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France requests Maersk to deal with potential oil leakage from sunken ships

The French embassy in Denmark has sent a letter to the Danish Foreign Ministry requesting Maersk Supply Service deal with significant volumes of oil in the tanks of two offshore vessels which sank in French waters at the end of last year.

The two ships – Maersk Searcher and Maersk Shippersank while being towed to a Turkish scrapyard for recycling in December.

Maersk Supply Service has informed the French authorities that the two ships contain around 192 cu m of different types of oil, accounting for about 6% of the total tank capacity.

The company conducted an inspection of the shipwrecks in January and noted there was no oil leakage from the sunken ships.

In March, French coast guard agency Prefecture Maritime Atlantique asked Maersk Supply Service to continue to investigate the risk of pollution from the two sunken ships.

The agency said it would keep monitoring the vessels over the next three years, and Maersk Supply Service will be forced to pump the tanks if there’s any signs of contamination found.

Jason Jiang

Jason is one of the most prolific writers on the diverse China shipping & logistics industry and his access to the major maritime players with business in China has proved an invaluable source of exclusives. Having been working at Asia Shipping Media since inception, Jason is the chief correspondent of Splash and associate editor of Maritime CEO magazine. Previously he had written for a host of titles including Supply Chain Asia, Cargo Facts and Air Cargo Week.
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