Sri Lanka vows to reopen X-Press Pearl investigations

Sri Lanka will reopen investigations into the X-Press Pearl disaster and seek multi-billion dollar pay-outs from insurers as clean-up operations from the accident continue three-and-a-half years after the event that led to the island’s worst environmental catastrophe.

The Singapore-flagged 2,700 teu containership suffered a fire in May 2021, spilling tonnes of hazardous substances such as nitric acid and microplastic granules into the Indian Ocean with much debris washing up along the island’s western coastline.

Sri Lanka is seeking $6.4bn in compensation for the environmental damage caused by the disaster from London P&I Club, the X-Press Pearl insurer. A report from a parliamentary select committee (PSC) last month pointed out that the country has so far received around $12.5m from the insurer. The compensation claim was filed in Singapore in April 2023 under the former government.

The government is planning to investigate the incident again after the country’s parliamentary elections wrap up in mid-November.

Another problem the PSC report focused on is the fact that the London-based insurer has paid over $10.5m in local currency.

Payments in the Sri Lankan rupee came at a point when the currency depreciated greatly when compared to the US dollar due to an economic crisis. These payments will also be investigated by the government for corruption and money laundering due to the parliamentary committee revealing pressures from the former administration to take the payments in rupees.

Even at the time the initial lawsuit was submitted, it was so sluggish that it took the country’s attorney general 23 months to submit it, just days before the deadline. The committee also pointed to this as a suspicious occurrence in its report.

Even though it has been nearly three and a half years since the disaster, the cleanup is still going on. The X-Press Pearl was carrying nearly 1,680 metric tonnes of plastic nurdles and around 200 women are still separating and collecting the nurdles washed ashore by hand. Each woman earns around $10 a day separating the nurdles.

Plastic nurdles are microplastic beads around 5 mm in size which are melted down to produce plastic items. In the wake of this disaster, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has agreed on draft recommendations for transporting plastic pellets on ships.