2025/10/07 MOL Tabletop Drill Hones Response to Serious Marine Incident - Scenario Has Oil Spill Incident Involving Cargo Handling Equipment on Cargo Transfer Vessel

October 07, 2025

TOKYO-Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL; President & CEO: Takeshi Hashimoto) today announced that on October 6, it conducted a tabletop drill based on a simulation of a marine accident involving a cargo transfer vessel (CTV, ^{Note 1}) owned by SeaLoading Holding AS (SeaLoading; CEO: Yoshiaki Kubo), an MOL group company.

During the drill, MOL confirmed emergency coordination with its group company based on a simulated incident scenario. Furthermore, SeaLoading CEO Kubo, together with MOL executives and employees, engaged in multifaceted discussions regarding the two companies' response to the CTV incident, deepening their mutual understanding.

The Maritime Disaster Prevention Center (MDPC) and other outside parties were also invited to introduce case studies and provide critiques of the companies' emergency response training and procedures.

<The drill scenario>

The CTV operated by SeaLoading was offloading crude oil from a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO, ^{Note 2}) anchored approximately 100 nautical miles south of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to a tanker. During an emergency evacuation from the FPSO due to stormy weather, the offloading hose connecting the CTV and the tanker ruptured. As a result, the crude oil remaining in the hose-estimated at up to around 80 cubic meters-spilled into the sea.

<Future initiatives>

MOL is working to raise the safety awareness of the entire MOL Group in pursuit of "the world's highest level of safety," in addition to accumulating emergency response know-how cultivated through training and periodic tabletop drills.

(Note 1) Cargo transfer vessels (CTVs) enable the offloading of crude oil from FPSOs to tankers by connecting the two in open water, where tankers are subject to wave and wind motion. Compared to offloading via shuttle tankers, CTVs dramatically improve the logistics efficiency of crude oil transfer. Currently, only two CTVs exist worldwide, both owned by SeaLoading, which holds the patents for CTV technology.

(Note 2) A floating production, storage, and offloading system (FPSO) is a facility that receives fluids produced from subsea oil fields, separates them into crude oil and gas using processing equipment on deck, stores the crude oil, and periodically offloads it to shuttle tankers or CTVs.

MOL Group 5 Sustainability Issues
MOL Group identifies "Sustainability Issues" (Materiality) as our key issues for sustainable growth with society through realization of the Group Vision.
We anticipate this initiative to contribute especially to the realization of "Safety & Value -Provide added value through safe transportation and our social infrastructure business-".