Singapore's Unix Line has been fined $1.65m in the US for illegally dumping oily bilge water from a tanker.
The company had already pleaded guilty and was sentenced in federal court this week.
Unix admitted that crew on the 26,200-dwt Zao Galaxy (built 2012) knowingly failed to record the overboard discharges without the use of the required pollution-prevention equipment.
The US Department of Justice said the company has also been placed on probation for a period of four years, and ordered to implement a comprehensive environmental compliance plan as a special condition of probation.
US officials said the vessel, which had sailed from the Philippines with a cargo of palm oil, arrived in California on 11 February 2019, where it underwent a US Coast Guard inspection.
Pipes and flanges
Officials discovered that during the voyage, a Unix Line-affiliated ship officer directed crew members to discharge oily bilge water overboard, using a configuration of drums, flexible pipes, and flanges to bypass the vessel’s oily water separator.
“Deliberately concealing illegal discharges of oil waste into our oceans is a federal crime we will not tolerate,” said Jeffrey Bossert Clark, assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice’s environment and natural resources division.
“This sentencing shows that polluting our oceans and misleading the Coast Guard will cost you.”
Kelly Hoyle, special agent in charge of the Pacific Region of the Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS), added: “The CGIS will continue to make criminal investigations that deter maritime organisations from breaking international and US law designed to protect our finite natural marine resources a priority.”
The prosecution was the result of a year-long investigation by the CGIS.
