WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Roughly 30 percent of the oil on board the stranded cargo vessel off the coast of New Zealand has been removed, authorities said Friday.
Authorities said they were pumping oil from a submerged fuel tank on the damaged starboard side of cargo vessel Rena at a rate of about 4 tons -- nearly 30 barrels -- per hour.
As of Friday morning, Maritime New Zealand, the agency in charge of salvage operations, said around 116 tons of the initial 358 tons in the starboard tank had removed.
"We have now removed around a third of the heavy fuel oil from this tank," said MNZ Salvage Unit Manager Arthur Jobard in a statement. "We are making good progress thanks to an extra pump on the line."
MNZ is using a process known as hot-tapping to get oil out of the submerged tank. The method employs sea water that raises oil to the surface of the tank. A dam used during earlier efforts to get oil out of the tank broke during rough seas, which have battered Rena since it struck a reef last month.
Calm conditions were expected through Wednesday. Jobard said that by Saturday, "the team hopes to start sucking out the final bits of heavy fuel oil from the bottom of number 5 port fuel oil tank."
