Extracting the industrial oil that San Miguel Corporation owns from the sunken tanker MT Princess Empress, which continues to leak in the waters off Naujan, Occidental Mindoro, may end on 19 June.
At a forum in Quezon City on Saturday, Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson, Rear Admiral Armand Balilo, said the siphoning of the toxic oil is in its final stage.
“The extraction of the remaining oil from the sunken Princess Empress would be 100 percent done after nine days due to the efficient operations of the company tapped by RDC Reield Marine Services, the company that operates the tanker,” Balilo said.
ROV crucial in ops
The National Task Force on Oil Spill Management on 1 June said the siphoning operations may last up to 30 days.
The Malayan Towage and Salvage Corp. started using remotely operated vehicles on 1 June and the deployed catch can gather oil from the oil tanks of the vessel.
The Princess Empress was carrying about 900,000 liters of industrial fuel oil when it encountered engine trouble, leading to the disaster.
Approximately 50 liters and 75 liters of oil, respectively, have been recovered from the ship’s COT 1 Starboard and 1 Port tanks, respectively.
The amount of oil recovered from the second Starboard and COT 2 Port tanks has yet to be determined.
As of 31 May, about 83.74 percent, or 64.43 kilometers of the 79.33 km. of affected coastlines, have been cleaned. Only 16.26 percent or 12.89 km. remain for cleanup.
The cleanup operations have so far collected about 44,656.30 liters of oily water mixture, and 10,708 sacks, 997 drums, 119 pails, and 648 1-tonner bags of oil-contaminated sand/debris and oily waste from CALABARZON, MIMAROPA and Western Visayas.
On 2 June, the Dynamic Support Vessel Fire Opal arrived at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone to begin extraction of the remaining oil from the sunken vessel.
The vessel extracts the oily waste and transfers it to a tanker for disposal.