Oil From Grounded Shadow Fleet Tanker Comes Ashore in Oman
Crews are cleaning six to eight miles of coastline by hand as salvage waits on the monsoon
Oil from the tanker Caroline Bezengi is washing ashore in Oman, more than two months after the vessel was disabled by an explosion and driven aground.
The Suezmax, which had been operating as part of the Russian shadow fleet, was crippled in June and ran aground on a remote island approximately 30 nautical miles off Oman's southeastern coast. Her tanks are ruptured and she continues to release crude into a protected marine area inhabited by sea turtles and humpback whales. She was fully laden at the time of the grounding.
Oman's National Committee for Emergency Management has deployed workers to manually clean a six to eight mile stretch of fouled coastline. Manual cleaning is a final-resort mitigation strategy, and the committee has turned to it because conditions at the casualty site rule out anything more effective.
The obstacles are physical rather than procedural. The vessel sits on an unsurveyed rocky shoreline, listing 17 degrees with her port side submerged. Wind gusts reach 40 knots, with waves of 12 to 15 feet.
Survey operations are under way to determine how salvage vessels might approach the ship. There are no sheltered harbours in the vicinity, and helicopter access remains the only option for moving personnel to and from the site.
The Khareef monsoon season, which ends in September, continues to impede recovery efforts. Once conditions improve, authorities plan to transfer cargo between tanks aboard the vessel to reduce the risk of further release.
Until that window opens, the response is confined to shoreline cleanup while the wreck continues to leak into the protected area.
