Drifting Freighter's Anchor Was Never a Risk to Oil or Gas Lines Off Belmont Shore

The drifting freighter that dragged its anchor nearly a half mile before running aground on an oil island off Belmont Shore Friday night posed no risk of piercing oil and gas lines because they are buried deep below the ocean surface, the U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday.

Ocean Sunrise, the 624-feet-long Panamanian freighter that was pushed by stormy seas and wind into Freeman Island a mile and a half offshore, had been at a federally assigned anchorage .41 miles away Friday night, said First Class Petty Officer Adam T. Eggers. Despite safety features designed to avert such an incident, the cargo ship, two football fields long, jutted into the rocky shoreline of the oil island, which is behind the lit-up, most visible island a mile off Belmont Shore.

The Sunrise was empty and awaiting a clearance by the Coast Guard, which had ordered it to clean out debris from an oil tank that could kill the engine and leave it adrift in busy shipping lanes in and out of the nation's busiest shipping harbor.

This made it a lighter vessel more easily movable from its single anchor than would be expected, Eggers said.

On Tuesday, responding to Patch questions, the Coast Guard provided further detatils about how anchorages are assigned, and about this specific anchorage off of Belmont Shore's coast. Freeman is one of four manmade oil islands in Long Beach Harbor that are named after U.S. astronauts killed on the job. Collectively they are referred to as THUMS islands, an acronym formed by the consortium of the original operators: Texaco, Humble, Unical, Mobil and Shell.

*Anchorage locations never have pipelines runnSing through or near them.

*The pipelines off Long Beach are buried below the sea floor and even if an anchor drug across its exact location, it would not come close to contacting the pipe buried below.  A ship dragging anchor poses no threat to the pipelines below.

*Anchorages are designated either City, Commercial, or Federal.  The ones near the THUMS islands are Federal as they are old Navy anchorage points.  Most anchorage locations across the country have been established for over 50 years, mostly because of the reason listed below.

*To create an anchorage location is an extremely long process that has to be approved by multiple city, state and federal agencies ... along with clearance from multiple environmental agencies to include NOAA and the like.  In short, new anchorage locations require tons of paperwork and approval at every step of government and must also pass multiple environmental assessments.

*To correct your reader, the Coast Guard does not make ALL calls regarding safety in State waters; the state does that.  We have enforcement and oversight responsibilities if there are any federal issues with whatever the state is doing.  We also do not make ALL calls regarding safety in federal waters as multiple federal agencies are often times involved.  However, there are circumstances where we have the final say and jurisdictional authority at the end of the day. But that doesn't mean we don't consult with NOAA, Fish and Game, etc."

Patch will follow the standard investigation into how and why the freighter moved and whether the ship's safety measures worked. The 25-member crew was safely taken off of the ship, which remains at an anchorage (D3) inside the Long Beach Breakwater.

There appears to be no known similar incident here in what are usually calm waters created by the breakwater built to protect the Navy's fleet half a century ago. Patch's last story about this case:

http://patch.com/A-fnzg