An equipment failure led to a Sept. 6, 2016 incident in the Houston Ship Channel that left two marine pilots with burn injuries and discharged 88,000 gallons of low-sulfur marine gas oil – which subsequently caught on fire.
That’s the finding of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The agency’s investigation into the incident found that a momentary failure of a ship’s governor actuator system caused the tank vessel Aframax River to violently strike two mooring “dolphins” - man-made marine structures extending above the water level.