French warship intercepts Malta- flagged tanker

France sent a warship to force a 24-year-old oil tanker away from its coast yesterday as part of a crackdown by some countries on ageing tankers after the Prestige oil spill.

Like the Prestige, the 88,000-tonne Enalios-Titan was loaded with fuel oil and was a single-hull tanker of the type now facing a ban from the seas, French port authorities said.

"It is considered a risk and is being rerouted at this moment by the warship Germinal," Sylvain Le Berre, a spokesman for maritime authorities in the Atlantic port of Brest.

He said the Maltese-flagged tanker, which loaded in the Baltic port of Muuga in Estonia and is bound for Singapore, was currently some 200 kilometres off the French coast to the west of the Ile d'Ouessant.

Le Berre said French officials would conduct checks on board the Enalios-Titan as it was being escorted outside France's 200 nautical mile Economic Exclusion Zone. Le Berre said that was roughly equivalent to 400 kilometres on the ground.

According to a leading port inspection authority, the Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), the Enalios-Titan was last inspected in the port of St Petersburg in mid-September.

Its website said the tanker - managed by Ermis Maritime Corporation of Greece - was found to have four deficiencies covering fire fighting appliances, operational matters and others concerning marine pollution.

The records showed not all the defects were rectified. The Maltese flag is a registry recently placed on a safety "black list" by the MOU, which classified it as "medium risk".

However major shipping industry bodies have condemned a decision by some European countries to expel ageing oil tankers from their territorial waters, saying the move contravenes existing international laws of the sea.