Korean Court Says Hong Kong Oil Tanker Responsible for Oil Spill

INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING COMMUNITY CALLS DECISION A DISGRACE



A South Korean appeals court overturned a lower court's verdict and found a Hong Kong-registered oil tanker operator and its deck officers accountable for the largest oil spill in Korean history.



The South Korean Daejeon District Court handed down a one-year jail sentence and a fine of 20 million won (US$14,316) to Captain Jasprit Chawla, master of the oil tanker owned by the Hong Kong-registered Hebei Spirit Shipping Company. It also sentenced the Chief Mate, Syam Chetan, to eight-months in jail and fined him 10 million won while the company as fined 30 million won.



The appeals court said the captain, whose 260,000 dwt ship was anchored, should have gone full astern to drag the anchor and prevented a collision with a drifting crane barge, Samsung No 1, which had broken from its tow. The barge, owned by Samsung Heavy Industries, struck the ship damaging three cargo tanks and caused 12,000 tons of crude oil to leak into the ocean in December 2007.

The court also said Captain Chawla should have not pumped inert gas into the ship’s cargo holds because it increased the spillage of oil when the explosive risk was low. It added the M/V HEBEI SPIRIT should have been ballasted to create a 10 degree list, which would have prevented the spill, because three and half hours was too long to transfer oil between the cargo tanks.



The oil spill is the worst to hit the western coast of Korea, which blackened beaches and destroyed fish farms along the coast. More than 1 million South Korean volunteers’ scrubbed oil covered rocks and cleaned beaches in the weeks following the spill. The International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund said fisheries suffered about 206 billion won ($144.1 million) in losses while the cleanup cost about 162 billion won.



The Taean area, approximately 150 km (95 miles) southwest of Seoul is still struggling to recover from the spill that wiped out oyster beds, killed thousands of seabirds, and turned national parks into tar-covered messes.



Lower Court



In June 2008, the lower court in Daejeon found the Samsung group accountable for the incident and acquitted Hebei Spirit Shipping on all criminal charges. Prosecutors filed an appeal after the ruling, saying the crew of the oil tanker failed to deal with the situation properly while acknowledging primary responsibility for the accident lied with Samsung Heavy Industries.



The higher court rejected an appeal by Samsung, which was fined 30 million won and had several employees receiving jail sentences. In fact, the barge master, who was asleep until the collision took place, was exonerated of the incident at the June hearing, but was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the environmental accident.



International Community Dismayed by Decision



Hebei Spirit’s management expressed dismay over the case saying the crew acted professionally by slackening the anchor line and shifted the tanker on short notice to minimize the collision.

VShips, one of the world’s largest ship managers said in a statement that the South Korean court’s decision will surely go down as one of the most disgraceful examples of a miscarriage of justice in a supposedly advance nation state.



The International Association of Independent Tanker Owners expressed ‘extreme dismay and disappointment at the court’s ruling, given all the efforts of the owners, managers and the industry in general, which has seemed to fall on deaf ears.



The Singapore Shipping Association said, “The SSA is very disappointed at the sentence meted out by the appeals court on the Master of the Hebei Spirit. This is despite the acquittal by the lower court and numerous protests from international shipping associations, including the Asian Shipowners Forum. This is in clear violation on the principal set forth in the IMO guidelines on the Fair Treatment of Seafarers in the Event of a Maritime Accident.”



The National Union of Seafarers of India said it is furious and condemns the South Korean Appeals Court decision. The union warned of a backlash against South Korea in jailing two of its members, both Indian nationals, saying there is a strong possibility Indian seafarers will not take ships to the country.



Adding its displeasure, the International Transport Workers Federation said the decision was ‘incomprehensibly vindictive.’ And its maritime coordinator, Stephen Cotton, said ‘this is not justice. It’s not even close.”



Additionally, VShips said that the appeals court relied on findings by the Korean Maritime Safety Tribunal (KMST), whose findings sent to Appeals Court, were ‘technically flawed, unreliable and filled with unjust evidence. They have demonstrated both its incompetence and obvious desire to find fault with the tanker officers.”