emergencies
Oil slick pollutes tropical sandy beach in Thailand
Polluted beach in Thailand: Now we know that much more crude oil has spilled than assumed. Photo: Athens Zaw Zaw/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Crude oil spills from an underwater pipeline in the Gulf of Thailand – polluting a famous sandy beach. Now we know: A lot more oil escaped than previously assumed.
An oil slick has hit the coast of Thailand’s tourist-popular Rayong province. The famous tropical sandy Mae Ram Phueng Beach around 200 kilometers southeast of Bangkok was then closed to visitors on Saturday, local media reported.
It will take more than a month to clean up the polluted stretch of coast, the Thai Navy reportedly said. According to official estimates, around 50,000 liters of crude oil spilled into the sea from a leak in an underwater pipeline belonging to the Star Petroleum Refining Company in the Gulf of Thailand on Tuesday. A day later, the flow of oil was stopped. The oil slick had covered an area of 47 square kilometers before reaching the Rayong coast, local media reported.
The Navy and other aid workers are now feverishly trying to clean up the beaches and contain the damage, the Bangkok Post quoted Pollution Control Department director-general Atthapol Charoenchansa as saying. The use of chemical dispersants in the past few days may have reduced the damage.
The consequences are probably less than in the environmental disaster of 2013. At that time, a leak in another pipeline caused an oil spill and polluted beaches in Rayong. It took months to remedy the consequences for fishing and tourism.
In the meantime, it has become known that the accident two weeks ago off the coast of Peru spilled significantly more oil than previously thought. The Peruvian Ministry of the Environment announced that not about 6,000 barrels (each 159 liters) of oil had spilled, as initially estimated, but 11,900 barrels. The Spanish oil company Repsol, which operates the affected La Pampilla refinery, spoke of 10,396 barrels.
The accident happened while a tanker was being unloaded. High waves after the eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano near Tonga caused the accident, it said. Since then, oil has contaminated more than 20 beaches north of the capital Lima. The prosecutor responsible accused those responsible at the refinery of reacting too late to the oil spill.