Navy to reveal Royal Oak plan ‘within weeks’
(From The Orcadian dated September 28, 2000)

The Royal Navy will shortly announce their new plan to keep the oil leaking from the HMS Royal Oak at bay until they remove all the remaining oil from the sunken battleship next year.

A team of Navy divers visited the wreck last week to carry out an up-to-date study on the wreck. They are now looking at the results of that study to try and find the best possible way to plug the leak.

About 12 years ago Stolt Offshore successfully removed oil from the sunken German warship, Blucher, which sank in the Oslo Fjord in Norway.

A spokesman for the Aberdeen based company told The Orcadian that they were interested in looking into whether or not they could use their method to help drain the oil from the Royal Oak.

However, Royal Navy spokesman Mr Steve Willmott said yesterday that they will be announcing details of any tenderers for next year’s hot-tapping of the oil during a visit to Orkney next month.

“We are planning to come up to Orkney in the first half of next month to make an announcement about the next stages of our new methods of reducing the risk in Scapa Flow,” he said.

“We are now studying the results of our visit last week and we hope to return to Orkney with quite a high powered team next month. I don’t want to say too much and start the fire early as there are still some refinements to be made.

“Within the next few weeks we will tell you what the MoD intend to do to remove the risk of a large scale oil release from the Royal Oak. It will require some kind of patching operation to keep the oil at bay until we begin the hot-tapping next spring.