INTERNATIONAL: The operators of the oil tanker, MT Strovolos, have approached the UN Human Right’s Commission for help in freeing their crew, who have been detained by the Indonesian Navy. The ship was intercepted late last month after fleeing Cambodian waters when the Singapore-based company it had been hired by went bankrupt. The ship is carrying an estimated 290,000 barrels of Cambodian crude that KrisEnergy says belongs to its creditors. Cambodia says the oil has been stolen.
The Bahamian-flagged Strovolos was seized on 27 July near the island of Sumatra, just days after Interpol issued a so-called “red statement” at the request of Cambodian authorities. The oil tanker slipped out of the kingdom’s territorial waters in the Gulf of Thailand just days after KrisEnergy filed for bankruptcy in June. It first headed to Thailand for refuelling and then headed to Indonesia.
The ship’s operators, World Tankers Management, have released a statement denying that they had loaded barrels of crude illegally or that they have anchored in Indonesian waters illegally. The statement says, “We also wish to highlight the impact on humanitarian issues of the approach taken by Cambodian and Indonesian authorities, where wrongful allegations made against the crew have resulted in refusals to enable a lawful crew change. The charterer’s (KrisEnergy’s) default meant that we and the crew had no realistic choice but to sail the vessel to the nearest appropriate port, Map Ta Phut in Thailand, to refuel for the safety of the crew, ship and the cargo. While the vessel was there, we tried to undertake a crew change as many of the crew had remained on board since September 2020 and were required to sign off and return home to their families. But the charter was terminated and the vessel was withdrawn from its chartered service.”
WTM stresses that the vessel’s 19 crew have been subject to unfair and unreasonable interference by Indonesian investigators, causing “immense distress and suffering”. WTM says it is aware that Cambodian authorities have made an application to Interpol for the crew to be extradited to Cambodia. The kingdom’s Director General of the General Department of Petroleum in the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Chiep Sour, says Indonesian authorities have been acting on a complaint made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in cooperation with Interpol. He says Cambodia maintains that the ship’s cargo belongs to the state and that the ship had no right to act unilaterally when KrisEnergy filed for liquidation. At the time, Cambodia said the matter was in the hands of KrisEnergy’s court-appointed liquidators. The tanker was leased by the company for use in pumping Block A of the Apsara Oil Field in the Gulf of Thailand.
