Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) has to take responsibility of the oil spill in the Sundarbans river as the vessel was on its way to a power plant carrying oil from the Khulna Padma Oil Depot, says an environment group.
“Padma Oil under the BPC is also responsible for the incident as it did not conducted proper inspection before operating such activities,” Poribesh Bachao Andolan (POBA) Chairman Abu Naser Khan told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
“The responsible people in the company has to be identified and their punishment has to be ensured,” he added.
Oil tanker Southern Star 7 sank in the Sela River on Tuesday on its way to the Gopalganj power plant with 357,664 litres of furnace oil.
The BPC has formed a five-member probe committee to investigate the incident with its Director of Operations and Planning Mosleh Uddin as convener. The committee has been asked to submit its report by December 14.
BPC Chairman Md Eunusur Rahman meanwhile told the Dhaka Tribune: “There was no negligence on our part. We have formed a five-member probe committee to calculate the loss.
“Such incidents generally do not happen and we load and unload oil after conducting proper inspection.”
Habibul Alam, president of the Oil Tanker Owners Association, however, told the Dhaka Tribune that such accidents often happened as tankers were not built maintaining the required quality.
He said: “These vessels were permitted to operate without following the proper procedure. Even inspection during loading and unloading of oil is done properly.”
These vessels do not have any registration and have no insurance.
Habib suggested making the river routes one-way to avoid such accidents.
A total of 200 private vessels carry oil under the BPC. Generally, it signs a two-year contract with the oil tanker owners.
According to BPC officials, the oil that Southern Star 7 was carrying was worth Tk60 per litre, which means its total cost was Tk2.10 crore.
As per contract, the owner of the sunken oil tanker has to pay the total amount of oil to Padma Oil.
An owner said oil tankers operating from Chittagong port to different destinations have a capacity of 600-1,800 tonnes and these ships are made in foreign countries such as Japan and Germany.
Besides, there are a few ships with a capacity of 600 tonnes or below that are made in Bangladesh, and they are below the quality. This low quality ships are one of the main reasons behind such accidents.
“Our vessel was made in our country with a load capacity of 341 tonnes and it is not possible to run bigger vessels on that route. It did not have any registration with any association,” Md Gias Uddin, manger of Harun and Company that owns the Southern Star 7, said.
Meanwhile, POBA activists formed a human chain yesterday urging the government to take immediate steps to stop the spread of oil in the Sela river and save the biodiversity of the Sundarbans.
Speakers at the event, held in front of the National Museum at Shahbagh, also demanded that the government forms a committee of specialists in this regard.
Traditional methods should be used by the local people for collecting the oil, they suggested, adding that failure to ensure swift action for stopping the oil spill would result in irreversible losses for the biodiversity of the Sundarbans.