Speed, small talk led to oil-tanker crash, feds find A tanker transporting liquefied petroleum gas was coming in too fast and at too steep an angle when it crashed into a wharf at Cherry Point, Washington, north of Bellingham, the National Transportation Safety Board has found. It didnât help that the captain and the pilot of the Levant engaged in two minutes of ânon-pertinent conversationâ on the bridge as the 741-foot-long ship bore down on the dock. The tanker Levant had come from South Korea to load up on liquefied petroleum gas â a pressurized mix of propane and butane â at the Petrogas export terminal in Ferndale.