Doorae Shipping fined again after further pollution offense

AUGUST 18, 2016 — South Korea’s Doorae Shipping has done it again. Back in April, the company was sentenced to pay a fine of $750,000 and a community service payment of $200,000 after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court in Hawaii to failing to accurately maintain an accurate oil record book, a violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, and for making false statements to the U.S. Coast Guard in a case relating to bilge water discharges from its Vanuatu-flagged tanker, B. Sky (see earlier story).

Yesterday, Doorae was back in the same court, where Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi accepted another guilty plea from the company and sentenced it to pay a fine of $275,000, and serve a term of three years of probation for the failure to maintain an accurate oil record book.

This time around the vessel involved was the 7,711 dwt Marshall Islands flag bunkering tanker B. Pacific. Information produced to the court established that from between July 8, 2016, through July 14, 2016, during a Port State Control examination, employees of Doorae Shipping presented the B. Pacific’s Oil Record Book to representatives of the U.S. Coast Guard knowing that it failed to document or acknowledge that approximately 5,400 gallons of oil contaminated bilge water had been placed into and stored in an unapproved void space neither designated nor appropriate for the storage of oil and other ship generated liquids.

In addition, the Oil Record Book also failed to document the location of approximately 8,400 gallons of machinery space oil contaminated bilge water.

Florence T. Nakakuni, United States Attorney for the District of Hawaii, said “It is unacceptable for a maritime company which was convicted and sentenced to pay $950,000 in fines and penalties four months ago for violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships to commit another criminal violation of the Act. This failure to properly follow the law with respect to maintaining an accurate and truthful Oil Record Book requires another conviction and sentence commensurate with Doorae’s conduct. By this prosecution and today’s sentence, we demonstrate our continuing resolve to keep our ocean environment clean, and the commercial tanker ships which port in Honolulu accountable.”