Vessel Movement Stopped at Nehru Terminal

Vessel movements came to an abrupt standstill Sept. 6 at the state-owned terminal in India's Port of Jawaharlal Nehru (Nhava Sheva). The Hapag-Lloyd container ship Lahore Express was stranded there after suffering an accident while discharging cargo.

"Two import containers fell onto the vessel's tank top and ruptured its fuel oil tank, resulting in spillage of hazardous liquid from the damaged boxes onto the tank top. The vessel is unable to sail until the tank top is cleaned, cleared of the hazardous material and its damaged parts repaired," a shipping line agent at Nhava Sheva said.

The mishap occurred just as the port, the country's largest container gateway, was returning to normalcy after weeks of chaos following the MSC Chitra-Khalijia-3 collision in the main harbor channel Aug. 7.

By The Numbers: U.S. Container Trade With India.

Port officials said the Lahore Express, a ship with 4,253 20-foot equivalent units capacity operated by the German carrier in the Indamex Service, arrived Sept. 5 with 918 import containers on board and was scheduled to depart Sept. 7.

Officials declined to confirm the week-long disruption. Local shipping circles said as of Tuesday morning, there were about 10 vessels waiting at the harbor for berths at the port-run facility capable of handling one deep-draft vessel at a time.

No injury or pollution was reported by the authority. Based on the latest update from port sources, the vessel is expected to sail out Wednesday morning.

Nehru currently has three terminals, including two private facilities operated by DP World and A.P. Moller-Maersk, with a combined capacity of 4.17 million TEUs. Volume for fiscal 2009-10 was a record 4.06 million TEUs, up from 3.95 million TEUs the previous year.