• The officer pled not guilty to the charge of negligence.
• A video clip from the tanker shows sparks flying when the two hit.
• The incident showed flaws in the Norwegian navy’s safety protocols.

A Norwegian naval officer denied negligence in the lead-up to a collision between a warship he commanded and an oil tanker in 2018, in which the military vessel sank.

The armed forces projected in a 2019 research that replacing the lost Helge Ingstad frigate will cost up to 13 billion crowns ($1.3 billion).

The early-morning collision between the Ingstad and the fully loaded Sola TS crude carrier at a key North Sea oil export facility also caused part of Norway’s petroleum output to be shut down. There was no oil leak from the tanker.

The officer pled not guilty to the charge of negligence. According to his lawyer, Christian Lundin, he believes he was unfairly singled out for blame.

“He is looking forward to the start of the lawsuit and delivering his account of what happened,” Lundin added.

A commission investigating the crash later stated that the highly lighted Sola TS may have been difficult to identify from the nearby terminal from which it had taken off, confusing the Ingstad crew.

A video clip from the tanker shows sparks flying when the two hit, leaving a gash in the side of the warship that was eventually repurposed as scrap metal. The tanker sustained fairly little damage.

The incident showed flaws in the Norwegian navy‘s safety protocols, including inadequate training and risk assessment systems. The defence ministry was later fined 10 million crowns.

The trial is set to go through March 10.

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