Continued from yesterday
Soon after the grounding, the vessel’s owner got in touch with the insurers, the American P&I Club, which assigned a local representative to pursue the case. A local marine survey company, M/S United Marine Surveyors Ltd was contracted for assessing and cataloguing the events as they continued to unfold. The P&I Club also contacted the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Ltd (ITOPF), a non-profit organisation funded primarily by the P&I insurers on behalf of their ship-owner members, and whose priority service is response to ship-source spills of oil. ITOPF in turn engaged the Southampton-based M/S OSRL (Oil Spill Response Ltd UK) and the Singapore-based M/S EARL (East Asia Response Ltd) to combat the ensuing pollution.
The owners engaged Tsavliris Russ as salvor on 30 July 2003, three days after the incident. A salvage team was thereafter mobilized and a tug Umkaand was chartered from Fujairah to speed to the site with essential salvage equipment like oil containment booms, dispersant and dispersant-spraying equipment on board. This tug reached Karachi late at night on August 3, while another one, the Tsavliris-operated salvage tug SB 408, dispatched from Colombo, arrived two days later. Specialised salvage equipment, including all the essential pumping, preservation and anti-pollution gear from Rotterdam and the Tsavliris warehouse in Athens also arrived via a chartered cargo plane. The two motor tankers, Fair Jolly and Sea Angel, sent by the salvors managed to relieve the stricken Tasman Spirit of around 34,000 metric tonnes of oil which was then duly transferred to the larger motor tanker Endeavour II sent by the owner. The removal operation of the wreckage of the hapless Taman Spirit had to be put off till January 2004 primarily due to the legal stand-off between KPT and the P&I Club. The release of the four salvage vessels – the Tsavliris-operated salvage tug SB 408, two lightering vessels Fair Jolly and Sea Angel and the chartered tug Umkaand – on December 26 paved the way for the salvage operation by Smit salvage to commence. The deal had also ostensibly been sweetened by a $1.6 million dollar payment by the P&I Club to the KPT, ostensibly as compensation for the clean-up efforts that it had undertaken. This salvage operation was a massive one involving 137 personnel, three tugs, one submersible barge and two shear-leg cranes of 1,000 tonnes capacity each.
The spate of charges and counter-charges, actions and counter-actions, claims and counter-claims that were made in the wake of the incident resembled a merry-go-round. In contrast to the low-key approach pursued by the KPT during the clean-up and salvage phase, it swung into action immediately thereafter, by detaining or confiscating anyone or anything it could lay its hands on. Apart from preventing the three oil tankers (Endeavour II, Fair Jolly & Sea Angel) and the two salvage tugs (Umkaand, SB – 408) from leaving the port, KPT detained the crew of the ill-fated Tasman Spirit, which included Capt Narystinos Demetrios, Chief Officer Metnetis Georgios, three Greek ratings and two Filipinos. The detention of the Salvage Master Nikos Pappas, the man heading the tanker’s salvage operation, generated even greater surprise, considering that he had replaced the Dutch salvage expert Capt Jan Van der Laan (who had been hospitalized) as on-site salvage master nearly a month after the grounding. These detainees became collectively known as the ‘Karachi Eight’.
The international maritime community stood aghast at the shoddy treatment meted out to seafarers. Pakistani authorities presumably drew their inspiration from the ‘Prestige’ incident of the year before (Nov 2002) in which 20,000 tonnes of oil leaked into the sea as it sank off the coast of NW Spain. If the Spanish Authorities could arrest its Master, Capt Apostolos Mangouras, on criminal charges and prevent him from leaving the country despite grant of bail, surely we Pakistanis could do much better. In doing so, we incurred the hostility and derision of the world at large. What made matters worse was that statements emanating from senior government functionaries hinted at a billion dollar plus financial guarantee by the P&I Club in exchange for the release of the detainees. Leaked excerpts of the tightly – guarded official inquiry report tended to suggest that the blame had been placed squarely on the shoulders of the ship’s master. Why then was the rest of the ship’s crew and particularly the salvage master, who had only come to supervise the latter part of the salvage operation, being detained, people were wont to ask. Negotiations to secure their release on ‘humanitarian grounds’ kept stalling due to stubbornness on the part of one party and sheer incredulity on the part of the other.
The ‘Karachi Eight’ were finally cleared to leave Pakistan on April 19, 2004. This came about due to the unrelenting pressure exerted by the Greek Government, the EUs Council of Ministers, the EU Parliament, the EU Commissioner for External Affairs, the EU Human Rights Commission Secretary General International Maritime Organisation, the International Chamber of Shipping / International Shipping Federation, the International Transport Worker’s Federation, the International Salvage Union and even the US Secretary of State. The Union of Greek Shipowners had also issued a veiled warning that as many as ten thousand Pakistani seafaring jobs could be at risk if the impasse continued. The American P&I Club’s resolve not to talk about money while seeking the release of the ‘Karachi Eight’ also exposed the futility of the Pakistani stand. The nine month long stand-off achieved little beyond earning the opprobrium and derision of the international community.
COMPENSATORY MECHANISM: Whenever such an oil spill occurs, measures aimed at preventing or minimising pollution damage are immediately initiated, followed by clean-up operations at sea, in coastal waters and on the shoreline. If a damaged tanker is leaking oil, such oil also needs to be removed. The recovered oil and associated debris also needs to be disposed off in an environmentally – friendly manner. Apart from environmental degradation, loss of livelihood, particularly for those engaged in the fishery and coastal tourism sectors, also results. So who pays for all this? The tanker owner is generally supposed to pick up the tab or rather, on his behalf, the oil pollution insurance that he subscribes to, which is normally a Protection & Indemnity (P&I) Club.
The primary compensatory layer is through the 1992 Civil Liability Convention (CLC). If the state raising the claims has signed and ratified the said convention, it can directly approach the concerned P&I Club, which is duty-bound to settle them promptly. There is however a catch: the actions taken as well as the costs being claimed need to be both reasonable and justifiable. The CLC moreover imposes a cap on the maximum liability of the owner / P&I Club, which is dependant on the tanker size, and which in the case in question, should have been around $47million.
Just in case valid claims go beyond this limit, the supplementary layer of compensation is furnished by means of the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund 1992 or simply the Fund Convention. The good part is that irrespective of the size of the tanker, compensation to the tune of $ 304 million can be dished out in respect of all claims found to be valid, which is way beyond the CLC limit. These payments are financed by contributions levied on oil companies and other entities that receive crude oil by sea, with the compensation again only being made available to the countries that have ratified the 1992 Fund Convention.
In the case of the Tasman Spirit Spill, the bad news was that Pakistan was neither a signatory to the 1992 CLC Convention nor the Fund Convention. The good news was that the American P&I Club still agreed to honour all claims in line with the CLC Convention. This offer, had it been accepted, would have netted us up to $47 million. Having been repeatedly spurned, the only recourse is through lengthy litigation, which is still in progress with no signs of reaching finality anytime soon.
To be concluded tomorrow
The writer is a retired admiral and currently heading the National Centre for Maritime Policy and Research at Bahria University, Karachi.