Accidents

Olympic Tug and Barge penalised for Seattle oil spill The Department of Ecology in the US West Coast state of Washington says it has fined Olympic Tug & Barge Company US$15,500 for an 13 April spill of two gallons of diesel fuel into the East Waterway off Harbor Island in Seattle. According to Ecology the incident involved crew inattention during a fuel transfer between two tugs. Washington law is very clear about oil spill prevention, said Dale Jensen, who manages Ecologys spill prevention, preparedness and response programme. All fuel transfers are serious business, every time. This penalty is about a failure to exercise that care. An Ecology statement says that Olympic crews began to transfer 25,000 gallons of diesel fuel from the tug CF Campbell to the tug Hunter D. About 13,000 gallons into the transfer, a member of the Campbells crew noticed fuel flowing out of a vent tube on the Hunter D. The crews stopped the transfer, began clean-up work, and notified Ecology and the U.S. Coast Guard. The spill totalled five gallons. Three gallons remained on deck, and just two went into the East Waterway. Ecologys follow-up investigation "conducted with the US Coast Guard and with Olympics...

Violating Pollution Prevention Act United States Attorney George E.B. Holding announced that in federal court, May 3, Vaja Sikharulidze, a citizen of Georgia, pled guilty before United States District Judge James C. Dever, III to violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, in violation of Title 33, United States Code, Sections 1901, et. seq. A Criminal Information was filed on April 23.Sikharulidze, 59, was the Chief Engineer of the Motor Tanker Chem Faros, a 21,145 gross-ton ocean-going cargo ship. The ship was operated by Cooperative Success Maritime SA and regularly transported cargo between various ports in Asia and the United States, to include Morehead City, N.C.Consistent with requirements in the APPS regulations, a vessel other than an oil tanker, must maintain a record known as an Oil Record Book in which transfer and disposal of all oil-contaminated waste and the discharge overboard and disposal otherwise of such waste, must be fully and accurately recorded by the person in charge of the operations. Oil-contaminated bilge waste can be discharged overboard if it is processed through on-board pollution prevention equipment known as the Oily Water Separator, which is used to separate the water from the oil and other wastes, and the...