Mystery oil spills blot more than 130 Brazilian beaches

RIO DE JANEIRO - The source of large blots of oil staining more than 130 beaches in northeastern Brazil remained a mystery Tuesday despite President Jair Bolsonaro's assertions they came from outside the country and were possibly the work of criminals.

Tamar, a group dedicated to the protection of sea turtles, said the oil spills were "the worst environmental tragedy" it has encountered since its formation in 1980.

The patches of oil began appearing in early September and have now turned up along a 2,000 kilometer (1,200 mile) stretch of Atlantic coastline.

"We are not in the presence of a constant leak. If it is the result of a shipwrecked oil tanker, the leaks will continue for the moment," Bolsonaro told a news conference in Brasilia.

"It appears to be criminal. This oil could have been dumped at sea."

Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, appearing alongside Bolsonaro, said the government's priority is "to act quickly to remove what is on land and to deepen the investigation to find the origin."

On Monday, Salles said after visiting the affected areas that more than 100 tonnes of oil has been removed from the beaches in the northeast.

State oil company Petrobras, which is taking part in the cleanup, said its analysis determined that the oil was neither produced nor marketed by the company.

The patches of oil have been detected in all nine states of northeastern Brazil, a poor region known for the beauty of its beaches and whose economy depends on tourism.

"The coastal ecosystem of northeastern Brazil is very fragile, with mangroves, rocky coves and coral reefs," Maria Christina Araujo, an oceanographer at Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, told AFP.

"In the mangrove, an environment with exceptional biodiversity, it is virtually impossible to remove oil. The damage could be irreparable and the ecosystems will take years to recover."

She also warned that the spills could harm the region's economy.

"We can already see that tourists no longer want to go to the beaches," Araujo said.

- Ecosystems at risk -

On Saturday, Bolsonaro ordered a swift investigation to "establish the causes and determine the responsibilities" for the spilled oil. The federal police announced last week that they were investigating the spills as an "environmental crime."

On Monday evening, Bolsonaro said Brazilian authorities had identified a country that the oil could have come from, but he did not name it.

Citing a confidential report, the daily Folha de Sao Paulo revealed that analysis by Petrobras showed the oil could have come from Venezuela.

But Bolsonaro refrained from singling out Brazil's South American neighbor.

Bolsonaro has been a vocal critic of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and relations between the two countries are strained.

Bolsonaro has also lashed out at international critics who blamed him for massive forest fires in the Amazon basin in August and a broader failure to protect the world's largest tropical forest.

Regardless of the source of the oil pollution, the government did not respond to the situation until last week.

"The government took too much time in reacting," said biologist Mario Moscatelli, who said coastal ecosystems -- the beaches, mangroves and coral reefs -- are particularly vulnerable to oil spills.

"It's fundamental that those responsible be identified and that they pay for the damage, environmental as well as economic," he said.

"Without a firm reaction, this kind of episode could happen again," he said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Thai oil spill reaches tourist resort

BANGKOK- Crude oil that leaked from a pipeline in the Gulf of Thailand over the weekend has reached a Thai tourist resort, pipeline operator PTT Global Chemical Pcl said on Monday.

Around 50,000 litres of crude oil poured into the sea on Saturday around 20 km (12 miles) off the coast of Rayong, southeast of the capital Bangkok.

"An oil slick has reached Ao Prao beach on Koh Samet island," PTT Global, which estimates that around 5,000 litres remain to be cleaned up, said in a statement.

"This should be the last oil slick that will come to shore. It is stuck in one particular corner of the shore close to some rocks."

Koh Samet, known for its white sandy beaches, is thronged by local and foreign tourists, thanks to its proximity to Bangkok, and is home to several high-end and budget resorts.

About 200 soldiers have been deployed to help clean up the spill and 300 more will provide back-up, Wichit Chartpaisit, governor of Rayong province, told Reuters, adding that the task would take some time, although he gave no details of how much.

PTT Global Chemical Pcl is part of state-controlled PTT Pcl, Thailand's biggest energy firm.

Another subsidiary, PTT Exploration and Production Pcl , was involved in Australia's worst offshore drilling accident in 2009, when thousands of gallons of crude oil spewed into the sea after a damaged oil well blew up.

The slick from the Montara oil field off Australia's northwest coast spread as far as Indonesian waters. An Australian government inquiry blamed the spill on systemic shortcomings at the Thai oil giant.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

'Manageable' oil slick reaches Sri Lankan capital

COLOMBO -- An oil slick from a rusting cargo vessel that sank in bad weather reached the coast of Sri Lanka's capital on Saturday and threatened a beach resort popular with foreign tourists, officials said.

