KARACHI, Aug 9: Residents of Sea View Township are facing great hardships because of the oil spill that occurred after a ship ran aground two weeks back.
The oil is seeping from the Greek oil tanker MT Tasmin Spirit that was bringing over 62,000 matric tones of crude oil from an Iranian port to off-load it at the Karachi harbour for the Pakistan Refinery Ltd. The oil tanker ran aground in the last week of July while coming in to the port for berthing, probably due to strong winds and bad weather.
A resident of Sea View Township, Z. A. Bokhari, said the smell had engulfed the area and people could not open the windows of their apartments.
Another resident, Faisal, said: “As one turns from Khayaban-i-Shamsher onto the Beach Avenue, one feels that one is standing in the centre of a pool of oil. The foul smell makes breathing difficult”.
Another resident, Wahid Bakhsh Chang, said that one of the most affected areas was the patch between Khayaban-i-Shamsher and Khayaban-i-Sahar. An early morning jogger, Bakhsh said that jogging in the morning had become difficult due to the oil smell on the beach which was more affected than the road and the apartments.
The sources said the oil spill would have serious effects on the fragile coastal ecosystem and marine life, and if the oil reached the mangrove forests those would also be harmed, for oil was a killer for mangrove trees as it covered their extensive aerial root system, seriously affecting the trees instantly.
Responding to queries, chief of the Karachi Port Trust’s Pollution Control Cell, Yahya Usmani, claimed that in the oil tanker the leak had been plugged and the oil leakage had been stopped yesterday.
He said he was overseeing the salvage operation being carried out by the Holland company. He could not say how much oil had leaked out into the sea and what effect, if at all, it would have on the marine life or on the mangrove forests.
Another KPT official involved in the salvage operation, Capt Iftikhar, said the operation to pump out oil from the ship had started and a smaller tanker named Fair Jolly and owned by the Polesmbros Shipping Ltd, which also owned MT Tasmin Spirit, was ferrying around 7,000 matric ton of crude oil a day. Fair Jolly, he said, was taking the oil to another big tanker, Endeavour II.
He said it might take around 10 to 12 days to completely empty MT Tasmin Spirit, and once the grounded tanker was empty, it would become lighter; after which efforts would be made to refloat the ship.
He said that oil containment booms had been put at the eastern and western ends of the harbour channel and the spill had been controlled and would not go further.
He said that chemical dispersents were also being used to neutralized the spill. However, he could not say how much oil had spilled from the ship and what effect it would have on the marine life.
Dawn repeatedly tried to know what, if something at all, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency was doing to check the pollution being caused by the oil spill. But SEPA’s deputy director concerned, Shahid Lutfi, could not be traced.
The sources said that a few years back an oil tanker owned by a multinational company had had an accident off the Alaska coast in the United States and the company had to spend over $4 billion on the beach clean-up operations only.
The sources also said that some time back two oil spills had occurred within a span of a few weeks in the Port Qasim Area which was surrounded by a thick cover of mangrove forest, but hardly any worthwhile fine was imposed by SEPA or other agencies responsible for the control of marine pollution.
Pakistan is a signatory to various international agreements dealing with the marine pollution caused due to shipping and, if it wants, can also register cases and impose fines under its local port and shipping laws against polluters.
Meanwhile, senior port officials said on Saturday that after painstaking preparations the authorities finally started draining oil from the grounded tanker, adds Reuters.
“We have drained out roughly 7,000 ton of (crude) oil on Friday,” Nishat Rafi, general manager operations of the Karachi Port Trust (KPT), told Reuters.
“The operation continues on Saturday. There has been no spillage because of the anti-pollution measures.”
The KPT and Pakistan Navy authorities moved swiftly to control the damage, preventing further leaks, officials said.
The authorities took four days to install the salvage equipment before the real drainage could start on Friday, they said.
Rafi said emptying of the tanker would take 10 to 12 days. “Once the tanker is empty we hope to tow it out. The salvage teams are optimistic.”
A tug from Dubai, carrying submarine pumps, hoses and other equipment, and another one from Sri Lanka are assisting the operation.