A massive oil spill at a drilling rig off northwestern Australia is much worse than initially thought and is within kilometers of the shoreline, the Greens party said yesterday.
Greens Senator Rachel Siewert flew over the spill in a chartered plane on Friday and said its “devastating” size was being downplayed by the authorities.
“The spill is far bigger than we have been told and closer to the coast than expected,” Siewert said.
“From east to west it stretches 180km at a minimum. Urgent action is needed to stop the flow,” she added.
Meanwhile, Australia denied claims yesterday it had downplayed the scale of the spill, and said the slick was dispersing naturally.
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said the Greens party was exaggerating the size of the leak at the West Atlas drilling platform, about 250km off the Australian mainland.
“The area of the spill is rectangular in nature,” Ferguson said.
“It is to the north-east of the rig and 15 nautical miles [28km] to the north and 60 nautical miles to the east. Contrary to what the Greens are suggesting, the closest it is to the Australian coastline is in excess of 80 miles [129km].”
Tonnes of dispersant chemicals have been dumped on the slick, and Ferguson said most of it was breaking up naturally.
“This spill will continue to spread in a north-easterly direction and I must say, as of today the weather conditions are assisting,” Ferguson said. “They are a bit more choppy and that will assist in the natural break-up of the oil and gas.”
Oil and gas began leaking from the West Atlas rig, about 250km off the Australian mainland early last Friday, forcing the evacuation of 69 workers.
Its Bangkok-based operator PTTEP Australasia was unable to cap the leak, and authorities have warned it could take up to seven weeks to contain, with a second rig sent from Singapore for the repair operation.
Tonnes of dispersant chemical had been dumped on the slick, but Siewert said oil had come within 20km of the coast. Based on average flow rates in the region and data from the company, Siewert said almost 500,000 liters of oil was daily spilling into the ocean. Siewert urged PTTEP and Norway’s Seadrill, which owns the West Atlas platform, to accept the offer of a relief rig from Australian company Woodside Petroleum.
“We’re calling on the companies to take up Woodside’s offer, because that rig can be there apparently within around five days,” she said. “There’s still around 17 days for the rig the company wants to use to get there. That’s an extra almost two weeks worth of oil pumping into the environment and that is simply unacceptable,” she said.
But PTTEP said there was no indication Woodside’s equipment would reach West Atlas any faster than the Singapore rig, which it estimated would arrive in “seven or eight days”.
“The other thing is there’s different types of rigs and the option that has been selected by the company is the safest, most effective and most likely for success,” PTTEP spokesman Ian Williams said.
He would not comment on Siewert’s claims about the size and extent of the spill.
PTTEP on Monday had estimated the slick was 8 nautical miles long and 30m wide, and said it had “not shown signs of expanding.”
It plans to drill a relief well with the secondary rig to intersect the leaking well head and stop the flow of oil and gas.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person