Coast conservation officials insisted that the spill -- about 10 kilometers long -- was "manageable" and could easily be cleaned up, and there were no immediate signs of it affecting wildlife or fish.

However, a thin layer of oil was seen off the coast of Negombo, navy sources said. One of the first tourist resorts that developed in the early 1970s, Negombo is popular with foreign holidaymakers.

"We can see a thin layer of oil off the coast, but it has not reached the coast yet," said the navy official in the resort, 40 kilometers north of the capital Colombo.

Earlier in the day, a patch of oil reached the coast of Wellawatte, an area of Colombo popular with local swimmers, the coast conservation department said.

"The spill is manageable and the leak from the sunken ship had stopped from last night," Coast Conservation Department chief Anil Premarathne told AFP. "About 10 or 15 people would be enough for this cleanup."

However, the national Disaster Management Centre said it had mobilized 500 volunteers, including soldiers and police, in case of serious damage to the coastline.

The rusting 15,000-tonne Thmothrmopolyseara, a Cyprus-flagged carrier, went down late Thursday after remaining anchored outside a Colombo harbor since 2009 following a dispute over its cargo of steel, local officials said.

DMC director Sarath Kumara said much of the 600 tons of oil from the ship had been pumped out before it sank.

The vessel had been detained by Sri Lankan courts following litigation over the cargo of steel, valued at over $300 million, according to local media reports. It was not clear who owned the vessel.

Sri Lanka's merchant shipping authority director Ajith Seneviratne said they had been ready to tow the ship away to a salvage yard in the island's east but were prevented by a court order.

source: interaksyon.com

Obama bids to curb political damage from spill

philstar.com

PENSACOLA (AP) – President Barack Obama sought to show he was leading a winning battle against the raging oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, taking a message of hope to the devastated coast hours before a nationally televised address Tuesday night.

During stops in Alabama and Mississippi, Obama assured Gulf residents and businesses that the region's beaches would be restored to their "pristine condition" even as he promised he was bringing the full force of his government to get BP to pay damage claims in the country's worst environmental disaster.

Suffering under a growing impression among some Americans that he had reacted with too little too late, the president toured the damage from the BP oil well blowout that has been gushing millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf for 57 days.

The president's two-day tour aimed to stanch the political bleeding and show his deepening involvement. At the same time, Obama collected information and impressions for a televised address to the country from his White House office — the first such address of his presidency.

Obama's address to the nation sets the stage for his showdown White House meeting Wednesday with top executives at British-based BP, the company that leased the rig that exploded April 20 and led to the leak of millions of gallons of coast-devastating crude. It is part of an effort by Obama, who has been accused of appearing somewhat detached as the oil spill disaster has unfolded, to convince a frightened Gulf Coast and a skeptical nation that he is in command.

The oil gusher a mile or 1,600 meters deep in the Gulf has forced Obama and the federal government to rely on BP for an eventual fix. That is not likely to happen until a relief well penetrates the blowout in a couple of months.

With the oil continuing to wash onto beaches and into critical wildlife habitat — delicate marshlands in particular — Obama has taken a hit in the polls.

The crisis also has taken up massive amounts of his time and cut severely into his schedule, including forcing him to cancel a trip to Asia and Australia, and threatening his legislative agenda on such issues as financial overhaul, climate change and immigration reform.

As he took the microphone in Theodore, Alabama on Monday afternoon, Obama likely was previewing what he would tell the country at large from the Oval Office on Tuesday evening.

"I can't promise folks here in Theodore or across the Gulf that this oil will be cleaned up overnight," the president said. Yet he offered assurances that the "full resources of our government are being mobilized to confront this disaster."

Obama also told the country that seafood from the region remained safe to eat, and implored holidaymakers not to cancel visits to the Gulf coast where many of the famous white beaches remain untouched.

But oil from the blown out BP well is spoiling significant parts of the shoreline and already has penetrated into critical breeding grounds for wildlife, waterfowl and sea creatures — in particular shrimp and oysters. The shellfish are a mainstay of some of the Gulf state economies.

The trip gave Obama ammunition for the speech and for his meeting with BP executives where he intends finalize the details of a compensation fund. He visited vacant beaches in Mississippi where the threat of oil has scared off tourists, heard the stories of local employers losing business, watched hazmat-suited workers scrub down boom in a staging facility in Theodore, Alabama, and took a ferry ride through Mobile Bay and then to Orange Beach, Alabama, where oil has lapped on the shore.

