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The shipping company of an oil tanker that burned off Sri Lanka for around a week wants to pay the Sri Lankan government 340 million rupees (around 1.6 billion euros) for the fire-fighting work.
From their point of view, that is not enough, it said on Thursday from the Ministry of Justice of the South Asian island state.
The company should pay 100 million rupees (around 464,000 euros) more for the extinguishing work with the Air Force and Navy alone.
In addition, there would be an undetermined amount for the sea pollution caused.
Sri Lanka's marine protection agency is currently calculating the level of pollution.
A court would have to decide in a procedure starting next week how high the corresponding costs would be.
Charged oil apparently did not get into the sea
Three weeks ago there was an explosion and then a fire in the engine room of the oil freighter "New Diamond", which is registered in Panama.
Fuel leaked from the ship's petrol tank, according to the authority responsible for marine protection.
But none of the 270,000 tons of loaded oil got into the sea.
The ship was supposed to bring the oil from Kuwait to India.
The freighter is currently bobbing at sea, attached to tug ships.
Sri Lanka had asked the shipping company of the freighter to bring it to a port - but not to Sri Lanka, the Ministry of Justice said.
Sri Lanka does not want to pump the oil from the tanker itself because the country has no suitable refineries for the oil or storage facilities.
The leak on the petrol tank has now been fixed.
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lmd / bah / dpa / AP
