KOCHI: The efforts to extract oil from the bunkers of MSC Elsa 3, which sunk into the depths of Arabian Sea around 14.6 nautical miles off Thottappally harbour in Alappuzha has hit rock bottom as the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has ended the contract with T and T Salvage, a global leader in marine salvage and wreck removal.
According to the Mercantile Marine Department, the ship owners have said that T and T Salvage was removed as they lacked expertise in removing the oil and wreck from the ship which is at a depth of 54 m from sea surface.
The move of the shipping firm has raised doubts about their intention as T and T had brought expert divers from Singapore and South Africa for oil extraction and the team had successfully sealed the leaks in the oil bunker pipeline. The Director General of Shipping had issued a notice to the shipping firm on June 10 setting a 48-hour deadline for oil extraction.
The diving team had completed capping and plugging of the fuel oil tanks of the sunken vessel Elsa 3 aided by diving support vessel SEAMAC III on June 12. The diving support vessel had returned to Kochi for installation of saturation diving system to aid the diving operations.
The T and T Salvage had said that the shipment had arrived and were under customs clearance.The ship owner had sought extension of time to start oil extraction citing adverse weather conditions. They had informed the DG Shipping that it was difficult to extract oil from the vessel due to monsoon turbulence. They had said that the hot tapping of oil from the bunker was a complex operation and the limited weather windows made it a challenging task.
The agency has said that it is not practical to remove the oil from the sunken vessel due to adverse weather conditions. They are in search of a new salvage agency and have promised to start the operations once the weather improves. The U-turn of the firm has caused concern that the oil extraction and removal of ship wreck may be delayed inordinately.