Phytoplankton bloom is visible in the Bohai Sea (upper right) and the Yellow Sea (lower right)
Posted on 07/19/2011 8:17:09 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
On Friday, China’s State Oceanic Administration reported that an oil spill in June from two wells in Bohai Bay has polluted 4,250 square kilometers—1,650 square miles—of sea, an area six times the size of Singapore. Moreover, another 3,400 square kilometers had been contaminated to a lesser degree, according to the agency.
Phytoplankton bloom is visible in the Bohai Sea (upper right) and the Yellow Sea (lower right)
ConocoPhillips, the Houston-based operator of the wells in the Penglai 19-3 field, says only 1,500 barrels of oil had been released in the incidents and that both leaks have been brought under control. Beijing, as of the 13th of this month, maintained that oil was still coming out of the wells.
Estimates of the coverage of the slick, spreading from China’s largest offshore oil field, have been rapidly growing in recent days. At the moment, reports put its size at 18 times the area polluted by last year’s spill in the port of Dalian, acknowledged as China’s worst oil leakage.
Analysts say that Chinese authorities have regrettably backtracked from their openness exhibited during the Dalian disaster. Yet that spill started with a massive explosion that was impossible to hide. This year, Beijing—characteristically—tried to cover up the June incidents.
According to the South China Morning Post, ConocoPhillips immediately reported the first spill to the State Oceanic Administration on June 4, the day it occurred. Its partner in the Penglai field, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, said nothing to the public until July 1, despite the fact that large numbers of dead fish were washing up on nearby shores. When SOA got around to saying something on July 5, it fibbed. “There is no visible floating oil on the sea and the leak is now under control,” said a spokesman—although
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...
Thanks bruinbirdman!
There will probably be a huge sale of fresh Tilapea at Walmart.
I Support COOL.
Cheers!
The Go-China! cheerleaders of the Fareed Zakaria school will ignore this story.
Tilapia are fresh water, not salt water, fish.
Therefore, one may reasonably expect the usual nastiness in ones Chinese Tilapia, but no oiliness from the spill.
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