China rushed to keep an oil spill from reaching international waters, while an environmental group tried to assess if the country’s largest reported spill was worse than has been disclosed.
Crude oil started pouring into the Yellow Sea off a busy northeastern port after a pipeline exploded late last week, sparking a massive 15-hour fire. The government says the slick has spread across a 180km2 stretch of ocean.
The cause of the blast was still not clear yesterday. The pipeline is owned by China National Petroleum Corp, Asia’s biggest oil and gas producer by volume.
Images of 30m flames shooting up near part of China’s strategic oil reserves drew the immediate attention of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and other top leaders. Now the challenge is cleaning up the greasy brown plume floating off the shores of Dalian, once named China’s most livable city.
Greenpeace China shot several photographs at the scene on Tuesday before their team was forced to leave. They showed oil-slicked rocky beaches, a man covered in thick black sludge up to his cheekbones, and workers carrying a colleague covered in oil away from the scene.
The state-run Xinhua news agency reported a 25-year-old firefighter, Zhang Liang (張良), drowned on Tuesday after a large wave pushed him into the sea amid the clean-up. Another man who also fell in was rescued. It was not immediately clear if either were the ones shown in the Greenpeace photos.
Activists said it was too early to tell what impact the pollution might have on marine life.
Officials told Xinhua they did not yet know how much oil had leaked, but China Central Television reported no more pollution, including oil and firefighting chemicals, had entered the sea on Tuesday. It was not clear how far the spill was from China’s closest neighbor in the region, North Korea.
Dalian Vice Mayor Dai Yulin (戴玉林) told Xinhua 40 specialized oil-control boats would be on the scene along with hundreds of fishing boats. Oil-eating bacteria were also being used in the cleanup.
“Our priority is to collect the spilled oil within five days to reduce the possibility of contaminating international waters,” he said.
However, an official with the State Oceanic Administration has warned the spill will be difficult to clean up even in twice that amount of time.
Dalian port is China’s second-largest for crude oil imports, and last week’s spill appears to be the country’s largest in recent memory.
“In terms of what is known to the public, this is definitely the biggest,” Greenpeace China spokeswoman Yang Ailun (楊愛倫) said.
“Government and business leaders have been telling the media that there’s no environmental impact. From Greenpeace’s perspective, that’s very irresponsible,” she added. “It’s too early to tell. Oil is still floating around.”
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