Crew rescued from U.S. ship working for Pemex

Sinking off Mexico a mystery
Crew rescued from U.S. ship working for Pemex

By BRETT CLANTON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

A U.S. ship doing work for Mexico's state-owned oil company sank in the Gulf of Mexico last week, but the vessel's 30 crew members were rescued before it went down.

The Ocean Leader was abandoned 19 miles north of Tuxpan, Mexico, and eight miles off the coast after being battered by a storm late last Thursday night, said Dan Stabbert, head of Stabbert Maritime, the Seattle company that owns the vessel.

"She was considered to be a great ship," he said. "This was a tremendous surprise to everyone."
The massive ship, 220 feet long and 42 feet wide, had been performing surveys and test borings of the seafloor through a contract with Fugro-McClelland Marine Geosciences, a Houston-based division of Dutch energy conglomerate Fugro, Stabbert said.

Mexico's Pemex energy company hired Fugro to gather the data before constructing oil and gas infrastructure in the shallow-water area, which had water depths of about 165 feet, he said.
Joe Castleberry, president of Fugro-McClelland, confirmed that the ship sank, but declined further comment.

Pemex officials said they were not aware of the sinking.

Fishing vessels respond
The Ocean Leader made its first distress calls late Thursday evening, Stabbert said. Two Mexican fishing vessels responded and stood by the boat all night while the crew made repairs. By midday Friday, however, the vessel was judged to be unsalvageable, and the crew evacuated to the fishing boats, he said.

In the process, two crew members were injured. A cook sustained a knee injury as she boarded one of the fishing ships, and a deck mate broke his leg during a final sweep of the boat with the captain before it was abandoned, Stabbert said.

The ship's distress calls were overheard by the U.S. Coast Guard's office in South Padre Island. But when the agency confirmed the Mexican navy was handling the call, it closed the case, said Mario Romero, a Coast Guard spokesman in Houston.

The accident occurred in Mexican waters. And although the vessel was U.S.-flagged, the crew was transported to Tuxpan in the coastal Mexican state of Veracruz.

Mexican authorities have been investigating the incident in recent days to determine why a relatively new ship accustomed to operating in rough waters was taken under by the storm, Stabbert said.

He also seemed baffled to explain what happened.

"There was no flooding in any of the machinery spaces," Stabbert said. "It just was a loss of buoyancy in the stern for some reason that has not been discovered."

Environmental impact?
Mexican officials will also explore the site to determine the potential environmental impact of the ship's sinking.

The incident came about the same time that authorities in the United Kingdom said they were temporarily calling off a search for a Fugro fishing vessel and its four crew members that went missing in the North Sea in October, according to British press reports. The search will continue next year.