An official warned the spill posed a "severe
threat" to sea life and water quality as China's latest environmental
crisis spread off the shores of Dalian, once named China's most livable city.
One cleanup worker has drowned, his body coated in crude.
"I've been to a few bays today and discovered they
were almost entirely covered with dark oil," said Zhong Yu with
environmental group Greenpeace China, who spent the day on a boat inspecting
the spill.
"The oil is half-solid and half liquid and is as
sticky as asphalt," she told The Associated Press by telephone.
The oil had spread over 430 sq. km of water five days
since a pipeline at the busy northeastern port exploded, hurting oil shipments
from part of China's strategic oil reserves to the rest of the country.
Shipments remained reduced Wednesday.
State media has said no more oil is leaking into the sea,
but the total amount of oil spilled is not yet clear.
Greenpeace China released photos Wednesday of inky
beaches and of straw mats about 2 sq. m. in size scattered on the sea, meant to
absorb the oil.
Fishing in the waters around Dalian has been banned
through the end of August, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
"The oil spill will pose a severe threat to marine
animals, and water quality, and the sea birds," Huang Yong, deputy bureau
chief for the city's Maritime Safety Administration, told Dragon TV.
At least one person died during cleanup efforts. A
25-year-old firefighter, Zhang Liang, drowned Tuesday when a wave threw him
from a vessel, Xinhua reported.
Officials, oil company workers and volunteers were
turning out by the hundreds to clean blackened beaches.
"We don't have proper oil cleanup materials, so our
workers are wearing rubber gloves and using chopsticks," an official with
the Jinshitan Golden Beach Administration Committee told the Beijing Youth
Daily newspaper, in apparent exasperation.
"This kind of inefficiency means the oil will keep
coming to shore. ... This stretch of oil is really difficult to clean up in the
short term."
But 40 oil-skimming boats and about 800 fishing boats
were also deployed to clean up the spill, and Xinhua said more than 15 km of
oil barriers had been set up to keep the slick from spreading.
China Central Television earlier reported an estimate of
1,500 tons of oil has spilled. That would amount roughly to 400,000 gallons
(1,500,000 liters) - as compared with 94 million to 184 million gallons in the
BP oil spill off the US coast.
China's State Oceanic Administration released the latest
size of the contaminated area in a statement Tuesday.
The cause of the explosion that started the spill was
still not clear. The pipeline is owned by China National Petroleum Corp.,
Asia's biggest oil and gas producer by volume.
Friday's images of 100-foot-high (30-meter-high) flames
at China's second largest port for crude oil imports drew the immediate
attention of President Hu Jintao and other top leaders. Now the challenge is
cleaning up the greasy plume.
"Our priority is to collect the spilled oil within
five days to reduce the possibility of contaminating international
waters," Dalian's vice mayor, Dai Yulin, told Xinhua on Tuesday.
But an official with the State Oceanic Administration has
warned the spill will be difficult to clean up even in twice that amount of
time.
Some locals said the area's economy was already hurting.
"Let's wait and see how well they deal with the oil
until Sept. 1, if the oil can't be cleaned up by then, the seafood products
will all be ruined," an unnamed fisherman told Dragon TV. "No one
will buy them in the market because of the smell of the oil."
