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EPA denies oil slick discovered off coast of Taiwan

Despite recent reports of a large oil slick looming off the north coast of Taiwan, an official from the Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) water pollution office said yesterday that they have yet to find any hard evidence that an oil slick has occurred.

“According to a story published by the Chinese-language China Times, the National Central University [NCU] contacted us and the Coast Guard Administration [CGA] immediately after they spotted a possible oil slick on a satellite image,” Hsu Jen-che (�?A) told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview.

“But in fact, we only learned about it when I saw the news online,” he said.

As soon as the EPA received the information, they contacted the CGA and began a search for the oil slick.

“We worked until around 10pm [on Thursday night] and began the search early on [Friday] morning,” Hsu said. “We even called in police helicopters to help, but we found nothing.”

The CGA also checked its telephone records since Monday, “but there was no record of anybody reporting the suspected oil slick,” he said.

“The report said that the oil slick was 30km in length and some 500m to 1,000m wide,” Hsu said. “But normally, an oil slick from a fishing boat would only span to around 2km to 3km.”

As of press time, the EPA was still unsure of what it is that appeared on the satellite image.

“We’ve contacted the NCU lab, and they said there’s no one there during the weekend,” Hsu said. “We can only try to figure it out on Monday at the earliest.”

The EPA was prompted into action after the NCU’s Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research said on Friday it had spotted the oil spill off Jinshan (金山), Taipei County on Wednesday.

“Multiple ENVISAT satellite radar images show that the oil slick is 30km in length and some 500m to 1,000m in width,” said Liu Shou-an (劉說安), director of the space research center.

The oil slick had been traced to a point almost directly north of Taiwan’s northernmost point Liu said.

At the time, the center said the spill thought to be the result of a leak from a merchant ship sailing in a north-northwest direction.

“We’ll also inform neighboring countries of the discovery and ask them to assist in tracking the movement of the vessel,” Liu said.

Additional reporting by CNA
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