He was beginning the day Tuesday in Pensacola, Florida, where he was to attend a briefing and then make remarks at Naval Air Station Pensacola.

Shortly before Obama toured the region, White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters with the president that the administration and BP were "working out the particulars" of Obama's demand that the oil giant set up a multibillion-dollar, independently run damage fund.

Burton said the account would be in the hands of a third-party and would amount to "billions of dollars."

"We're confident that this is a critical way in which we're going to be able to help individuals and businesses in the Gulf area become whole again," he said.

Obama's first stop on Monday was a briefing at a Coast Guard station here on Mississippi's coast, where he said that the two days in the region would help him prepare for a Wednesday showdown with BP executives in the White House. In particular, Obama said there continue to be problems with processing claims for damages and with effective coordination.

"We're gathering up facts, stories, right now so that we have an absolutely clear understanding about how we can best present to BP the need to make sure that individuals and businesses are dealt with in a fair manner and a prompt manner," the president said.

Afterward he ate a lunch of local seafood, declaring it delicious.

BP's board was in session Monday in London to discuss deferring its second-quarter dividend and putting the money into escrow until the company's liabilities from the spill are known.

The administration had said earlier — uncertain whether BP would voluntarily establish the damage fund — that Obama was prepared to force BP to take the step.

BP said in a statement that its costs for responding to the spill had risen to $1.6 billion, including new $25 million grants to Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. It also includes the first $60 million for a project to build barrier islands off the Louisiana coast. The estimate does not include future costs for scores of damage lawsuits already filed.

The company was likely to encounter even more anger Tuesday where Congress was holding three hearings on the Gulf tragedy, which has long ago outstripped the previously worst US environmental tragedy, the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

The administration said early Monday that BP had responded to a letter sent over the weekend asking the company to speed up its ability to capture the spewing oil.

BP said it would target containing more than 2 million gallons of oil a day by the end of June, more than three times the present rate. The government's high-range estimates say as much as 2.1 million gallons a day could be billowing from BP's runaway well.

Singapore closes beaches as oil spill spreads

(philstar.com) Updated May 27, 2010 03:19 PM

SINGAPORE
(AP) — Singapore closed beaches along 7.2 kilometers (4.5 miles) of its east coast as an oil spill from a damaged tanker continued to spread Thursday.

Blotches of rust-colored oil floated next to a breaker wall at a ferry terminal while the nearby National Sailing Center, which usually gives daily classes to hundreds of school students, shut its doors.

A pungent stench has now enveloped the eastern coastline — an area that is normally packed on weekends with families, roller-bladers and cyclists enjoying the sand, sea and some of the island's best seafood restaurants.

"The smell was so bad yesterday, it made me nauseous," said Ho Shufen, a manager at the sailing center. "I don't expect anyone would want to come here until the smell is gone."

About 18,000 barrels of light crude oil spilled from the Malaysian-registered tanker MT Bunga Kelana 3 after it collided with the St. Vincent's and The Grenadines-registered bulk carrier MV Waily early Tuesday in the Singapore Strait about eight miles (13 kilometers) southeast of the city-state's east coast.

The National Environment Agency said it would take the "next few days" to clean up the coastline and advised the public to stay away from affected beaches.

Officials deployed oil dispersants and 3,300 meters (10,800 feet) of containment booms in an unsuccessful bid to keep the slick from fouling the coast.

Officials at the ferry terminal said the oil spill hasn't affected its services.

Gulf Coast oil spill could eclipse Exxon Valdez

VENICE, La. – An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control and drifted inexorably toward the Gulf Coast on Thursday as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.

The spill was both bigger and closer than imagined — five times larger than first estimated, with the leading edge just three miles from the Louisiana shore. Authorities said it could reach the Mississippi River delta by Thursday night.

"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life.

The leak from the ocean floor proved to be far bigger than initially reported, contributing to a growing sense among many in Louisiana that the government failed them again, just as it did during Hurricane Katrina. President Barack Obama dispatched Cabinet officials to deal with the crisis.

Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, worried that his livelihood will be destroyed. He said he did not know whether to blame the Coast Guard, the federal government or oil company BP PLC.

"They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he said. "As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with booms."

The Coast Guard worked with BP, which operated the oil rig that exploded and sank last week, to deploy floating booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants, and set controlled fires to burn the oil off the water's surface.

