Xingang Port oil spill
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The Xingang Port oil spill is a spill that occurred in July 2010 caused by a rupture and subsequent explosion of two
crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...
pipelines that run to an oil storage depot of the
China National Petroleum Corporation The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) () is a major national oil and gas corporation of China and one of the largest integrated energy groups in the world. Its headquarters are in Dongcheng District, Beijing. CNPC was ranked fourth ...
in Xingang Harbour,
Dalian Dalian () is a major sub-provincial port city in Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, and is Liaoning's second largest city (after the provincial capital Shenyang) and the third-most populous city of Northeast China. Located on ...
,
Liaoning Province Liaoning () is a coastal province in Northeast China that is the smallest, southernmost, and most populous province in the region. With its capital at Shenyang, it is located on the northern shore of the Yellow Sea, and is the northernmost ...
,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
. The 1,500 tonnes of oil spilled from the pipes created a slick in the Yellow Sea that grew to within a week. By July 21, the spill had spread to , and stretched as far as along the coast.


Incident

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 Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth t ...
report released several weeks after the incident, intentionally released to prevent the fire from expanding towards a tank containing dimethylbenzene, a flammable chemical.


Containment and cover-up allegations

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 The Yellow Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean located between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula, and can be considered the northwestern part of the East China Sea. It is one of four seas named after common colour ter ...
. He said that " '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 " will know w ther 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. The ensuing fire burned for 15 hours and one firefighter drowned after being swept overboard into the water. There was extensive damage to local wildlife areas, aquaculture, and beaches were closed following the spill and conflagration which appeared to have been caused by the injection of a highly oxidizing sulfur reducing agent into a pipeline. On 26 July 2010, the Chinese local government announced the spill had been contained and that the spill had failed to reach open waters. Cleanup efforts continued two weeks after the original explosion began, with operations to remove the oil performed at night when the oil is most viscous. The cleanup effort largely used low-tech methods, including containment booms and straw mats to absorb the oil, as well as a fleet of fishermen manually scooping oil out of the water and transferring it to barrels for storage and eventual disposal. Additionally, limited amounts of chemical dispersants were used, as well as a material to increase biodegradation of oil.


Reaction

After the incident the Chinese government announced that safety standards would be tightened up at ports.


Impact

The oil spill affected several aspects of the area's economy.
Tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...
was affected after oil began washing ashore on beaches, some of which were closed after the spill; according to Greenpeace, additional oil washing ashore was a possibility that remained for the rest of the summer. The oil severely affected fishing industry near Dalian, especially offshore
shellfish Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater environ ...
farms, many of which were contaminated by the oil, either killing the fish or rendering them unfit for consumption. The economic loss was estimated to be as high as tens of million
US dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...
s. Environmental damage was also serious as a result of the spill; the majority of wildlife inhabiting the area was exposed to oil, which led to the deaths of some, while others were expected to display longer-term effects. Lu Guang's pictures of the oil spill and the subsequent funeral of firefighter Zhang Liang were awarded a third prize in the category "Spot News" in the 2011 World Press Photo contest.World Press Photo
Lu Guang - 2011 Photo Contest


Aftermath

The non-fiction book''The Deepest Water Is Tears'' (最深的水是泪水) authored by Bao'erji Yuanye was based on the incident, and then adapted as the film '' The Bravest''.


See also

*
List of oil spills This is a reverse-chronological list of oil spills that have occurred throughout the world and spill(s) that are currently ongoing. Quantities are measured in tonnes of crude oil with one tonne roughly equal to 308 US gallons, 256 Imperial gallon ...


References


External links


Oil spill in Dalian, China
The Big Picture
The Value of Ethical Oil
The Source with Ezra Levant - April 20, 2011 {{China National Petroleum Corporation Explosions in 2010 2010 disasters in China 2010 industrial disasters Oil spills in China 2010 in the environment Environmental disasters in China July 2010 events in China