Tanker was too slow after warning: police

The Hong Kong-registered tanker involved in Korea`s largest-ever oil spill did not take enough precautions to avoid the collision with a crane-carrying barge on Friday, local police said yesterday.

The supertanker Hebei Spirit anchored off the western shores of Taean leaked 10,500 tons of crude oil, devastating the once ecologically pristine region.

"It appears that the tanker failed to take necessary actions while the tugboats (that had been towing the barge) tried to move away from it in the bad weather," Choi Sang-hwan, chief of Taean maritime police, was quoted as saying by Yonhap News.

"Telephone records and radar trails at the control tower showed that the tugboats had been sailing about 3.2 kilometers away from the tanker until heavy seas forced them towards the tanker."

As the tugboats went off their planned course about an hour before the crash, the control center tried to contact the tugboats, to no avail.

Contrary to what was reported earlier, the tow wire that connected the offshore crane to the tugboat broke just about 10 minutes before the collision, according to Choi.

Local authorities at the Daesan control center said they had warned the tanker at 6:27 a.m. on Friday to move away because the boats were out of control nearby. Hebei Spirit responded that it would start moving. When the tanker was warned again at 6:52 a.m., its captain said it would move after the boats passed by, according to contact records released by the Ministry of Maritimes Affairs and Fisheries.

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"The crash seems to have occurred around 7 a.m. on Friday," Choi said. "We will focus on figuring out the natural or man-made causes of the accident, and determining the degree of fault of the tanker and the tugboats."

Hebei Spirit had been waiting for orders to enter the single-point mooring base where large tankers are supposed to be anchored.

Investigators plan to cross-examine those representing the supertanker on the details of the incident.

The tanker is owned by China`s Hebei Ocean Shipping Co. and managed by the British firm V.Ships.

"We are fully cooperating with the Korean authorities, and regret that the incident happened in the first place," Ferdi Stolzenberg, spokesman of V.Ships, told The Korea Herald.

"But when the crane barge ran out of control and the ship could not communicate with the tugboats, whose radios were on a different frequency from the official emergency frequency, there was little the ship could do, being fully anchored, as instructed by the Daesan authorities the previous night."

V.Ships, in a letter released to the media on Tuesday, had urged Samsung, owner of the tugboats, to take the lead in the clean-up.

Nearly 17,000 local residents, volunteers, soldiers and police continued to clear the oil slick, which has spread some 70 kilometers along the coastline.

As a lack of necessary equipment has hindered cleanup efforts, the government yesterday asked an international organization called the Northwest Pacific Action Plan to provide 100 tons of oil sorbents.

At least 25 tons of sorbents are needed per day in order to soak up the oil by absorption, but there are only 5 tons left, according to government officials.

The government also came under fire for its poor initial handling of the crisis.

The Maritime Affairs Ministry had predicted that it would take at least 24 hours for the leaked oil to reach the shore, but in fact it took only 13 hours. The ministry has claimed it has the capacity to collect 16,600 tons of oil in the first three days of a spill, but only about 900 tons have has collected so far.

The six townships - Taean, Seosan, Boryung, Seocheon, Hongsung and Dangjin - were declared special disaster zones on Tuesday, and are now eligible for financial and administrative aid.



By Kim So-hyun



(sophie@heraldm.com)