Tanker Grounds, Spills Oil Off Singapore

A Panama-registered tanker ran aground between Indonesia and Singapore at dawn Tuesday, spilling about 2 million gallons of crude oil into the sea, officials said.

The leakage appeared to have stopped by late Tuesday afternoon, said Sam Norton, commercial director of the Singapore-based company Tanker Pacific, the ship’s manager.

No injuries were reported among the 32 people aboard the Natuna Sea, which ran aground in Indonesian waters five miles southeast of Singapore.

An oil patch about a mile long and half a mile wide was drifting toward Indonesia’s Riau islands, which lie about 12 miles south of Singapore, said Felicia Wu, spokeswoman for the Singapore Maritime and Port Authority.

A private salvage company placed an oil boom--a floating device used to contain spills--around the vessel and sent two cleanup craft to the scene, Norton said. Singapore cleanup craft were on standby to help.

The spill, though substantial, was smaller than other high-profile mishaps such as a 1997 tanker collision that spilled about 7 million gallons of oil off Singapore. The well-known Exxon Valdez tanker incident in Alaska dumped 11 million gallons in 1989.

The Natuna Sea left Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, en route to China, and was supposed to stop in Singapore for refueling, Wu said. It was not immediately clear what caused the vessel to run aground, she said.

Four of the vessel’s oil tanks, containing an estimated 11 million gallons, were damaged, the Maritime and Port Authority said in a statement.

“It’s very difficult to assess the extent of the damage,” Norton said. “Our efforts are directed toward limiting damage to the environment and removing the oil which entered the sea.”

The ship’s owner is Dolphin Bay Navigation Ltd., a Liberia-based company, Wu said.