MOL Containership Detained in Seattle

Port State Control officers from U.S. Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound detained the container ship MOL Precision in Seattle, Thursday after discovering several significant violations during a port state control exam of the Panamanian-flagged ship, which will remain in Sector Puget Sound's Captain of the Port zone until the violations are corrected.

 

The coast guard said violations included defective oil bilge line filtering equipment, missing security training records and not sending required ballast tank information to the National Ballast Information Clearinghouse prior to entering a U.S. port. 

 

The 962-foot containership MOL Precision’s oil bilge line filtering equipment had a nonfunctional alarm and intermittently operating meter; records of the security drills could not be provided for an eight month period in 2014; and the required information for any vessel equipped with ballast water tanks and bound for ports or places in the U.S. was not sent to the NBIC.

The crew was conducting cargo operations in Seattle at the time of the exam. The ship’s last port of call was Busan, South Korea.
 

“The Port State Control program holds foreign flagged vessels to internationally agreed upon standards to ensure the safety of life at sea and to prevent damage to the global and local environment,” said Lt. James Tynan, chief of the Sector Puget Sound Port State Control Branch. “We are continuing to monitor the MOL Precision and are working with the crew and Panamanian representatives to correct these deficiencies."