Tamluk, May 30: A ship car-rying 15,000 tonnes of oil until a few hours ago rammed into the walkway of Haldia Port today, giving it a brush with near disaster.

Fortunately, MT Jagat Pragati had discharged the entire freight of furnace oil from its belly and was sailing out when it hit the walkway, damaging it severely.

“While the ship was casting off (drifting away) after discharging the furnace oil, there was a strong wind and the ship landed heavily on the mooring dolphin,” Calcutta Port Trust chairman A.K. Chanda said in Calcutta.

A dolphin is the steel structure to which a ship is fastened. It is connected to the main jetty with a walkway.

MT Jagat Pragati was not damaged. “The walkway connecting the dolphin with the main jetty, a fire monitor, water supply lines and electrical cables were damaged,” Chanda said.

“The ship has been stopped at Sagar Island as it will have to pay compensation to the port,” Chanda added.

The damage could have been severe had the accident taken place when the ship was loaded, a port trust official said.

The jetty hit was unlikely to affect the oil in the cargo hold even if the ship was loaded because it would be immersed deep in the water, but the “oil in the pipelines of the deck could be spilled”, the official said.

Even if 1,000 tonnes of oil had spilled out, which the official said was “eminently possible”, it would have spread fast over the water surface because of the strong wind.

The oil could have cover- ed 5,000sqm, causing pollution and damaging the ecological balance of the area. Thousands of fish, prawns and other animals would have perished.

A fire could have also broken out.

The ship, owned by the Mumbai-based Great Eastern Shipping Company, arrived at Haldia’s jetty No. 2 last evening. The consignment was for Hindustan Petroleum.

After discharging the fuel, the ship was scheduled to sail to Visakhapatnam and onwards to Jamnagar, Gujarat.

The vessel, unfastened from the mooring around 3pm today, was about to sail into deep waters when the wind took it adrift.

Port trust officials said it would take a few days to repair the damage and make the jetty fit for operation.

There are two more jetties and operations would not be hit, the port trust said.