Panamanian ship that plowed through corals to pay damages

KIAMBA, Sarangani—The owner of the Panamanian cargo ship MV Double Prosperity, which rammed into a coral colony near the shore of this town, have promised to pay an estimated P42 million in environmental damage that the incident caused.

“The company will never run from its responsibility,” Pedrito Faytaren, lawyer for Yano Kaiun Co. Ltd. of Japan, said on Monday when Coast Guard and provincial officials inspected the site.

The 224-meter Double Prosperity was carrying 66,000 tons of coal en route to India from Australia when it ran aground 7 kilometers off this town on Sunday. It crashed onto Bakud Reef, a protected area in the Sarangani Bay and a rich fishing ground.

Its captain, Danilo Sta. Ana, admitted in a brief conference that human error was one of the reasons that caused the incident, but insisted that the ship was on its right course and that the bay’s strong current caused it to drift toward the coral colony.

Mayor Danny Martinez refuted the captain’s statements. “I was born here and I know that the usual route of big marine vessels is about two nautical miles from where your ship was stuck,” he said.

The Coast Guard will soon convene a board of inquiry to investigate the incident.

Coast Guard divers found that the outer hull of the vessel was punctured, according to Vice Admiral Ramon Liwag, chief of the Philippine Coast Guard. “But there’s no threat yet of an oil spill because the ship is double-bottomed,” he said.

Liwag accompanied Gov. Miguel Dominguez during the inspection of the ship.

Sta. Ana assured the Coast Guard and the local government that there was no pollution threat yet and that the company was doing everything to remove the ship from the reef at the soonest possible time.

Daniel Sarmiento, a representative of Malayan Towage and Salvage, said it would take just three days to pull the ship away.

“We need to unload the cargo from the vessel to refloat it. The barge to do the salvaging and towing is already coming,” Sarmiento said.

Liwag ordered the Coast Guard to lay down an oil spill boom around the Double Prosperity as part of the preventive measures.

The vessel must first undergo repair before it is allowed to sail again, he said. Repair may be done in nearby General Santos City where the nearest shipbuilding and repair facility is located.

The Coast Guard said the repair equipment from Subic had already arrived.

Dominguez said the legal counsel of the ship’s owner had already submitted a letter of guarantee to the provincial legal office.