Coast Guard says fuel leak from ship stopped

ORMOC CITY—The Coast Guard in this city said it has stopped an oil leak from a container vessel that listed in this city’s port on Saturday.

Capt. Pablo Gonzales Jr., commander of the Ormoc Coast Guard station, said on Monday that he ordered the placing of a spill boom around cargo vessel MV Ocean Legacy to prevent fuel from the vessel from contaminating Ormoc Bay.

The MV Ocean Legacy, owned by the Oceanic Container Lines, listed past 7 a.m. on Dec. 29, about 30 minutes after it docked at the Ormoc port.

The 3,000 gross tonnage container vessel contained about 110 container vans and is manned by a 29-member crew headed by Capt. Juntyce Eslawan.

It arrived at the Ormoc port to deliver the container vans and was set to sail to its next port of call in Dumaguete City, Gonzales said.

The incident did not affect the operation of the Ormoc city port, he added.

Gonzales said the cleanup operations also involved removing debris from the ship.

He said the fuel that had leaked from the vessel came from its air vent.

The Coast Guard, however, said it was still checking for other possible sources of leak of fuel from the vessel.

Divers recovered at least 800 liters of fuel since the cleanup operation started, Gonzales said.

He said by Tuesday, all the fuel that had leaked from the vessel is expected to have been recovered.

He said the MV Ocean Legacy could have carried at least 28,000 liters of bunker fuel when it left the port of Manila and could still be carrying at least 20,000 liters when it docked at the Ormoc City port.