Not to be outdone, China has Nations Worst Oil Spil

[Crossroads Inc.]

YAHOO NEWS

BEIJING – China's largest reported oil spill had more than doubled by Wednesday, closing beaches on the Yellow Sea and prompting an environmental official to warn the sticky black crude posed a "severe threat" to sea life and water quality.

Some workers trying to clean up the inky beaches wore little more than rubber gloves, complicating efforts, one official said. But 40 oil-control boats and hundreds of fishing boats were also deployed in the area.
"I've been to a few bays today and discovered they were almost entirely covered with dark oil," said Zhong Yu, a worker with the environmental group Greenpeace China, who spent Wednesday on a boat inspecting the spill.

"The oil is half-solid and half liquid and is as sticky as asphalt," she told The Associated Press.
The oil was spread over 165 square miles (430 square kilometers) of water five days since a pipeline at a busy northeastern port exploded. State media says no more oil is leaking into the sea, but the amount of oil spilled was not clear Wednesday. Based on the known figures, the spill is significantly dwarfed by the BP oil spill off the U.S. coast.

Greenpeace China released photos Wednesday of straw mats of about 2 square meters (21 square feet) in size scattered on the inky sea, meant to absorb the oil.
Zhong said it was still difficult for Greenpeace China to estimate the spill's real size and the damage it is causing.

But one maritime official with the city of Dalian, where the port is located, was already warning of environmental dangers.

"The oil spill will pose a severe threat to marine animals, and water quality, and the sea birds," Huang Yong, deputy bureau chief for the China Maritime Safety Administration in Dalian, told Dragon TV.
At least one person died in cleanup efforts. A 25-year-old firefighter, Zhang Liang, drowned Tuesday when a wave threw him from a vessel and pushed him out to sea, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. Another man who fell in was rescued.

Beaches near Dalian, once named China's most livable city, were closing as oil started reaching their shores, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Officials at all levels were turning out on the beaches for cleanup, using sometimes makeshift equipment.
"We don't have proper oil cleanup materials, so our workers are wearing rubber gloves and using chopsticks," an official with the Jinshitan Golden Beach Administration Committee told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper in apparent exasperation. "This kind of inefficiency means the oil will keep coming to shore. ... This stretch of oil is really difficult to clean up in the short term."

China Central Television earlier reported an estimate of 1,500 tons of oil has spilled. That would amount roughly to 400,000 gallons (1,500,000 liters) — as compared with 94 million to 184 million gallons in the BP oil spill off the U.S. coast.

State Oceanic Administration released the latest size of the contaminated area in a statement Tuesday.
Though the slick has continued to expand — it covered a 70-square-mile (180-square-kilometer) stretch earlier this week — state media has said no more oil was leaking into the Yellow Sea.
The cause of the explosion that started the spill was still not clear. The pipeline is owned by China National Petroleum Corp., Asia's biggest oil and gas producer by volume.

Images of 100-foot-high (30-meter-high) flames shooting up near part of China's strategic oil reserves late Friday drew the immediate attention of President Hu Jintao and other top leaders. Now the challenge is cleaning up the greasy brown plume.

"Our priority is to collect the spilled oil within five days to reduce the possibility of contaminating international waters," Dalian's vice mayor, Dai Yulin, told Xinhua on Tuesday.
But an official with the State Oceanic Administration has warned the spill will be difficult to clean up even in twice that amount of time.

The 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.

Some locals said the area's economy was already hurting from the spill.
"Let's wait and see how well they deal with the oil until Sept. 1, if the oil can't be cleaned up by then, the seafood products will all be ruined," an unnamed fisherman told Dragon TV. "No one will buy them in the market because of the smell of the oil."

Well yay for killing the Earth >_<

[Coyote]

Hey, if you really want a happy story, check out some of the wonderful news about years-long oil spills in Nigeria.

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.

This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."

What is the biggest tragedy? That these things happen and corporations don't care? Or that they don't get reported, and when they do, people just cluck their tongues and shake their heads about how poor those people are, then go watch Dancing With the Stars so they don't feel so depressed.

