By Angel Gonzalez and Naureen Malik
of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

HOUSTON (Dow Jones) – A collision between an oil tanker bound for Exxon Mobil Corp.’s (XOM) Beaumont refinery and an outbound vessel towing barges resulted in a major crude oil spill in the port of Port Arthur, Texas on Saturday.

The U.S. Coast Guard said that the towing vessel and the two barges it was pushing tore a hole on the side of the 807-foot tanker Eagle Otome at about 9:30 a.m. CST, spilling an estimated 450,000 gallons of crude oil, or about 11,000 barrels. The Sabine Neches Waterway is closed to all vessel traffic along Port Arthur’s river front, the Coast Guard said in a press release.

• KEEP READING »
• NOAA Office of Response: T/V Eagle Otome-Barge Collision (photos and map) »
• news video report »
• UPDATE: Washington Post / January 24, 2010; 11:10 AM: Coast Guard: Oil spill in Texas waterway Contained »

You may find comments on this collision by professional mariners on gCaptain forum post: Port Arthur -Tanker Eagle Otone holed by barge.

Estimates for the amount of oil that spilled earlier this week after the cargo ship, Pacific Adventurer, sustained damage in Cyclone Hamishthe near Brisbane, Australia is now upwards of 200,000 liters.  This is substantially more than the 42,000 liters first stated by the ship’s owner, Swire Shipping.  Australian authorities have declared several coastal areas near Brisbane disaster zones, with oil blanketing more than 60 kilometers of coast.  CNN tells us:

“This is a very serious situation,” Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said, according to a news release on Friday. “It appears the volume of oil involved is much greater than originally reported by the Pacific Adventurer. And the effect of the oil spill is more widespread.”

The Pacific Adventurer sustained damage early Wednesday when Cyclone Hamish struck the waters of eastern Australia with more than 125 kph (77 mph) winds. The cargo ship lost 30 of its 50 containers of ammonium nitrate about 13 kilometers (8 miles) off the coast of Cape Moreton. Those containers are still missing.

Just a few weeks ago, the Pacific Adventurer was involved in a fatal collision with a Chinese patrol boat, killing 17 naval personnel.

The ship is currently in the custody of Australia’s Maritime Safety Authority in Brisbane, as the investigation into the spill continues. [Continue Reading →]

Did you know that Exxon Valdez’s Captain, Joesph Hazelwood, never had his masters’ license revoked and it remains valid to this date?

To put the recent conviction of Cosco Busan’s pilot John Cota in perspective, here are ten of the world’s largest oil spills in which the pilot was not convicted of federal charges.

Amoco Cadiz The Amoco Cadiz encountered stormy weather and ran aground off the coast of Brittany, France on March 16, 1978. Its entire cargo of 68.7 million gallons of oil spilled into the sea, polluting about 200 miles of Brittany’s coastline.

Arabian Gulf Spills Beginning in late January of the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi Army destroyed tankers, oil terminals, and oil wells in Kuwait, causing the release of about 900,000,000 barrels of oil. This was the largest oil spill in history.

Argo Merchant On December 15, 1976, the Argo Merchant ran aground on Fishing Rip (Nantucket Shoals), 29 nautical miles southeast of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts in high winds and ten foot seas. Six days later, the vessel broke apart and spilled its entire cargo of 7.7 million gallons of No. 6 fuel oil.

Barge Bouchard 155 On August 10, 1993, three ships collided in Tampa Bay, Florida: the barge Bouchard 155, the freighter Balsa 37, and the barge Ocean 255. The Bouchard 155 spilled an estimated 336,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil into Tampa Bay.

Barge Cibro Savannah On March 6, 1990, the Cibro Savannah exploded and caught fire while departing the pier at the Citgo facility in Linden, New Jersey. About 127,000 gallons of oil remained unaccounted for after the incident. No one knows how much oil burned and how much spilled into the environment.

Burmah Agate On November 1, 1979, the Burmah Agate collided with the freighter Mimosa southeast of Galveston Entrance in the Gulf of Mexico. The collision caused an explosion and a fire on the Burmah Agate that burned until January 8, 1980. An estimated 2.6 million gallons of oil were released into the environment, and another 7.8 million gallons were consumed by the fire.

Exxon Valdez On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The tanker was traveling outside the normal shipping lanes in an attempt to avoid ice. It spilled 10.8 million gallons of oil (out of a total cargo of 53 million gallons) into the marine environment, and impacted more than 1,100 miles of non-continuous Alaskan coastline. State and Federal agencies continue to monitor the effects of this spill, which was the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

Ixtoc I The 2-mile-deep exploratory well, Ixtoc I, blew out on June 3, 1979 in the Bay of Campeche off Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico. By the time the well was brought under control in March, 1980, an estimated 140 million gallons of oil had spilled into the bay. The Ixtoc I spill is currently #2 on the all-time list of largest oil spills of all time.

