A major oil pollution insurance claim resulting from the New Diamond casualty may have been averted after salvors managed to remove the risk of an oil spill.

The VLCC was fully laden with 270,000 tonnes of crude when it suffered a fire in its engine room off Sri Lanka, raising widespread fears of a potential pollution incident.

The 300,000-dwt New Diamond (built 2000) has now been made safe to tow after a nearly two week cooperative effort involving the 16,300-bhp firefighting vessel Boka Expedition (built 2007) and the Sri Lankan and Indian navies.