Boskalis Annual Report 2020

70

SALVAGE EXPERTS RESCUE HUGE OIL TANKER AND ITS 275,000-TON CARGO

Over the last number of years our Salvage experts have prevented an average of 400,000 tons of (refined) oil products and 800,000 tons of hazardous cargo from spilling into our oceans and seas annually by salvaging vessels in distress around the world. One of these cases involved the successful salvage of the New Diamond at the end of 2020. This very large crude carrier was transporting a cargo of two million barrels of crude oil (275,000 tons) when the engine room caught fire.

“After a challenging firefighting operation, we were able to tow the vessel to a location offshore the United Arab Emirates where we successfully transferred all crude oil out from the New Diamond to two mobilized oil tankers. In terms of size, this operation is comparable with that of the Maersk Honam in 2018 – one of our largest salvage operations in recent years,” says Salvage operations director Berend Jan Zonneveld. STOP THE SPREAD OF FIRE “After the extensive salvage operations on the ore carrier Stellar Banner off the coast of Brazil and the bulk carrier Wakashio in Mauritius, the salvage of the New Diamond was our third complex salvage operation in 2020,” says Zonneveld. The 330-meter-long and fifty-meter-wide oil tanker was on its way from Kuwait to India in early September with a cargo of two million barrels of crude oil when there was a fire in the engine room. “As the navy and coastguard of both Sri Lanka and India launched a firefighting operation, we immediately started to prepare a