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(Recast)Iran says Singapore-flagged ship wanted for hitting oil rig

Xinhua, May 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Singapore-flagged commercial vessel, which was reportedly fired at by Iranian boats on Friday, is wanted for hitting an oil rig and fleeing, an Iranian official said Saturday.

The ship, coded Alpine Eternity under Norway's Transpetrol TM AS, hit an Iranian oil platform in the South Pars gas field on March 22, causing 300 million U.S. dollars of damage, said Habib Jadidi, head of the consortium developing the Phase 13 of South Pars project.

The Alpine Eternity was over 20 miles off its normal course when the collision occurred. The Norwegian company had been ignoring Iran's request to compensate for the damage, Jadidi was quoted by Shana News Agency of Iran's Ministry of Petroleum's quoted Jadidi as saying.

Jadidi called on other countries to help seize the ship and hand it over to Iran.

Iranian coast guards on Friday ordered the Singapore-flagged ship to enter Iranian waters but it headed to Dubai, Shana reported. Five Iranian boats fired warning shots at the ship in Persian Gulf, according to previous reports.

The oil-chemical tanker, last stopped at a port in Bahrain, made a distress call and came to the Dubai free port Jebel Ali under the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) coast guard, UAE state news agency WAM reported.

The report quoted an official source of the UAE coast guard as saying that it received a distress call from the ship, and came to the aid of it as the vessel sailed to the port.

The incident comes two weeks after Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship, coded Maersk Tigris, and held the vessel over a separate financial dispute.

Iranian officials said Maersk Tigris was seized on court order with neither political nor security motive. It was released on May 7. Endit