The World - News from Dec. 25, 1988

A huge oil storage tanker broke free from its moorings in the North Sea about 150 miles east of Dundee, Scotland, oil firms said, disrupting about 10% of Britain’s oil production. A Royal Air Force spokesman said a 200,000-ton converted tanker, which had drifted for more than five hours with 34 men aboard and almost collided with an oil platform, was safely under tow after a rescue operation in high seas. But output of three oil fields served by the tanker was likely to remain shut for several weeks in the absence of a collecting point, a spokesman for Shell UK Ltd. said. The three fields have a combined output of about 210,000 barrels per day. This amounts to about $3.15 million worth of daily lost output.