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Engineers, insurers on edge as Costa Concordia salvage nears

13 September 2013 19:51 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. When salvage teams begin hauling the wrecked Costa Concordia liner upright on the Italian island of Giglio next week, the financial stakes for insurers will be almost as enormous as the awe-inspiring feat of engineering, APA reports quoting Reuters.

According to reinsurer Munich Re, the overall insurance loss from the accident could surpass $1.1 billion. As much as half of that may be swallowed up by the cost of the salvage operation.

"I think now it's the most expensive wreck removal operation in history," said Rahul Khanna, a former tanker and bulk carrier captain and now a senior marine risk consultant with the shipping insurance arm of Allianz.

"We have our fingers crossed on it and we just hope that this is a success because if it is not, I don't even want to think what the financial consequences would be," he said.

The cost of the salvage operation, which a senior offici

al from the ship's owner Costa Cruises this week estimated at 600 million euros ($800 million) "and rising", is already expected to be greater than the value of the vessel itself.

That compared with other complex salvage operations like the MV Rena, a huge container ship which sank in New Zealand in 2011, whose salvage costs are estimated at around $240 million.

The sheer scale of the Costa Concordia, a vast floating hotel which was carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew when it went down, make the recovery one of the most complex ever attempted.

Lying on its side on a rock shelf just outside the harbor mouth, the 114,500 tonne vessel is the length of three soccer pitches and appears almost as big as the tiny Tuscan port where it was holed and sunk with the loss of 32 lives on January 13 last year.

A multinational team of 500 salvage engineers has occupied the island for most of the past year, stabilizing the hulk and preparing for the start of the lifting work, which is expected to begin at 6 a.m. (0400 GMT) on Monday.

If all goes as planned and the weather remains fine, a so-called "parbuckling" operation will see the ship rotated by a series of cables and hydraulic machines, pulling the hulk from above and below and slowly twisting it upright.

Engineers say they are confident the 12-hour parbuckling project will work but there is no 100 percent guarantee that nothing will go wrong.

"The size of the ship and her location make this the most challenging operation I've ever been involved in," said Nick Sloane, a South African with three decades of experience who is leading the project for contractors Titan Salvage.

Once the ship is upright, it will be stabilized before being eventually towed away to be broken up for scrap. Alternative approaches, such as breaking the ship up on the spot, were rejected as too complicated.