A DAMAGED Cypriot-flagged ship carrying 29,500 tonnes of unleaded gasoline is floating in the western Mediterranean, refused a port of refuge and unable to make it back to Cyprus.
The stricken Cypriot-flagged tanker Castor was refused entry to Spanish waters on Wednesday, Lloyds List reported.
The 1997-built Castor has been seeking shelter since New Year’s Eve after the crew reported a deck crack. Fears are high the gasoline it is carrying might ignite.
Although a salvage company is currently finalising preparations for a gas operation to remove any risk of explosion, Spain said no refuge would be given to the ship within its waters.
“To allow the ship to come close to our coasts would put civilians at risk,” Spain’s shipping authority said.
Suggestions that the ship be towed back to Cyprus were ruled out by the Merchant Shipping Department (MSD) yesterday.
“The ship can’t travel that far,” a spokesman told the Cyprus Mail. “It’s an injured giant in the sea.”
The plight of the Castor has opened a debate in shipping circles on ports of refuge. Spain said its main obligation was to save lives and prevent pollution within its waters. Bringing the ship into Spanish waters was too much to ask, it said. “If the ship has to be lost it has to be lost.”
Algeria and Gibralter have also refused shelter to the ship.
Lloyds said that if no coastal state in the region allowed the ship into its territorial waters, the cargo salvage operation might have to be carried out in open seas.
Both the Castor’s owners and managers are members of CYMEPA, the island’s marine environmental protection association.
The MSD spokesman said Cyprus was happy with the European Commission and International Maritime Organisation’s view that countries should provide a safe haven for such ships, and he slammed Spanish claims that the Castor was sub-standard. “The record of the ship is excellent and there is no need for the Spanish to target the company or the vessel,” he said.
The spokesman also said that inspectors would soon be leaving the island to investigate how a fire broke out in the Cypriot-flagged Arethusa off the Danish coast on Wednesday. Seventeen crew members were evacuated but no casualties were reported. The fire appeared to have started in the engine room of the Cypriot-owned vessel before spreading to staff quarters.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
