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A ship damaged in a collision off Gibraltar was expected to split in two and sink, sending its cargo of 27,000 tons of scrap metal to the bottom of the sea, officials from the British colony said Wednesday.

The Fotiy Krylov has been pulling at the New Flame throughout most of yesterday after the fuel extraction operations were halted due to the stability of the vessel.

Officials had hoped that the current operations would see the vessel breaking up, with the main fuel storage areas remaining intact and avoiding an oil spillage.

“The ship is going to break in two in a matter of hours or days,” Gibraltar’s Port Affairs minister John Holiday told Spain’s Cadena SER radio. He said Gibraltar had “the adequate logistics in place” to cope with whatever happened.

Holiday said the cargo would sink, but a Gibraltar government statement said the part of the ship containing some 500 tons of fuel was expected to remain afloat and would be towed to safety.

The Panamanian-flagged cargo ship, the New Flame has been partly submerged since it ran into a Danish tanker carrying 37,000 tons of unleaded gasoline on Aug. 12. The oil tanker was able to continue to the Spanish port of Algeciras.

Gibraltar, whose sovereignty is disputed by Madrid, lies at the southern tip of Spain.

source: International Herald Tribune

Tags : salvage, New Flame, Tsavliris, Fotiy Krylov