Dutch salvage firm to pump fuel from stricken liner

Dutch firm Smit Salvage has been hired by the owners of the Costa Concordia to pump thousands of tons of fuel from the stricken cruise liner lying on its side off the Italian coast, a spokesman said.

"The owner of the vessel has asked us to ensure that the oil is brought out of the vessel safely," Martijn Schuttevaer, spokesman for Boskalis, Smit's holding company, told AFP.

He said the operation was expected to start within days, but added, "The first focus at this point is still to find those people who are missing."

Twenty Smit workers were expected to be on the Tuscan island of Giglio, where the Costa Concordia ran aground on Friday night with 4,200 people aboard and capsized, by late today, Schuttevaer said.

The rest depended on the arrival of the necessary equipment and the stability of the liner, whose tanks contain some 2,380 tons of fuel oil.

Schuttevaer added, "The insurers and the owner of the vessel will still have to decide on what they want to do with the vessel and to make a decision" on how to go about it.

Rescuers were forced Monday to suspend briefly the search of the wreck because of bad weather, the Italian coastguard said, adding that the ship had also shifted slightly.

Local and national authorities have warned of the environmental consquences of a fuel leak on the area of outstanding natural beauty, which is a marine nature reserve.

Pier Luigi Foschi, the chief executive of Costa Crociere, the ship's owners, said Monday he did not yet know if it would be a total write-off or if it could be salvaged and returned to service."

Warning that salvage would be "very difficult," he said the company would know by Sunday how to go about it.

He estimated the immediate direct cost of the accident at 93 million dollars.

Foschi said the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, had "carried out a manoeuvre which had not been approved by us," breaking company rules for an as yet unknown reason.

Smit Salvage specialises in dealing with marine disasters. Among its most recent high-profile cases was the raising of the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in 2001.