Equipment to siphon oil from sunken ferry will arrive this week

MANILA, Philippines - Equipment that would be used to siphon off the oil from the sunken ship M/V St. Thomas Aquinas will arrive from Japan on Thursday, a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) official said yesterday.

PCG Central Visayas District commander Commodore William Melad said there was a need to extract the remaining 120,000 liters of bunker oil, 20,000 liters of lube oil and 20,000 liters of diesel oil from the ship to prevent further damage to the environment.

2Go Travel, the owner and operator of the 11,405 gross ton M/V St. Thomas Aquinas, has contracted Malayan Towage and Nippon Salvage to remove the remaining oil from the wreckage.

They would have to draw out the contents from the Aquinas’ six tanks, though officials do not have an estimate of the volume of oil in the ship.

A tugboat of Malayan Towage reportedly fetched the equipment from Japan last Thursday and it would take them until Sept. 5 to travel back to Cebu.

“They would siphon the oil and it would be transferred to a container on board the tugboat and this would put an end to the oil spill, ” Melad said.

Melad, however, clarified that the Sept. 5 date of arrival of the equipment was only tentative since it would depend on weather conditions.

At the time of the accident on Aug. 16, Aquinas was reportedly carrying 120,000 liters of bunker oil, 20,000 liters of lube oil and 20,000 liters of diesel oil when it collided with a cargo vessel near Cebu.

But Melad said the danger of the oil spill has been “substantially reduced” since 2Go Travel has plugged some of the leaks in the sunken ship.

“We wrote to 2Go and informed them that it is their responsibility to remove the oil and to undertake onshore clean up… They have plugged the vents (where the oil was seen coming out) but oil looks for its own level. There are still crevices that they are still trying to locate,” he added.

Local government units and national government agencies mobilized personnel and volunteers to clean up the mess left by the leaking oil on the coastal areas.