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ILOILO CITY: Allied Shield, an
80-meter long dynamic positioning vessel of Sonsub Limited will
arrive in Bacolod City Saturday evening to start the recovery
operation of the remaining bunker fuel left at the M/T Solar 1 that
sank off Guimaras strait in August last year.
The vessel
will arrive earlier than expected as it was previously reported to
dock at the Bacolod reclamation (BREDCO) port on March 14. However,
the Ligtas Guimaras website confirmed that the recovery operation
will start on the 14th of March.
Presidential
Assistant for Western Visayas Rafael Coscolluela who was
designated by President Arroyo as Regional Incident Commander
relative to the sinking of the Solar 1 tanker said the management of
Sonsub Limited, an Italian firm specializing in deepwater
operations, chose to dock at BREDCO in Bacolod City because it is
closer to the site of the sunken vessel.
Upon berthing
at the BREDCO, the crew of the Allied Shield will have six hours
to clear their documents with the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the
Bureau of Immigration (BI).
Coscolluela
added that interested members of the Task Force Solar 1 Oil Spill
and the media will be given the chance to board the recovery vessel
prior the actual operation. It will be off limits to the public as
soon as the groundwork starts.
The operation,
which is expected to last for 20 days, will be using two remotely
operated vehicles (ROVs).
The Philippine
Coast Guard (PCG) warned that the one-kilometer exclusion zone from
the ground zero would be enforced to avoid possible problems that
may arise while the operation is going on.
PCG has also
mapped out its other contingency measure in addition to the
enforcement of an exclusion zone to include deployment of response
tugboats, spill booms and two coastal vessels to provide security.
Tugboats are
equipped with oil dispersants, oil skimmers for the mechanical
recovery of oil.
Likewise, an
aircraft with an airborne dispersant capability will be deployed to
do a continuous monitoring.
The PCG
estimated that around 800,000 to 1 million liters of bunker fuel
remained embedded at the tanker from the more than two million
liters that should have been transported to Zamboanga.
 --PNA
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