An Italian military pollution control vessel sent by Rome has arrived off the coast of southeastern Tunisia to help in the operations of pumping diesel transported by a shipwrecked tanker.
Sent as part of Tunisian-Italian cooperation, an Italian pollution control vessel is currently inspecting the tanker “Xelo” which sank near the Tunisian coast on April 16, 2022, with a view to proposing a technical solution to carry out the pumping, said the captain. of the Tunisian navy Mazeri Letayef, who heads a crisis unit set up after this accident.
The Italian ship is not equipped to take on the pumping operation which “is not easy” and must be carried out “without posing the risk of a diesel leak”, he added. Pumping “could start” on April 19, 2022, he said.
Three specialized Tunisian companies have offered to carry out the pumping operation of the 750 tonnes of diesel transported by the “Xelo”, indicated Lotfi Saïd, director-general of the National Agency for Environmental Protection (ANPE).
The “Xelo”, which left the port of Damietta in Egypt and was heading for Malta, sank in Tunisian waters where it had taken refuge on April 15 due to bad weather conditions.
“No marine disaster”
For some unknown reason, this tanker, 58 meters long and 9 wide, began to take on water. Navy forces evacuated the seven crew members before the ship sank.
According to divers deployed on April 17 to carry out the inspection operations, the ship sank nearly 20 meters deep, in a horizontal position, and does not show any cracks,” according to a press release from the Ministry of the Environment.
In a statement to local media, the Tunisian Minister of Transport, Rabie Majidi, assured that this shipwreck had caused “no marine disaster”.
Tunisian justice has opened an investigation to determine the causes of this accident but also the nature of the oil tanker’s activity and its route over the past few weeks, said the spokesperson for the Gabes Prosecutor’s Office, Mohamed Karray. The Gulf of Gabes is close to Libya, a major oil-producing country, whose coasts have been the scene of traffic hydrocarbons in recent years.
