Burning Tanker Spills Oil in Sea Off Indonesia : Environment: Collision near entrance to busy Strait of Malacca is latest in series of recent mishaps causing pollution.

A supertanker laden with 78 million gallons of crude, ablaze after a collision with another ship, began spilling oil Thursday into the sea off the northwestern tip of Indonesia, shipping officials said.

The 254,000-ton Maersk Navigator was drifting after its 24-person crew abandoned the tanker in the Andaman Sea near the northern entrance to the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, said a statement from the ship’s agents, A. P. Moller Singapore PTE. Ltd.

The crew was picked up by a passing German container ship and reported to be safe.

“The extent of the hull damage is uncertain,” the statement said. “Some oil has spilled into the sea and is on fire.”

The accident was the latest in a series involving oil tankers recently. Last Saturday, the tanker Kihnu ran aground off the Estonian coast in the Gulf of Finland, spilling part of its 420,000-gallon cargo.

Two weeks ago, a huge slick spread around Britain’s Shetland Islands after the tanker Braer ran aground and broke up in heavy seas, spilling its 25 million gallons of oil.

That accident followed a Dec. 2 mishap off La Coruna, Spain, in which the tanker Aegean Sea ran aground and spilled 24 million gallons of light crude.

The Strait of Malacca, site of Thursday’s collision, is on the route from the Middle East to Asia and is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

The Maersk Navigator was carrying a full load of crude from Oman to Japan for General Sekiyu Co., an affiliate of Exxon.

According to Singapore’s Marine Department, the tanker collided with the Singapore-registered Sanko Honour at 3 a.m. about 60 miles off Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra.

Fire also broke out aboard the 96,545-ton Sanko Honour, which was empty, but the blaze was extinguished. There was no immediate explanation of how the accident happened.

A team of salvage experts flew over the burning supertanker late Thursday in an effort to assess the damage and the environmental impact from the spillage. Reuters news agency reported that the assessment was unsuccessful and was rescheduled for today.

Four tugboats with firefighting equipment began arriving at the scene of the fire late Thursday, Reuters said.

It quoted a company spokesman as saying: “Any leaking oil from the breached cargo tank is burning off. A salvage tug is now hosing down the front of the tanker, but the ship remains on fire along the port side.”

The spokesman said two more salvage tugs were to arrive to help combat the blaze but added: “It will take days before we put out the flames.”

He explained that crews will need to spend at least two days cooling off the ship before chemical foam can be applied to blanket the fire and cut off oxygen feeding the flames.

The world’s worst seagoing oil spill occurred in 1979 when more than 92 million gallons of crude were dumped off the Caribbean island of Tobago after the collision of two supertankers.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska involved 11 million gallons, while the amount of oil spilled by the Iraqis during their occupation of Kuwait was estimated at 130 million gallons.

More Oil in the Ocean

The supertanker Maersk Navigator carried 78 million gallons of crude oil when it collided with another ship Thursday.

OTHER RECENT SPILLS * ESTONIA: A tanker ran aground Saturday about 200 yards from the Estonian coast on the Gulf of Finland. An estimated 17,000 gallons leaked. * SHETLANDS: A tanker ran into rocks on Jan. 5. The vessel’s 25-million-gallon cargo oozed into the North Sea. * SPAIN: 24 million gallons of light crude spilled when a tanker went aground Dec. 2 in northwest Spain. It was twice as much oil as was lost in the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.