Jupiter On September 16, 1990, the tank vessel Jupiter was offloading gasoline at a refinery on the Saginaw River near Bay City, Michigan, when a fire started on board and the vessel exploded.

Megaborg The Megaborg released 5.1 million gallons of oil as the result of a lightering accident and subsequent fire. The incident occurred 60 nautical miles south-southeast of Galveston, Texas on June 8, 1990.

Photo Courtesy: Santa Barbara Indepedent

This weeks incident photo comes from Sunday’s oil spill six miles offshore from Carpinteria in the Santa Barbara Channel.  With an estimated 1,400 gallons of oil leaked into the water, environmental damage was relatively light due to favorable wind conditions and the leak never made landfall.  As of now, most all the oil is cleaned up.

What really raises concerns in this incident is the fact that the oil leaked from the same platform (Platform A) that caused the January 1969 oil spill where over 1 million gallons of oil leaked into the channel.

More information on this incident can be found HERE.

Carl Nolte of the San Francisco Chronicle writes:

According to a report released Thursday by the state pilot commission…

“There was unequivocally pilot error,” said Gary Gleason, an attorney for the state Board of Pilot Commissioners, which is appointed by the governor to regulate ship pilots in San Francisco, Suisun and San Pablo bays.

John Cota was in control of the 901- foot-long container ship Cosco Busan when it smashed into one of the towers of the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7. The crash caused a 220-foot long gash in the side of the ship and punctured the ship’s fuel tanks. More than 50,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil spilled out, fouling 26 miles of shoreline and killing more than 2,000 birds.

Gleason presented the report to the seven members of the commission and closed with a recording of Cota’s voice, made on the Cosco Busan just after the accident.

“Oh, yeah, it’s so foggy. I shouldn’t have gone,” the pilot said. “I’m not going to do well on this one.” As Cota spoke, the mournful sound of the ship’s fog signal was heard in the background.

Continue Reading…

You can find the full pilot commission report HERE.

OPA 90, the legislation enacted after the Exxon Valdez incident mandated double hull technology, essentially wrapping a second hull around the first, on all newly built tankers. While this has been mostly effective and (had it been mandated for use on container ships) would have prevented last year’s San Francisco Oil Spill, it fails to protect the environment during catastrophic groundings. Mo Husain of MH Systems, Inc. has recently worked on perfecting alternative means of “loss of containment” prevention. He tells us:

CONCEPT MADE SIMPLE
Imagine a Straw…

The underpressure concept is best understood by making an analogy with which most people can identify. Imagine sipping water half-way up through a straw and sealing off the top of the straw with your fingertip. A simple principle of hydraulics allows the water to be held in the straw at this level until the finger is released.

This same principle allows oil to be contained within the hull should a rupture occur in the tank. When a tanker is loaded, the oil level inside the tank is higher than the surrounding seawater level. This causes a higher pressure to exist inside the tanker due to hydrostatic pressure. Normally, when a hull is ruptured, the pressure inside forces oil to flow out up to the level of the surrounding seawater (discounting density). Using AUPS, this complete loss would not occur.

The system equalizes the pressure inside and outside the tanker at the rupture point by applying a slight underpressure of 2 to 4 psi in the ullage space of the tank. As oil flows out, it is replaced by seawater up to the rupture point only. Oil loss is held to a minimum as all oil above the rupture point will remain in the tanker. In the event of an accidental grounding bottom rupture, AUPS would prevent virtually all oil spillage from the tanker.

For a comprehensive look at this system click HERE and for the work Mo is doing on Ballast Water Treatment visit his company’s blog found HERE.

Also see our related post History’s 10 Most Famous Oil Spills.

CNN tells us:

The 420,000-gallon oil spill polluting 98 miles of the Mississippi River happened early Wednesday when a 61-foot barge carrying the fuel collided with a tanker, just north of the massive bridges connecting downtown New Orleans to communities across the river.

Operations to salvage the barge, which is owned by American Commercial Lines Inc., were to begin Thursday, said Petty Officer Jaclyn Young. She said the barge was no longer leaking oil.

Containment booms were installed Wednesday to prevent the oil from spreading to environmentally sensitive areas and seeping into water-supply intake valves in Gretna, St. Bernard, Dalcour, Belle Chasse, Pointe a la Hache, Port Sulphur and Boothville-Venice, Young said.

The tug Mel Oliver, which had been hired to push the barge upriver, had no properly licensed crew on board the vessel, Young said. The tugboat pilot had only an apprentice mate’s license instead of the required master’s license, she added.

