A Maltese oil spill recovery vessel is to assist in the salvage of the stricken Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia.
The Salina Bay, owned and operated by the Island Bunker Oils Group, has been contracted by SMIT Salvage BV Rotterdam, the company responsible for the salvage of the ship.
It sailed from its Northern Italian base port of La Spezia on Saturday evening, heading for the island of Giglio, where the Costa Concordia is lying on its side after having hit a reef.
The Salina Bay is a fully equipped Oil-Spill Recovery Vessel contracted to the European Maritime Safety Agency, EMSA. The role of the Salina Bay in this operation will be to assist in the recovery of about 3000 tons of fuel oil from the Costa Concordia and provide oil spill containment, protecting the sensitive marine environment of the declared natural reserve area of the Tuscany Coast.
Island Bunker Oils owns and operates a fleet of five tankers. Both the Salina Bay and another ship, the Balluta Bay are on term contracts to EMSA as stand-by Oil Recovery Vessels, for combating pollution from oil spill disaster at sea, covering an area that includes the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, the Sea around Malta, the Spanish and French Coast, Western Italy (where the wreck of the Costa Concordia lies), Northern Sicily as well as the Balearic, Alboron, Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas. EMSA has a number of contracted vessels strategically located in other high traffic European waters.
In 2007, the company’s Oil-Spill Recovery Vessel, M/T Mistra Bay, which at the time was also contracted to EMSA, was involved in the 10 month salvage operation of the Panamanian bulk carrier New Flame, which was involved in a collision with the Danish tanker Torm Gertrud, at the time carrying 37,000 tons of fuel oil.
The New Flame was shipwrecked less than one kilometer off Europa Point, Gibraltar on the 12th August 2007. The incident attracted world attention, not least from the maritime industry and environment lobby, because of the catastrophic effect an oil spill in the narrow Straits of Gibraltar would have had on a number of coastal countries. The complex politics of the region contributed to the sensitivity of the operation and was ultimately hailed as an example of inter-state cooperation.