Siphoning of fuel deferred

CEBU, Philippines - The siphoning of the remaining oil from the sunken ship, M/V Saint Thomas Aquinas, earlier set today was deferred as the drilling of the oil tanks have yet completely done.

This was announced by Noel Kimmayong of Malayan Towage during the regular command conference yesterday at the Cebu City Hall adding that the drilling is part of the preparatory process before the actual siphoning tomorrow.

The drilling of the tanks started last September 9 and out of the 11 banker oil tanks, five were drilled completely.

Of the five tanks already drilled, two tanks were found empty from oil, said Kimmayong.

Kimmayong though cannot determine yet the amount of oil remaining in the three tanks that were drilled by the Japanese and Filipino divers.

M/V Saint Thomas Aquinas had reportedly around 120,000 liters of lube oil, diesel and fuel oil when it sunk.

Kimmayong said they are trying to finish and find time to drill all the six remaining tanks today for tomorrow’s siphoning.

“I hope we could really finish the drilling process, the divers can only dive for 45 minutes and do all the drillings, afterwards decompress for two hours,” Kimmayong explained.

2GO’s representative Boy Mundo showed two short videos of the actual underwater drillings. /GMR (FREEMAN)