The Norway shipping company, DSD Shipping, was ordered to pay a fine of $2.5 million as a result of its convictions in Mobile, Alabama, for obstructing justice, violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, tampering with witnesses and conspiring to commit these offenses. As part of the sentence, DSD Shipping was ordered to pay $500,000 to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab Foundation, to help fund marine research in the area.
Also, DSD Shipping was placed on a three year term of probation and was ordered to implement an environmental compliance plan to ensure the company’s vessels obeyed domestic and international environmental regulations in the future.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the company’s 56,000 ton oil tanker operated in the area without an operable oily-water separator. DSD Shipping illegally operated the vessel for approximately five years before the damaged separator was identified in an inspection by the U.S. Coast Guard in November, 2014.
DSD Shipping is said to have operated the vessel from 2010 to 2014 without a functioning oily-water separator, a vessel engineer said to have warned DSD Shipping that the vessel's pollution prevention equipment did not work. The Company allegedly illegally discharged an estimated 20,000 gallons of oil-contaminated waste water and plastic bags containing 270 gallons of sludge into the water during the last two-and-a-half months of the vessel’s operation.
Additionally, DSD Shipping engineer's maintained fictitious books, omitting records of the illegal discharge of oil and garbage and falsely claimed that the prevention equipment was operational.
The vessel’s chief engineer and another engineer on the tanker were given sentences of six months in prison and a third engineer, was sentenced to two months in prison.
