A Norwegian naval officer is on trial Monday accused of negligence that led to a 2018 collision between the warship he commanded and an oil tanker that sank the military vessel. Building a replacement for the lost Helge Ingstad frigate would cost up to 13 billion crowns ($1.3 billion), the armed forces estimated in a 2019 report.
The early morning crash between Ingstad and the fully loaded oil tanker Sola TS near the North Sea’s main oil export terminal also caused shutdowns for some of Norway’s oil production. There was no leakage from the oil tanker.
Members of the Ingstad’s 137-strong crew described waking up in the middle of the night to water pouring into their cabins and alarms going off as they tried in vain to save the ship, although they suffered only minor injuries.
The defendant was an officer on the Ingstad Bridge at the time. The defendant believes he has been unfairly blamed and will plead not guilty, his lawyer Christian Lundin.
prosecutor Magne Kvamme Sylta said in the indictment “He did not exercise caution and did not take the precautions that safe navigation requires”.
Records of communications between the two vessels showed that the slow-moving Sola asked the faster Ingstad several times to change course or face a collision, but the request was refused by the naval ship, which feared it was too close to shore. A commission of inquiry into the collision later said that the brightly lit Sola TS may have been difficult to distinguish from the nearby terminal from which it had departed, confusing the Ingstad crew.
Video footage from the tanker showed sparks flying as the two collided, tearing a gash in the warship’s side that was later recycled as scrap metal. The tanker suffered only minor damage. The collision exposed safety gaps in the Norwegian navy, including inadequate training and risk assessment systems. The Ministry of Defense later paid a fine of 10 million crowns.
