slick like with crude, but it's soluble,
toxic and flammable, which is why we're seeing the fire. A lot of it
is burning off or evaporating," said Greenpeace's Kang.
(Reporting by Josephine Mason, Beijing News Monitoring and Meng Meng
in BEIJING; Jane Chung and Yuna Park in SEOUL; Editing by Christian
Schmollinger and Mark Potter)
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