Preparations underway to remove oil from ship

MANILA, Philippines - Diving operations to retrieve bodies from the sunken M/V St. Thomas Aquinas in Cebu have being suspended for four days to pave the way for preparations to siphon thousands of liters of oil from the ship, a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) official said yesterday.

Commodore William Melad, PCG Central Visayas District commander, said divers had to temporarily stop search, rescue and retrieval operations to allow the Nippon Salvage and Malayan Towage, both hired by 2Go Travel, to remove the oil from the sunken vessel.

2Go Travel owns the cargo ship Sulpicio Express Siete that collided with M/V St. Thomas Aquinas last Aug. 16.

Since the last dive on Monday, Melad said the death toll has remained at 115, with 22 others still missing. At least 733 people survived the sea tragedy.

Melad said it may take until tomorrow to install the equipment to be used for the siphoning of oil, and divers may resume their operations thereafter.

Melad said from the initial plan to work on one tank at a time, they opted to weld the flange and the tube, install the hose so the contents of the tanks that are positioned close to one another, could be siphoned simultaneously.    

Melad said it turned out the sunken ship had a total of 11 tanks based on their markings.

As of yesterday, he said the divers had installed flanges to six tanks and drilled holes to at least five tanks. 

The vessel had 120,000 liters of bunker oil, 20,000 liters of lube oil and 20,000 liters of diesel oil, as well as lubricating oil when it sank off Talisay, Cebu.

Since the maritime incident, an undetermined amount of oil has leaked out from the vessel and reached the shores of Cordova town.