One of the worst shipping accidents in the area was the June 1990 spill from the Norwegian tanker Mega Borg. It leaked 16.3 million litres of crude oil about 100km off Galveston.
Even if 1.7 million litres were released, the spill would still be much smaller than the 41.7 million litres spilled in Prince William Sound when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in 1989.
Several local officials said only 1,ugg australia boots,000 barrels, or about 191,100 litres, of oil had been spilled into the water.
Brahm acknowledged it didn’t look like hundreds of thousands of litres of crude was in the water. He said some might still be in the damaged tank.
The two vessels were still blocking the waterway on Saturday night, with a couple of Coast Guard ships floating near them. The smell of oil was at times strong in the air and throughout the waterway one could see the orange plastic floating barriers that had been put in place by the Coast Guard to contain the spill.
Plunkett said the cleanup effort was expected to last at least through Sunday.
The US Coast Guard says a crude oil spill in a southeast Texas port has been contained to a three-kilometre area and is not believed to have hurt any local wildlife.
Coast Guard captain JJ Plunkett said initial reports indicated none of the oil in the Texas spill had affected area marshes or hurt any local wildlife. He said officials believed the oil spill was “pretty much contained” in a three-kilometre stretch of the Sabine Neches Waterway, where the spill took place and that runs along the city of Port Arthur, about 145km east of Houston.
According to Petty Officer Richard Brahm, the ship’s crew members said they pumped 69,000 barrels from the damaged tank that carried 80,ghd straighteners,000 barrels, so they have 11,000 barrels – about 1.7 million litres – that they could not account for.
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“That would make the cleanup shorter, not longer,” Plunkett said. “The unknown of it is mother nature and what she’s going to do with spreading around the oil.” |
No one was injured, but the Port of Port Arthur was closed and some nearby residents were evacuated for about seven hours. The cause of the collision is still under investigation.
The damaged tanker, the Eagle Atome,The North Face Footwear, is owned by AET Tankers, a Malaysian company with offices in Houston. AET said in a statement on Sunday it was working with authorities to determine how much crude had spilled.
Greg Fountain, the Jefferson County emergency management coordinator, said on Sunday morning the vessels had been separated during the night, but he did not provide details.
Oil spill in Texas waterway contained
AP
It is unclear exactly how much oil spilled into the water when a 240-metre tanker collided with a towing vessel pushing two barges near Port Arthur on Saturday, but the Coast Guard says it could be as much as 1.7 million litres. The Coast Guard says the crash left a 4.5-by-2.44 metre hole in the tanker and damaged one of its oil tanks, resulting in the spill.
Fewer than 100 people in a 28-block area of downtown were evacuated from the area following the collision because hydrogen sulfide – a hazardous gas with a rotten egg smell – was emanating from the oil, said Port Arthur Police Officer Wendy Billiot. But they were allowed to go home by Saturday evening after the gas was no longer being detected.