Transportation Grounded tanker may cause U.K.'s largest oil spill

Attempts last week to refloat an oil tanker grounded on the South Wales coast took on an air of desperation. The stricken Sea Empress vessel had been refloated twice only to be beached again soon afterward. By the morning of Feb. 22 the tanker had been floated for the third time, and at last it was towed to a jetty in Milford Haven harbor, where it was to be unloaded.

Feb. 26, 1996

2 min read

Attempts last week to refloat an oil tanker grounded on the South Wales coast took on an air of desperation.

The stricken Sea Empress vessel had been refloated twice only to be beached again soon afterward. By the morning of Feb. 22 the tanker had been floated for the third time, and at last it was towed to a jetty in Milford Haven harbor, where it was to be unloaded.

At Oil & Gas Journal presstime last week, what was originally expected to be a relatively small spill of about 1,000 metric tons of crude oil held the prospect of becoming Britain's worst oil spill. The amount of oil estimated to have leaked from the ship had risen to 70,000 metric tons, and it was still leaking.

The ship was carrying 130,000 metric tons of crude to Texaco Ltd.'s Pembroke refinery at Milford Haven.

The Department of Transport's Marine Pollution Control Unit (MPCU) monitored efforts to save the vessel.

There had been increasing belief that time was growing short to tow the vessel to safety to prevent its breakup, a prospect that authorities viewed as a great threat to the area's bird sanctuaries and picturesque coastline.

Wildlife at risk

MPCU said an oil slick 8 miles long and 1 mile wide was streaming from the tanker toward the southwest. The oil last week reached bird nesting sites on two islands along the coast.

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said three main bird sanctuaries were at risk, along with their sources of food at sea and along the shore.

RSPB's main fears were for an estimated 250,000 breeding pairs of assorted seabirds that nest on Skomer and Skokum islands, 15,000 water fowl and wading birds that winter in the Milford Haven estuary, and a 10,000 wintering population of Common Scoter ducks in Carmarthen Bay.

RSPB said,"If the rest of the cargo comes off the tanker, as seems increasingly likely, we don't hold much hope for many of these birds."

Meantime, politicians and environmental groups were asking why the tanker ran aground in the same place as another tanker crashed only 4 months ago and why salvage attempts were delayed.