Solar 1
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The Solar 1 was a Filipino oil tanker . The ship sank on August 11, 2006 off the island of Guimaras with a cargo of about 2100 tons of bunker oil .
history
The tanker, which was put into operation on December 15, 1988, had a measurement of 998 GT and a deadweight of 2129 tdw. The tanker was acquired on July 4, 2001 by Sunshine Maritime Development in Manila and operated under the name Newhinase until the end of 2004 . At the time of the accident, the Solar 1 was chartered by the Philippine Petron Corporation .
On August 11, 2006, the ship, loaded with a cargo of around 2,100 tons of IFO 217 heavy fuel oil, got into distress in the Guimaras Strait in heavy seas and sank around ten nautical miles south of the island of Guimaras. Two of the twenty crew members were killed in the accident. Almost the entire cargo flowed into the sea, as later investigations of the wreck showed.
The post-accident measures were carried out by the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) with the help of Petron Corporation and international support. The oil spill was fought from planes and ships with chemical solvents. On land, the cleaning work mainly extended to around 125 km of the most severely affected areas of the south and south-west coast of Guimaras. The coral reefs and seagrass beds in Taklong Island National Marine Reserve were badly damaged. The work took about three months and was carried out by residents of the affected area and with the support of Petron and the PCG. Most of the collected material was burned in a cement factory on the island of Mindanao.
The Solar 1 accident was the first to be dealt with under the Small Tanker Oil Pollution Indemnification Agreement (STOPIA 2006), a voluntary agreement of the P&I Clubs (ship insurers). The new agreement included a larger maximum of 20 million Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to settle a damage claim to a single ship below 29,548 GT. Under the previous Civil Liability Convention of 1992 for ships with a measurement below 5,000 GRT, the limit was still 4.51 million SDR.