ConocoPhillips blamed for pollution
US oil giant ConocoPhillips has been held responsible for polluting some 4,250 square kilometres (1,650 square miles) of the Bohai Bay. Of the estimated area, 840-square-kilometre area is seriously polluted, according to a report posted on the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) website on Friday.
Following its investigation, SOA ordered ConocoPhillips on Wednesday to suspend its operations at platforms B and C of the Penglai 19-3 oilfield in the northern Bohai Bay. The US firm in its website on the same day stated that "this order was complied with immediately".
"While the detailed causes of these incidents are still under investigation," it said, ConocoPhillips will continue to work diligently and safely to finalise clean-up activities and pledged to implement procedures "to eliminate the risks of additional releases".
The releases took place on June 4 and 17 were allegedly kept secret by the authorities for several weeks before being made public early this month. The SOA order follows a slow progress in cleaning up oil leaks, which sent water quality ratings in the area to their lowest level, Reuters said.
The spilled oil has also been detected in seabed sediment samples taken near the oil field. "Most of the measures taken by ConocoPhillips so far are temporary and remedial. They cannot completely eliminate the risks of oil spills and the possibility of another oil spill is at all times posing huge threat to the ecological environment of the Bohai Bay," the regulator said on its website. Oil continued to spill from the two platforms and there was still oil slick floating on the sea, the SOA added.
The Texas-based firm, the third in the US and fifth in the world, has five production platforms with total daily production of roughly 160,000 barrels in that oilfield and operates under an arrangement of state-owned producer China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC).
In its latest update available on the official website of ConocoPhillips China, dated July 13, the firm estimates the aggregate amount of fluid be around 1,500 barrels (240 cubic meters) of oil and oil-based drilling fluids. It claims, "Almost 3,000 metres of absorbent and inflatable booms were deployed to contain the oil surface on water, and 33 vessels (workboats, fishing boats and tugs) supported clean-up activities. "…and it believes the seepage has stopped."
ConocoPhillips was awarded two deep-sea blocks in the Bay of Bengal for exploration of gas and oil under a production sharing contract with the Bangladesh government on June 16. It holds 100 percent of the working interest in the PSC.
Blocks DS-08-10 and DS-08-11 cover a total area of 5158 square kilometres, (1.27 million acres), and are located in water depth of 1000-1500 meters (3,300-5,000 feet) approximately 280 kilometres (175 miles) from the port city of Chittagong.
SOA expressed its concern citing an initial investigation that there were still oil belts around the two platforms, "as well as signs indicating that more oil spills may occur". It urged ConocoPhillips to thoroughly check its platforms in order to eradicate the risk of new spills, as well as report information regarding possible spills to the SOA in a timely manner.
CNOOC's executive vice-president Chen Bi said last week that the field was losing daily production by about 1,000 cubic metres, or around 4 percent, and that ConocoPhillips had "stopped water injection and drilling at the affected wells". A preliminary investigation showed the leak was caused because water injected down the pipe used to drill for oil increased pressure in the oil-bearing strata of the sea bed and operator ConocoPhillips was to blame.
ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS Experts, following the incident, have called for strict safety checks for seafood caught from the Bohai Bay, warning that the spill would leave a long-term effect on the sea water. "The oil, containing toxic substances and heavy metals, will greatly affect the growth of marine lives that live on the seabed, such as clams, scallops and some kinds of crabs," Xinhua reported last week quoting Cui Wenlin, director of the environmental monitoring centre with the North China Sea branch of the SOA.
Bohai is a half-closed sea with comparatively low self-clean ability due to limited water exchange with the outside, he added. The environmental monitoring centre Cui directs has been monitoring the impacts of the oil spills on the Bohai's water quality, seabed sediments and marine lives.
Though the US firm claims that no oil sheen reached the shoreline after the spills, Xinhua reports that "dead seaweed and rotting fish have been reported in the water around Nanhuangcheng Island, about 74 kilometres south from where the leaks originated".
TRACK RECORDS The CNOOC has recently come under scrutiny for several accidents involving its facilities, the third such incident on the Bohai Sea in less than two months. Following an oil spill on Tuesday in its Suizhong 36-1 oilfield, it was to be shut temporarily, SOA announced in a statement. By Wednesday afternoon, CNOOC finished cleaning up an oil slick near the oilfield and gradually resumed production.
ConocoPhillips, after being incorporated in 2002, was responsible for the spill in Dalco Passage, 21 miles of the South Sound beaches, in October 2004 and had to pay $588,000 in compensation for environmental damage.
A gas blow-out occurred on May 3, 2006 approximately 26 kilometres southeast of Edson, Alberta by the US firm's Canada concern.
A ConocoPhillips well caught fire near Groundbirch, 30km east of Chetwynd or 45km west of Dawson Creek on Nov 11, 2008. A rusted pipeline ruptured on Christmas Day in 2008 at ConocoPhillips' Kuparuk oil field in Alaska, causing one of the biggest-ever spills of oil-laced water on the North Slope. Some 95,000 gallon oil was spilled from a corroded water-injection pipeline from the North America's second-biggest field, after Prudhoe Bay.
COMPENSATION China state media said the government was considering seeking compensation from ConocoPhillips over the spill. "We've made an initial plan to claim compensation from ConocoPhillips China," the business daily 21st Century Business Herald quoted an unnamed SOA official as saying. "But whether and how it will be implemented still depends on the status of plugging the leak," the official added.
The SOA last week said ConocoPhillips would be fined 200,000 Yuan ($ 30,770) for the spills. However, Wang Bin, a senior official with the SOA oceanic environmental protection bureau, said maritime authorities will also claim environmental compensation from COPC in accordance with relevant laws, and the figure will be "much more than" 200,000 Yuan. "Compensation can climb to 200 million Yuan for 1,000 hectares [10 square kilometers] of the affected area," the China Daily reported.
UK energy giant BP has so far spent an estimated $42 billion on clean-up and other costs for the Gulf of Mexico incident, involving Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana of April last year. Eleven people died when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, 2010, resulting in the largest oil spill in US history, when it was estimated that 4.9 million barrels of oil were spilt covering 9,450 square kilometres.
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