The Coast Guard urged the company to formally request more resources from the Defense Department. A BP executive said the corporation would "take help from anyone."

Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated — about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.

At that rate, the spill could easily eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 — in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor.

Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because Gulf of Mexico wells typically hold many times more oil than a single tanker.

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP Exploration and Production, had initially disputed the government's larger estimate. But he later acknowledged on NBC's "Today" show that the leak may be as bad as federal officials say. He said there was no way to measure the flow at the seabed, so estimates have to come from how much oil rises to the surface.

Mike Brewer, 40, who lost his oil spill response company in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago, said the area was accustomed to the occasional minor spill. But he feared the scale of the escaping oil was beyond the capacity of existing resources.

"You're pumping out a massive amount of oil. There is no way to stop it," he said.

An emergency shrimping season was opened to allow shrimpers to scoop up their catch before it is fouled by oil. Cannons were to be used to scare off birds. And shrimpers were being lined up to use their boats as makeshift skimmers in the shallows.

This murky water and the oysters in it have provided a livelihood for three generations of Frank and Mitch Jurisich's family in Empire, La.

Now, on the open water just beyond the marshes, they can smell the oil that threatens everything they know and love.

"Just smelling it, it puts more of a sense of urgency, a sense of fear," Frank Jurisich said.
The brothers hope to get all the oysters they can sell before the oil washes ashore. They filled more than 100 burlap sacks Thursday and stopped to eat some oysters. "This might be our last day," Mitch Jurisich said.

Without the fishing industry, Frank Jurisich said the family "would be lost. This is who we are and what we do."

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Thursday so officials could begin preparing for the oil's impact. He said at least 10 wildlife management areas and refuges in his state and neighboring Mississippi are in the oil plume's path.

The declaration also noted that billions of dollars have been invested in coastal restoration projects that may be at risk.

As dawn broke Thursday in the oil industry hub of Venice, about 75 miles from New Orleans and not far from the mouth of the Mississippi River, crews loaded an orange oil boom aboard a supply boat at Bud's Boat Launch. There, local officials expressed frustration with the pace of the government's response and the communication they were getting from the Coast Guard and BP officials.

"We're not doing everything we can do," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, which straddles the Mississippi River at the tip of Louisiana.

Tension was growing in towns like Port Sulphur and Empire along Louisiana Highway 23, which runs south of New Orleans along the Mississippi River into prime oyster and shrimping waters.

Companies like Chevron and ConocoPhillips have facilities nearby, and some residents are hesitant to criticize BP or the federal government, knowing the oil industry is as much a staple here as fishing.

"I don't think there's a lot of blame going around here. People are just concerned about their livelihoods," said Sullivan Vullo, who owns La Casa Cafe in Port Sulphur.

A federal class-action lawsuit was filed late Wednesday on behalf of two commercial shrimpers from Louisiana, Acy J. Cooper Jr. and Ronnie Louis Anderson.

The suit seeks at least $5 million in compensatory damages plus an unspecified amount of punitive damages against Transocean, BP, Halliburton Energy Services Inc. and Cameron International Corp.

In Buras, La., where Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, the owner of the Black Velvet Oyster Bar & Grill couldn't keep his eyes off the television. News and weather shows were making projections that oil would soon inundate the coastal wetlands where his family has worked since the 1860s.

It was as though a hurricane was approaching, maybe worse.

"A hurricane is like closing your bank account for a few days, but this here has the capacity to destroy our bank accounts," said Byron Marinovitch, 47.

"We're really disgusted," he added. "We don't believe anything coming out of BP's mouth."

Signs of the 2005 hurricane are still apparent here: There are schools, homes, churches and restaurants operating out of trailers, and across from Marinovitch's bar is a wood frame house abandoned since the storm.

A fleet of boats working under an oil industry consortium has been using booms to corral and then skim oil from the surface.

The Coast Guard abandoned a plan Wednesday to set fire to the leaking oil after sea conditions deteriorated. The attempt to burn some of the oil came after crews operating submersible robots failed to activate a shut-off device that would halt the flow of oil.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was briefed Thursday on the issue, said his spokesman, Capt. John Kirby. But Kirby said the Defense Department has received no request for help, nor is it doing any detailed planning for any mission on the oil spill.

Obama dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to help with the spill.

The president said the White House would use "every single available resource" to respond.

Obama has directed officials to aggressively confront the spill, but the cost of the cleanup will fall on BP, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said. — AP


article source - gmanews.tv