Page 34: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 1993)

Recent Tanker Disasters

Cause European Owners

To Ease OPA90 Opposition

The recent groundings and re- sulting old spills from the tankers

Braer, off the Shetland Islands, and

Aegean Sea, near the approaches to

Gibraltar, are forcing European tanker owners to back-off from their adamant opposition to the U.S. Oil

Pollution Act of1990 due to increased political and environmental pres- sure from their own countries.

The International Association of

Independent Tanker Owners (Intertanko) in particular has dropped its harsh rhetoric that had come to characterize European re- sponse to the U.S. legislation.

Speaking at a recent meeting in the U.S., Intertanko's chairman,

Andreas K.L. Ugland, stated: "The sea is our home and we must protect it.. .Intertanko fully accepts and sup- ports the principle of effective inter- national rules for improving the safety of the environment and sup- ports the environmental philosophy of OPA 90." Mr. Ugland is also head of the Ugland Group, an asso- ciation of shipowners based in

Grimstad, Norway. The Braer and

Aegean Sea tanker accidents in Eu- ropean waters, as well as the Maersk

Navigator oil spill off of Indonesia, have generated local calls for much stricter regulations, including pro- posals for a double-hull law in Eu- rope similar to that of the U.S.

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The International Maritime Or- ganization (IMO) and the European

Commission (EC) are both offering recommendations for enhanced ma- rine safety. The IMO has begun an initiative to improve seafarer qual- ity and training, while the EC has proposed legislation that would re- quire its membership to fully sup- port greater IMO authority, enforce more stringent classification soci- ety and ship design standards, en- act tougher controls over ships stop- ping in European ports, modernize and standardize aids to navigation and ban tankers from environmen- tally sensitive areas.

Marco To Design Oil

Recovery Tug For Taiwan 4£ \ / / ( ®

Profile drawing of the Marco-designed SORT.

Marco Shipyard has entered into an agreement with the United Ship

Design and Development Center (USDDC) of Taipei, Taiwan, to de- sign and develop a 108.3-foot Spe- cial Oil Recovery Tug (SORT).

USDDC is the national ship design center for the Republic of China.

The new SORT is intended for offshore singlepoint mooring ship handling service, among many other missions. The twin-screw, Z-drive reverse tractor-style SORT will com- bine superior maneuverability with

Marco's proven Filterbelt oil spill recovery technology. Equipped with two Filterbelt units, the tug is able to effectively recover spilled oil and store it in two 320-bbl capacity tanks without sacrificing the vessel's ship handling capabilities.

The first of these SORT vessels to be built in Taiwan under contract to

USDDC is scheduled to be delivered to Chinese Petroleum Corporation of Taipei in June 1994. "The vessel can go from being a tugboat to being rigged out as a skimming vessel in about 15 min- utes. All the equipment is safely contained in the 'tween deck oil re- covery machinery space ready for rapid deployment," said D. W.

Lerch, vice president of Marco's pollution control division. "The decks are clear and safe for the vessel's primary duty as a ship handling tug." Twin knuckle boom cranes on the foredeck, utilized for fast and safe passing of the tug's hawser to the deck of the tow, are also used to deploy port and starboard oil booms that direct oil to the Filterbelt mod- ules when in the skimming mode. In addition to oil spill recovery, the

SORT is designed with firefighting capability in the form of main en- gine-driven pumps and two four- inch fire monitors at the house top.

For more information about the

Marco-developed SORT vessel,

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