“The (more than) 450,000 gallons removed from the Coimbra over the last three months were a hidden threat to the health of Long Island’s marine fishery and the South Shore’s environment”
That's kind of an understatement.
A release was just a mattter of time.
Kudos to the Coast Guard for a difficult and dangerous operation done safely.
In the Chunk lagoon But three of the 52 wrecks were oil tankers, with a total capacity to carry 32 million litres of fuel – three quarters of what catastrophically leaked from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
If you work on the rough premise of 32000000.00 * 1.11 world average price of oil per litre = about 35,520,000 gross USD minus 20% for recovery and 20% for reprocessing. 10% Bulk storage and transporting management costs. In theory there could be a potential 17,760,000 USD Profit.
There is specialist salvage company Briggs Marine has shown interested in a possible salvage venture. However Micronesia is poor nation which is not able to bankroll the initial costs of the venture. A present there is drive to reach an agreement to fund the cost of the extraction with Japanese government.