We are still in the process of sorting out information regarding the cause of the incident but are familiar with the state of American Commercial Lines in light of their recent financial difficulties. In our close working relationship with Northeast Maritime Institute we have learned that ACL had abruptly ended a contract established to train ACL’s mariners. This training was developed to provide unlicensed crew members training as captains and helped them get both the skills need to navigate inland rivers. Specific to collision avoidance the Institute used hands on training from licensed instructors as well as advanced ship simulators that allow mariners to simulate transits on the Mississippi.

gCaptain is also investigating a death that occurred recently when a captain fell overboard. Initial reports question the role vessel maintenance played in the incident.

Stay tuned HERE for continued coverage.

UPDATE:

We have been informed that the tugboat pushing an American Commercial Lines barge was owned and operated by a 3rd party vendor, not ACL. With further research gCaptain has also learned that ACL had identified the need to vet the level of training provided to mariners by vendor companies. According to a Northeast Maritime Institute representative they had made significant progress in the development of this program when ACL walked away from the training contract with NMI in June of this year.

Today’s AP wire tells us:

The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit six months ago accusing the pilot and the owner of the Cosco Busan of breaking environmental laws when the ship struck a bridge support and spilled 53,000 gallons of toxic oil.

In legal papers filed Thursday, Hong Kong-based ship owner Regal Stone argues that the episode was caused by what it called the gross negligence and willful misconduct of the United States.

The company says the government should not have granted Capt. John Cota licenses because he was not medically fit for duty. (Full Story)

.

BYM Marine and Maritime news is reporting:

A federal grand jury has returned an indictment charging John Joseph Cota, a U.S. Coast Guard and California licensed ship pilot, with making false statements to the Coast Guard concerning his medications and medical conditions in 2006 and 2007. The false statements arose from annual physical examinations that pilots are required to complete every year to maintain their pilot’s license.

Cota, who was the pilot of the Cosco Busan, was previously charged with negligently causing the discharge of approximately 50,000 gallons of oil in San Francisco Bay from the 65,131-ton container ship when he caused the ship to collide with the San Francisco Bay Bridge on Nov. 7, 2007.

The grand jury’s indictment supersedes and includes charges brought previously by a criminal information that charged Cota with violating the Clean Water Act (CWA), as amended by the Oil Spill Act of 1990, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by causing the death of protected species of migratory birds.

The full post is here.

Those with medical concerns at sea should also check Global Rescue’s Medical Extraction Insurance for Mariners

___________________________

This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

TROUBLE ON OILY WATERS.
MV COSCO BUSAN vs THE BRIDGE ON SAN FRANCISCO BAY

BY John G. Denham

On Wednesday 7 November 2007, it started as a short 10 AM radio news item. A tanker hit the bay bridge and some oil was spilled. Just another boating accident. By noon it was reported that the slight contact by a container ship with the “D” tower of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge was more than slight and oil in an unknown amount was spilled. By sunset there were rumors that the oil spill was a major catastrophe. The media scrambled to find information but was unsuccessful. The USCG was not fully aware of the situation and there were no available eye witnesses coming forth Finding available transportation to the scene was near impossible as fog shrouded the bay although incoming ships, ferries and tugs seemed to be moving freely near the bridge.

Lacking official news, the print press, TV and a number of blogs did an excellent job keeping interested persons informed with bits of information pried from various sources and a network of unofficial marine observers e.g., “g Captain.com,” “ flickr.com ” and ”boatingsf.com .” The lack of speculation was evident and although the reports were accurate only professionals and maritime aficionados recognized inconsistencies.

Therefore, this review will summarize what was reported and insert explanations as appropriate, including probable scenarios of what may have transpired. Regardless of facts to be determined later, all the facts may never be known without the truthful statements of those involved.

There will be hearings, investigations, inquiries and probably court trials, both in admiralty and criminal and civil justice; one to find fault, others to make financial awards. The oil spill and its management will be examined by others, ad infinitum, but most disturbing will be the knee-jerk reaction by some to propose solutions before the reason is known.

Time has since passed and we now know the culprit was not a tanker, but the 284.7 meter ( 911 foot) motor (diesel) ship COSCO BUSAN, ex- Hanjin Cairo a foreign flag containership registered in Hong Kong. The captain was Mao Cai Sun of the Peoples Republic of China and the crew was allegedly Chinese. The San Francisco Bar Pilot was John J. Cota a veteran of 27 years as a pilot. The ship was nearly fully loaded with containers and bound for Korea. The China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) denied any ownership or managerial responsibility for COSCO BUSAN. The name HANJIN, a Korean shipping company was prominently displayed on the ship’s side but the reported owners are Regal Stone, LTD of Hong Kong and the managing operator was Fleet Management Limited of Hong Kong. [Continue Reading →]