Oil from Solar 1 siphoned off

An Italian marine engineering company has begun to siphon fuel from a tanker that sank in Guimaras seven months ago, causing a devastating oil spill, officials said yesterday.

The MT Solar 1 lies 640 meters underwater off the island province of Guimaras after being holed in rough seas last August while transporting 2,000 tons of bunker fuel.

Petron Corp., which owns the cargo, said Sonsub, a deepwater operations company, has been contracted by the insurers of the tanker to remove the cargo using the Allied Shield, a specialist oil recovery ship.

The task was expected to last 20 days and cost $6 million.

"This is only the second time in history that such a deep sea oil retrieval operation will be undertaken," it said in a statement.

"Sonsub successfully retrieved 13,500 tons of crude oil without spillage from the tanker Prestige which sank in 10,000 feet of water 240 kilometers from the coast of Spain (in 2002)."

Allied Shield is using global positioning satellites and thrusters along its sides to allow it to stay directly above Solar 1 at all times.

Two remotely-operated vehicles will be deployed underwater to drill holes in the sunken vessel’s cargo tanks, one hole to let seawater push the oil to the top and the second to let the oil out in an operation monitored by robotic cameras.

Valves will be installed to control the flow of oil, which will be transferred first to the Allied Shield and then into a tanker barge.

Additionally, everything that will be done in this oil recovery project has been already done before," said Sonsub director Robin Galleti. "We will be operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week to hasten the recovery of any trapped oil in Solar 1," he added.

Galleti said tugboats equipped with skimmers and floating booms, and a plane loaded with dispersant would be deployed during the retrieval operation in case of any spillage.

The coastguard has set up a one-kilometer exclusion zone around the area to divert shipping traffic.

"The retrieval of oil from Solar 1 will finally end all speculation whether there is still oil on the vessel and, more importantly, ease the apprehension of people from the Visayas," said Petron chairman Nicasio Alcantara.