X-Press Pearl parent company challenges $ 1 b Supreme Court Order over disaster

• X-Press Feeders says ruling overlooks failures of SL authorities
• Charges that judgment holds vessel’s Master and agents as human collateral
• Alleges ruling risks raising costs for Sri Lankan importers and exporters

Singapore-based X-Press Feeders, the former operator of the container ship X-Press Pearl, in a statement yesterday challenged the Supreme Court order requiring it to pay an initial $ 1 billion within a year for the 2021 marine disaster, warning of human, legal, and economic repercussions.

The 2,700 TEU vessel sank off Colombo in June 2021 after a fire in a container carrying leaking nitric acid, triggering Sri Lanka’s worst marine pollution event, with large volumes of plastic pellets washing ashore. “Our foremost concern is the human cost that this judgment threatens to impose. The Court has effectively pronounced the vessel’s Master and local agents guilty of criminal charges before their trials have concluded, and in the case of the agents, even before formal charges have been filed on some of the allegations. The judgment directs the Attorney General to mandate that police investigate the agents further and prosecute them, despite them having no decision-making role in the vessel’s operations,” the company said in a statement.

According to X-Press Feeders, “The Master has already languished in Sri Lanka for four and a half years due to a court-ordered travel ban. Despite offers to deposit the maximum fine possible for the charges he faces, he remains in limbo, separated from his family and unable to resume his life or career.” 

The company said he was neither present nor represented in court and had no opportunity to respond to the charges. It argued the ruling “effectively holds him and the agents as human collateral to ensure the compliance of the owners and operators.”

The company also claims “the court’s intent to lay all blame and liability on the vessel’s owners and operators is blatantly apparent in their judgment on the Sri Lankan authorities’ role in the incident.” 

It noted that local maritime officials boarded and inspected the ship more than a week before it sank, raising no alarm, and that ports in Qatar, India, and Sri Lanka had refused to offload the leaking container.

The court acknowledged that the then-chair of the Marine Environment Protection Authority failed to order the vessel offshore, which could have reduced environmental and economic damage, but “assigns no accountability or liability despite numerous and urgent requests by the owners to do so.” The court described the omission as “a clear departure from the collective decision-making process.”

X-Press Feeders said it has “expressed deep regret to the people of Sri Lanka” and has already paid more than $ 150 million for wreck removal, clean-up operations, and compensation to fishermen. 

While accepting the need for environmental compensation, the company called for a settlement “in an equitable and fair manner that identifies the failings in the response and clean-up operations of the Sri Lankan Government and is based on an expert, scientifically based assessment of damages, without having a severe human impact.”

The company, which has served Sri Lanka for over 40 years, warned that “this judgment, which ignores accepted international maritime law, establishes an unprecedented level of risk that we, along with most shipping companies, will struggle to meet. We fear the inevitable rise in import-export costs and the broader impact on the people of Sri Lanka.”

X-Press Feeders urged stakeholders to “consider the implications and ramifications of these interim findings” and called for “rational decision-making and judgments regarding liability and compensation that address the needs for environmental rehabilitation and compensation whilst ensuring the ongoing viability of trade for Sri Lankan people.”