Companies and executives will never be held accountable because the only people who can stand up to them are government officials-- and guess who the companies have paid off with big money, money that no individual or Greenpeace-style organization can ever match? Even if we vote out the government officials, they are replaced by more of the same. At best the rhetoric changes tone a bit.

[MKSheppard]

The ChiComs will clean this up fast.

Because Hu Jintao is not a retarded fuckstick like Obama, and understands how the EXECUTIVE wields power.

[mr friendly guy]

A few things.

It seems like the flow of oil has stopped if the article is correct. Thus its just a matter of cleaning it up before it spreads.

According to Xinhua they have taken up around 460 tonnes of oil. The yahoo article had a preliminary estimate of 1500 tons (yes I do note the differences between the spelling so presumably one is using the metric and the other imperial measurements). Oh and they are deploying 23 tonnes of oil eating bacteria. I have also read earlier from CNN that winds are currently favourable for the clean up crew.

So with any luck, the Chinese will be "outdone" because this oil spill will be smaller.

[Coyote]

The ChiComs will clean this up fast.

Because Hu Jintao is not a retarded fuckstick like Obama, and understands how the EXECUTIVE wields power.

Hopefully they handle this they way it should be handled; like the poisoned baby-milk scandal: the executives in charge will be taken out and fucking shot like a diseased farm animal.

[Temujin]

The ChiComs will clean this up fast.

Because Hu Jintao is not a retarded fuckstick like Obama, and understands how the EXECUTIVE wields power.

Sadly this is too true.

Hopefully they handle this they way it should be handled; like the poisoned baby-milk scandal: the executives in charge will be taken out and fucking shot like a diseased farm animal.

If only they had ultimate authority over BP and Massey Energy.

[Havok]

Well yay for killing the Earth >_<

Stop overreacting you big baby. The Earth will be fine. Humans are going to be fucked.

[Edward Yee]

Fuck that shit...

Regarding ultimate authority over BP though, wouldn't that theoretically be Britain's portfolio? 'Course, you could then claim "they're on our lands/waters, so it falls to us by geographic location," but that just opens up a whole 'nother can of worms... ho boy.

[Coyote]

That's the problem with the multi-national corporation-- or, from their point of view, the glory of it. You have an overall British company subcontracting through American companies to drill for oil in international waters. Was the oil even going to come to American refineries? We get most of our oil from Nigeria.

The responsibility is diffused and dispersed, and so it is hard to pin the blame on any one agency or individual, and when blame finally does get pinned, it gets pinned on some scapegoat low on the totem pole who can't fight back. And the Captains of Industry sail on, untouched.

[Edward Yee]

Heh... if I were running a MNC and could get away with it, I'd be partaking!

[mr friendly guy]

xinhua updated

Dalian oil spill contained, stopped from reaching open waters: vice mayor
English.news.cn 2010-07-26 22:48:23

DALIAN, July 26 (Xinhua) -- China has stopped the Dalian oil spill from reaching international waters, an official said Monday, admitting the clean-up work was "arduous."

Dai Yulin, vice mayor of Dalian City, Liaoning Province, where oil pipelines exploded on July 16, said workers had contained the oil slick, stopping it from reaching the open sea.

"But the next step, which is clearing it up, is an arduous task," Dai told a press briefing.

"Some of the slick has been mopped up, but it's not easy to get rid of the rest," he said.

The clean-up has involved 266 oil-skimming vessels and 8,150 fishing boats, Dai told reporters.

Maritime agencies and oil companies have laid down more than 40,000 meters of oil barriers and 65 tonnes of oil absorbent mats, he said.

Despite this, oil could still be seen on some beaches.

An explosion hit an oil pipeline 0.9 meters in diameter at 6:20 p.m. on July 16 and triggered an adjacent smaller pipeline to explode near Dalian Xingang Port. Both pipelines are owned by China's No.1 oil and gas producer CNPC.

Improper injections of strongly oxidizing desulfurizer into the oil pipeline after a 300,000-tonne tanker had finished unloading its oil caused the explosion, results of a State Administration of Work Safety and Ministry of Public Security investigation showed Friday.

They managed to deploy more than 200 oil skimming vessels in a few days.

Wasn't one of the problems with the oil spill in the US was that the law prevented foreign sea skimming ships from helping when the US didn't have enough?