Salvor siphons 300 liters from sunken Terranova

Divers of Harbor Star Shipping Services Inc. have already transferred about 300 liters of industrial fuel oil (IFO) from the sunken MT Terranova, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) reported on Wednesday.

PCG Bataan Station commander, Lt. Commander Michael John Encina, said salvor personnel have installed pipes through hot tapping for the remaining seven tanks. Each tank contains 175,000 liters.

“The safe working pressure during siphoning was maintained at a maximum of 0.15 bar,” said Encina in a statement.

“Approximately 300 liters of oil were transferred to a tank to test the equipment, with no leaks observed and minimal oiling effectively contained using one length of boom,” he added.

Additional equipment is expected to facilitate the next phase of oil transfer operations in the coming days.

Further, Encina said all of the 1.4 million liters of oil would be removed to lessen the effect in case of a “worst-case scenario,” which is either leaks from the tanks or the breakage of the tank due to the high underwater pressure.

“We have adopted some measures to ensure that our maximum risk assessment is applied so that the effect will be lessened if there would be a worst-case scenario. So, we want to remove all contaminants,” he said.

“The 300,000 liters aimed to be siphoned per day, there is a high risk of problems to arise along the course of salvaging the vessel. So the more contaminants present inside the water tanker where the salvage operation is, the higher the risk,” he added.