Metula
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
The Metula was a crude oil tanker for the shipping company " Shell Tankers". The ship, built in 1968, ran aground on August 9, 1974 on the Satellite Bank of the Strait of Magellan , suffered severe damage to the ground and caused the largest oil spill on the Strait of Magellan to date with around 53,000 tons of oil spilled . At the time, it was the second largest oil spill after the beaching of the Torrey Canyon and the first serious oil spill involving an oil tanker the size of a VLCC in the world.
history
The ship
The ship was ordered in 1966 by the Shell Group from the Japanese shipyard Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) as a tanker with a load capacity of 175,000 tons. In the same year the order was changed to a VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) designed ship with a deadweight of 210,000 tons. In 1968 the Metula was delivered and put into service under construction number 2019. It was owned by the NV Curaçaosche Scheepvaart Mij. in Willemstad and was operated by the Shell group.
The stranding
The Metula was chartered in 1974 by ENAP (Chilean State Oil Company) to transport 195,673 tons of Arabian Light crude from Ra's Tanura in the Persian Gulf for further processing in Quintero Bay in Chile. In addition, there were around 2000 tons of heavy fuel oil of the Bunker C type in the bunker tanks. On August 9, 1974 around 10:20 p.m. local time, the ship ran aground in the west-east passage of the Strait of Magellan at a speed of around 15 knots on the satellite bank near the west end of the headland First Narrows . On the second day after being stranded, the ship turned over starboard, whereby the engine room also hit the ground and was flooded by incoming sea water. Around 51,500 tons of crude oil and a further 1,500 tons of the bunkered heavy oil flowed out.
Relief efforts
After the ship swung around on August 11, the Chilean government sent a request for technical assistance to the United States Coast Guard . They sent ADAPTS pump systems capable of air transport to Chile to support the pumping over and pumping out of the oil cargo as well as the salvage work with pumping out the seawater. Further measures were not taken due to the geographical remoteness of the affected area and the harsh climatic conditions.
Further history of the ship
The ship was brought down on September 25, 1974, towed to Isla Grande near Rio de Janeiro and anchored there on September 29 at Angra dos Reis. The following year the insurer declared the ship to be a total loss (Constructive total loss), whereupon it was sold to German dropouts and renamed Tula . After it reached Brunsbüttel in tow on April 18, 1976, it was sold on to a Spanish demolition yard. On June 13, 1976, the Tula finally arrived in Santander for scrapping. It was the first VLCC ever to be scrapped and the largest ship ever to be scrapped.
The consequences of oil entry
Although the amount of oil that escaped from the Metula was the second largest after the amount released when the Torrey Canyon was stranded , due to the local conditions, such as the proximity of the ship to the surrounding coastal area and the wind and tidal conditions at the Metula, the largest amount of oil reached one Coast, namely the island of Tierra del Fuego , which borders the eastern part of the Strait of Magellan to the south. Since almost no cleaning work was carried out on the Chilean coast as a result of the accident, the affected area became a research field in the years after the accident to investigate the consequences and the reduction of oil discharges into nature. In particular, the comparison with the later accident of the Exxon Valdez was drawn here, the oil entry of which took place in a climatically comparable area, but in contrast to the Metula accident involved extensive cleaning work.
Web links
- Summary report on Defense Technical Information Center (English)
- Report at IncidentNews (English)
- Photo and data from Leon van Duivendijk (English)