An oil leak was discovered on Monday on water surrounding an islet of the Penghu Archipelago (澎湖群島) where a cargo ship from Niue was stranded, and authorities yesterday initiated emergency response measures to combat the pollution and remove fuel from the ship.
The ship, the Yunhai, ran aground in waters near Niao Yu (鳥嶼), an islet in the northern part of Penghu County, on Feb. 25, but no oil pollution was discovered until Monday, when members of the Penghu Ocean Citizen Alliance posted a video showing oil floating on water around the stranded ship.
Alliance director Weng Chen-sheng (翁珍聖) yesterday said the group hired a boat to patrol the sea surrounding the cargo ship because nothing had been done in the 11 days since the ship was grounded, and they discovered an oil belt on waters to the south of the vessel, but they could not estimate the volume of the spill. He said the spill was diesel fuel rather than heavy crude oil, which is difficult to remove and takes a long time to decompose in the sea.
Photo: Liu Yu-ching, Taipei Times
The Penghu Environmental Protection Bureau yesterday said that the Coast Guard Administration dispatched two vessels to the scene on Monday, but did not find the spill. However, the bureau sent a small fishing boat and located the spill, which the boat crew soaked up with oil-absorbent sheets, it said.
The bureau said that the oil might have washed off the ship’s mechanical parts, instead of leaking from oil tanks, which Weng said was yet to be confirmed.
Following the discovery of oil pollution, the bureau yesterday convened an emergency meeting with the ship’s Indonesian owner, the Maritime and Port Bureau, the coast guard and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to organize an oil removal program to remove the 145 tonnes of fuel in the ship’s tanks.
The program is to start on Friday after preparation finishes tomorrow and the oil tanks are expected to be emptied by Tuesday next week if weather conditions permit.
The situation is to be closely monitored by patrol officers of the coast guard and the EPA’s satellite monitoring system, the EPA said.
“The central and Penghu government felt the pressure after public opinion focused on the issue following the discovery of oil pollution, so they finally came up with an action plan to deal with the situation, which we are glad to see,” Weng said, calling on authorities to take action as soon as possible before the weather turns bad.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS