Xingang Port oil spill
| Xingang Port oil spill | |
|---|---|
| Location |
Yellow Sea, Xingang Harbour Dalian, Liaoning Province, China |
| Coordinates | 38°55′N 121°38′E / 38.92°N 121.63°ECoordinates: 38°55′N 121°38′E / 38.92°N 121.63°E |
| Date | 16–26 July 2010 |
| Cause | Ruptured pipeline |
| Operator | China National Petroleum Corporation |
| Volume | 1,500 to 105,000 m3 (400,000 to 27,740,000 US gal) |
| Area | >946 km2 (365 sq mi) |
The Xingang Port oil spill is a spill that occurred in July 2010 caused by a rupture and subsequent explosion of two crude oil pipelines that run to an oil storage depot of the China National Petroleum Corporation in Xingang Harbour, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China. The 1,500 tonnes of oil spilled from the pipes created an 180 km2 (69 sq mi) slick in the Yellow Sea that grew to 430 km2 (170 sq mi) within a week. By July 21, the spill had spread to 946 km2 (365 sq mi), and stretched as far as 90 km (56 mi) along the coast.
The spill occurred after a process to desulfurize oil in a pipeline at the port began, triggering a fire which subsequently burned for 15 hours. The fire burned from oil that was released from a filled storage tank with a 90,000 ton capacity that collapsed as a result of the fire. Oil from other nearby tanks was, according to a Greenpeace report released several weeks after the incident, intentionally released to prevent the fire from expanding towards a tank containing dimethylbenzene, a flammable chemical.
Although Chinese government officials reported that as little as 1,500 tonnes of oil spilled, a former University of Alaska marine conservation specialist, Rick Steiner, estimates the spill to have a much higher total, with somewhere in the range of 60,000 to 90,000 tons (18.47 to 27.70 million gallons) of oil spilled into the Yellow Sea. He said that "[i]t's enormous. That's at least as large as the official estimate of the Exxon Valdez disaster." However, a government spokesperson for Dalian refuted this estimate, and referred to a panel of experts assessing the spill's size and environmental effect saying that "[w]e will know w[h]ether it's smaller or bigger than 60,000 tons based on the conclusion made by the panel".
According to leaks on Weibo, the accident may have begun as early as June, 10. However, because the government never formally acknowledged the accident took place, as well as threatened informed citizens to delete their posts, the true nature of the accident was not clear to the public. No assessment on the effect on wildlife was ever carried out.
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Wikipedia