The Stellar Banner<\/em> suffered damage to her bow during her departure from the Vale-operated Ponta da Madeira Maritime Terminal in Maranhão on February 24. Her 20 crewmembers were evacuated safely, according to Vale, and "the vessel's captain [grounded] the vessel about 100 kilometers off the coast of São Luís" as a precautionary measure. The vessel took on a heavy list after the grounding but did not capsize. <\/p>\n Efforts to lighter off her fuel got under way in March and finished on April 12. Over the course of the month-long operation, about 3,900 cubic meters of fuel oil were removed from the vessel's tanks. The cargo lightering operation got under way shortly after and concluded on June 2; salvors removed a total of about 140,000 tonnes of iron ore from the Stellar Banner's<\/em> holds. After lightering and other measures, the vessel's list was reduced from about 25 degrees to about 13 degrees, according to the Brazilian Navy. <\/p>\n Stellar Banner after her grounding, February 2020 (IBAMA)<\/em><\/p>\n Salvors successfully refloated the Stellar Banner <\/em>on June 3 and towed her to deeper water. After the refloat, the ship's class society oversaw structural inspections with assistance from commercial divers and an ROV team. The vessel was declared a total loss, and Polaris proposed to dispose of her by scuttling. <\/p>\n According to the Brazilian Navy, the portion of the cargo that remains on board is not a threat to the environment. Remaining oil and oily residue will be removed prior to the operation. The AHTS Bear<\/em>, the MPSV Normand Installer, <\/em>a Brazilian Navy patrol vessel and an oil spill response vessel will remain on scene during the process. <\/p>\n maritime-executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Brazilian Navy has authorized the scuttling of the damaged VLOC Stellar Banner at a position about 80 nautical miles off the coast of Maranhão, Brazil. The Stellar Banner suffered damage to her bow during her departure from the Vale-operated Ponta da Madeira Maritime Terminal in Maranhão on February 24. Her 20 crewmembers were evacuated …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2268,7486,2156,7485,7487,1603,2153,2104],"class_list":["post-11399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-banner","tag-normand-installer","tag-polaris","tag-scuttle","tag-scuttled","tag-stellar","tag-stellar-banner","tag-vloc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/11400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"\/media\/images\/article\/Photos\/Wreckage_Salvage\/stellar-banner-aground.jpeg\")
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