CHENNAI: It is more than 45 days since the ships — M T Dawn Kancheepuram and B W Maple — collided resulting in huge oil spill along the city’s coast. But the inquiry by the Directorate-General of Shipping is yet to ascertain the exact quantity of oil that spilled from M T Dawn.
While the ship company had claimed that just 1.2 to 2 tonnes of oil spilled from its ship, officials of Indian Coast Guard, which supervises the cleaning operations, estimated that at least 20 tonnes of oil should have spilled into the sea.
But the Directorate of Shipping functioning under the Union Shipping Ministry, despite conducting an inquiry in the ship, is yet to ascertain the exact quantity of oil that spilled into sea.
When queried about this, officials involved in the investigation noted that the difficulty in estimating the oil quantum is due to mixing of sea water with oil into one of the oil tanks in the ship. “Only after we analyse the oil-water mixture in the ship’s tank, we can ascertain how much oil actually spilled into the sea,” a Directorate General of Shipping official told Express.
Sources said the process of removing the oil-water mixture from the tanks in the ship is being delayed as there are no adequate containers to transport them and efforts are on for the same.
However, officials were non-committal on the actual quantity of the oil present in the ship at the time of collision or the full capacity of the tanks in the ship.
Meanwhile, efforts are on to pay the claims filed by the fishing community. “The fishermen have been provided with forms which they have to fill up,” said the official.