The Carla Maersk sustained significant damage and had been carrying approximately 216,000 barrels of MTBE.
The Houston Ship Channel fully reopened Thursday morning after a collision between two vessels caused flammable gasoline additive to spill and forced a section of the major waterway to close for three days.
A 4- to 8-mile section of the channel had been shut down since Monday, when the tanker Carla Maersk and the bulk carrier Conti Peridot crashed in foggy conditions. Nobody was hurt, but some of the Carla Maersk’s cargo — a gasoline additive called methyl tert-butyl ether, or MTBE — was spilled.
The cause of the collision remains under investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of the accident is expected to take a year.