Six helicopters were put on standby overnight to Sunday to be ready to possibly evacuate employees on the platforms in the North Sea. Then the cargo ship “Sergey Bodrov” drifted towards the Ekofisk field. For a while the ship was only three nautical miles away. – It was closer than what is seen as comfortable, says director of environmental preparedness at the Norwegian Coastal Agency Hans Petter Mortensholm. Aker BP’s Tambar platform on the Ula field was shut down on Sunday. Press spokesperson for Aker BP, Ole-Johan Faret, tells Stavanger Aftenblad that it looked for a while from the direction of the ship that it would collide with the platform. That’s why production was stopped. But that didn’t happen, and after six hours production could start up again. The cargo ship came from Murmansk and was on its way to Rotterdam when it ran into problems on Saturday. The ship is registered in Liberia. The weather was fine in the North Sea when the cargo ship received help from the coast guard ship Bergen. Photo: Kystverket Did not notify that they had problems It was the Norwegian Maritime Traffic Center that discovered that the ship had problems, and the situation was followed closely. The crew aboard the ship never notified that they were in trouble. – It is not unusual, but we have very good monitoring of the Norwegian coast so that we can see when ships change speed or direction. The Coastal Agency was notified on Sunday morning. Then the ship drifted in the direction of England. – It is not unusual for ships along the Norwegian coast to have problems, but they usually manage to sort themselves out within a relatively short time, says Mortensholm. But when the ship began to drift south instead of towards England, the situation became more serious. The coast guard ship Bergen was called out to take control of the cargo ship. Helicopter traffic to and from the North Sea was also affected. – We deployed six helicopters as a precaution in case employees in the North Sea had to be evacuated, as we must do in the event of such incidents, says Bristow Norway flight commander, Tom Idar Finnesand. On Monday morning, the coast guard ship had the cargo ship towed, while they were waiting for the tug that had been ordered by the insurance company for the shipping company. – We want the shipping companies to sort out such problems themselves, and do not want to intervene more actively than is necessary, says Mortensholm.
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Russian cargo ship without engine power in the North Sea – danger to several platforms – news Rogaland – Local news, TV and radio
