In its latest monthly scenario, the Swedish Club informs about an incident where a vessel experienced overflow during bunkering.
The incident
It was morning in the middle of summer and a vessel was loading alongside on the starboard side. The Chief Engineer had ordered a fuel truck to bunker marine diesel oil. The Second Engineer had asked one of the oilers to prepare the manifold for receiving fuel.
The fuel checklist had been completed by the Third Engineer and all scupper plugs on deck were in place.
However, there was no risk assessment for the bunkering operation and no toolbox meeting was held before the bunkering took place.
The bunkering began at 09.00 and the oiler and Third Engineer were monitoring the operation by the starboard side bunker station.
The Second Engineer was carrying out maintenance in the engine room. The Third Engineer was in radio contact with the Chief Engineer who was in the engine control room. As there was no radio contact with the truck driver ashore, the Third Engineer and the truck driver had agreed to use hand signals.
An hour later an AB was walking on the port side to the mess for a coffee break when he saw oil overflowing from the port side bunker station. He called on the radio that there was oil overflowing into the harbour and ran to the starboard side and informed the Third Engineer.
Oil was overflowing from a blind flange on the port side bunker station. The Third Engineer waved to the fuel truck driver to stop pumping, and he also pushed the emergency stop by the bunker station.
The fuel truck driver stopped immediately. The Chief Engineer had heard the AB over the radio and closed the valves to the tank. He had not noticed anything unusual on the gauges and had not suspected that oil was overflowing.
The Third Engineer and the oiler ran over to the port side with absorbent pads from the Shipboard Oil Pollution Emergency Plan (SOPEP) equipment. However, there was too much oil, and it was spreading into the harbour.
Fortunately, there were favourable winds which pushed the oil back towards the vessel and berth.
Lessons learned
According to Swedish Club, when discussing this case operators should consider and ask themselves the following questions:
- What were the immediate causes of this accident?
- Is there a risk that this kind of accident could happen on our vessel?
- How could this accident have been prevented?
- How do we monitor the bunkering operation?
- Are our procedures efficient to prevent this from happening?
- What SOPEP equipment do we have?
- Is our SOPEP equipment sufficient?
- How do we ensure that we open the correct valves?
- Do we always ensure that valve flanges are secured for the unused bunker station?
- Are our fuel valves marked in an efficient way?
- Do we have a toolbox meeting before bunkering commences?
- Do we have a risk assessment for bunkering?
- Is it relevant to have a risk assessment or not?
- What sections of our SMS would have been breached if any?
- Does our SMS address these risks?
- How could we improve our SMS to address these issues?
- What do you think was the root cause of this accident?
- Is there any kind of training that we should carry out that addresses these issues?
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