Danish television has revealed a product tanker transporting Russian fuel lost power off Denmark on Monday, raising safety concerns.
TV2 reported that the 53,000-dwt Canis Power (built 2005) suffered engine problems off the coast at Langeland, citing the Norwegian Navy.
The Cook Islands-flagged MR had left Vysotsk in Russia on 13 May destined for Ceuta, the North African Spanish enclave, on 24 May.
The $20m ship was loaded with 340,000 barrels of oil, the report said.
The tanker was unable to move for six hours.
AIS data showed it underway on Thursday in the North Sea.
Environmental worries have been mounting in Denmark over older vessels carrying Russian exports past its coast.
The MR is owned by hitherto-unknown Radiating World Shipping Services of the United Arab Emirates, which has acquired 12 tankers since December last year.
Its insurer is also not known.
The former Aris was sold by Tsakos Energy Navigation of Greece for $20.7m as part of an en-bloc deal in January.
‘Poor condition’
Danish pilots believe many of the ships carrying Russian oil are in poor condition.
Bjarne Caesar Skinnerup, chairman of the pilots union Danske Lodser, told TV2: “We have seen that there has been a drop in the standard of the tonnage that serves the Russian oil ports, both on ships and crew. The ships are older and the crew has a different standard than we are used to.”
He pointed out that Canis Power was in a busy shipping lane when it broke down.
Skinnerup predicts even more problems in the future.
“Those of us who sail in the Great Belt know how busy it is,” he said, adding that the current situation has “potentially catastrophic consequences for the marine environment”.
Radiating World has six older aframaxes acquired from Delta Tankers of Greece and GNMTC of Libya, plus six MR2s bought from Tsakos.
