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A week of horror and tragedy along the Chinese Coast

Posted by Xiu Min Li / July 22nd, 2010

 

Dalian oil pipeline explosion and spill

On July 16, an oil pipeline in Dalian, owned and operated by ChinaPetrol Group exploded while loading oil off a Libyan tanker.

The Financial Times reported today, “The disaster began last Friday, when two pipelines exploded as high-sulphur crude was being unloaded from a Libyan tanker. State media said firefighters were on the scene within three minutes and more than 2,000 firefighters were deployed to battle the blaze, which raged through Saturday morning.”

According to Chinese media report, the explosion has caused 1500 tons of oil to spill, reaching an ocean area of 50km with pollution likely to spread to 100km.  John Amos from SkyTruth made the above satellite image of the Dalian Spill.

“The government’s clean-up efforts have been energetic but, just as in the Mexican gulf, hampered by poor equipment and preparation. Some 40 skimming vessels, 15km of boom and 23m tons of oil-eating bacteria are being used to disperse and remove the oil, according to state media,” said the Financial Times.

Our Chinese partner Blue Dalian has done research and site investigation on the spill. They were able to take pictures of swimmers along the coast cleaning oil off their face on Sunday afternoon, two days after the spill. They will continue to follow the event and is preparing a report. Together with PE, we will analyze what happened and how Blue Dalian can play a role in dealing with this unprecedented issue.

Wen Bo, China Program Senior Fellow will be heading over to Dalian in a few days. In San Francisco, we are putting together best practices and response kits for citizens and NGOs to be shared with our partner Blue Dalian. Any resources you know or come across will be extremely helpful and do not hesitate to send them my way.

For other images on the Dalian Oil Spill, Click Here.

Stay tuned for updates from Pacific Environment and our partners on the ground.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 4:46 pm and is filed under China, Climate Change, Energy, Oceans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “A week of horror and tragedy along the Chinese Coast”

  1. Not close to Deep Horizon in Volume Says:
    August 31st, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    Any spill is significant, and man oh man, this is huge. However, compared to Deepwater the one highlighted in the story is a drop in the bucket, so to speak. Tells you how horrendous the BP oil disaster really is.

    (1 500 ton * 2 000 #/ton) / (8.34500 #/gal * .87 * 42 gal/barrel) = 9 838.44293 barrels
    (1 500 ton * 2 240 #/ton) / (8.34500 * .87 * 42 gal/barrel) = 11 019.0561 barrels

    Deepwater was spewing up to 25,000 to 50,000 barrels or more per day!!!