Reuters reported that The Sanchi, an Iranian oil tanker, collided with the Chinese freight ship 160 nautical miles off the coast near Shanghai and the mouth of the Yangtze River Delta on Saturday evening, leaving 32 crew members missing. Except two Bangladeshi crew members, all the 30 sailors were Iranian, among them four maritime students.
The Panama-registered tanker was sailing from Iran to South Korea, carrying 136,000 tonnes of condensate, an ultra light crude. That is equivalent to just under 1 million barrels, worth about $60 million, based on global crude oil prices.
In another article, Reuters estimates the environmental consequences of the disaster to be the worst since 1991 when 260,000 tonnes of oil leaked off the Angolan coast.
Go to Iranian oil tanker burns, 32 missing after collision off China’s coast
