Seven days before a container ship slammed into a Baltimore bridge, it received a large load of fuel at a New Jersey berth where testing at the time determined the oil was safe to use, according to the company that delivered the fuel and documents showing the test results.
The load, comprising two types of oil and totaling more than 400,000 gallons, was delivered to the Dali by Centerline Logistics, a Seattle-based company, the documents show.
“There was nothing wrong with the fuel that we delivered to the Dali,” Centerline CEO Matt Godden said in an interview. Centerline was hired by the shipping giant Maersk, which had chartered the Dali.
The tests for contaminants are important because fuel is among the areas of interest for investigators trying to determine what caused the March 26 collision, in which the Dali suffered a power failure and veered into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, triggering its collapse. Six road workers were killed.
Fuel contamination is believed to cause power and propulsion failures on scores of ships around the world every year. Investigators have said they planned to sample the Dali’s fuel and test it for contaminants. But experts caution that a number of factors could have caused the power loss, and fuel may not have anything to do with it.
It is not clear whether the Dali was burning the fuel it had received from Centerline at the time of the collision. The ship could have been burning fuel it received elsewhere — data shows that it received fuel in South Korea and China in February — or from another company on the East Coast. NBC News has not seen documents on tests of other fuels.
Godden said Centerline delivered the two types of fuel on March 19: marine gas oil — typically used while navigating at port — and very low sulfur fuel oil — typically used while at sea. Both loads were tested for contaminants twice — once at the terminals where the Centerline barge and tugboat picked up the fuel, and again at the…
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