More Indian navy boats were moving to the area to help fight the fire on the tanker which was carrying 270,000 tons of crude and 1,700 tons of diesel.
Colombo: An oil tanker registered for Panama burned out of control for the second consecutive day off Sri Lanka on Friday, increasing worries of a major new oil spill in the Indian Ocean.
Sri Lankan navy and India coast guard fired up water cannon at the same time as an air force helicopter dropped water on the floating oil tanker, New Diamond.
More Indian navy boats were moving to the area to help fight the fire on the tanker which was carrying 270,000 tons of crude and 1,700 tons of diesel.
One Filipino crew member was confirmed to have died in an engine room explosion on Thursday while the other 22 crew — five Greek and 17 Filipino — were taken off the 330-meter (1,080-foot) vessel and the fire had not spread to the cargo by mid-morning Friday, the Sri Lankan navy said.
The ship was on a route from Kuwait to the eastern Indian port of Paradip when it released an emergency signal 60 kilometers (38 miles) from Sri Lanka’s east coast.
As the fire grew, the affected oil tanker in ship drifted about 10 kilometers closer to the Sri Lankan shore, Sri Lankan officials said.
According to India’s coast guard, there was a two-meter crack in the New Diamond’s (Oil tanker) hull about 10 meters above the water line.
Both India and Sri Lanka have deployed surveillance aircraft to track the ship, officials said. However, Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Center said there was no immediate danger of a spill.
The vessel is larger than the Japanese bulk carrier MV Wakashio, which collided with a reef in Mauritius in July dripping more than 1,000 tons of oil into the island nation’s pristine waters.
Maldivian minister at the president’s office, Ahmed Naseem, called for precautionary measures in the Indian Ocean archipelago of 1,192 coral islands. “Maldives needs to watch this oil spill carefully and take all precautions to prevent it from reaching Maldives shores,” Naseem said on Twitter. “This could be a major disaster.”
The Maldives is located approximately 1,000 kilometers southwest of Sri Lanka and
The Maldives depends on fisheries and tourism and the country has one of the world’s best coral eco systems.
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