the toxic truth - Greenpeace

28 Amnesty internAtionAl And greenpeAce netherlAnds
Chapter 2
The Probo Koala at the Estonian port of Tallinn on
27 September 2006, after the toxic waste dumping had occurred.
© ANP/AFP/rAiGo PAjulA
Caustic washing at sea
After caustic washing was stopped in Tunisia
in April 2006, Trafigura concluded that it had
run out of options in terms of finding another
facility to undertake the caustic washing on
land and decided to undertake the operation
at sea. 54 When a Dutch court later considered
the issue, it could not find any record of
caustic washing of gasoline on board a ship at
sea having been done before. The ship used
for the operation was called the Probo Koala, a
ship leased to Trafigura.
However, there was still no solution to the
waste disposal problem. An internal email,
dated 18 April 2006, and entitled “PMI Shit”,
states:
“ …we are coming up with some problems
regarding treating/disposing of the PMI
naphtha out of Brownsville. We are now limited
to Caustic washing on a ship. La Skhirra where
we were washing/discharging will not let us
discharge this material anymore, so the ship
we’re using for washing is now converted to
floating storage … We also still havent [sic]
tackled how we will dispose of the washings on
55
board the vessel washing the cargo. ”