Danh mục: Market News

What Happened and When

A large oil spill happened in the Kerch Strait, which links the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The oil leaked from two aging tankers that were hit by a storm on Dec 15.

The exact cause isn’t clear yet, but bad weather and mistakes by the crew might be to blame. Strong winds and rough seas made the situation worse. The Kerch Strait is known for being a tricky area for ships, and this spill is one of the worst accidents there.

How Big Is the Spill?

Experts say about 20,000 tons of crude oil spilled into the water. Pictures from satellites show that the oil slick covers over 50 square kilometers. This is very bad news for animals and plants in the area. Foul-smelling fuel oil from sandy beaches in and around Anapa, a summer resort. Environmental groups have reported deaths of dolphins, porpoises and sea birds.

People living nearby say they can smell the oil, and some have seen it washing up on the beaches. Environmental groups worry about how the spill will harm rare animals and plants that live in the Black Sea.

The Effects on Nature and People

This oil spill is hurting the environment. Oil in the water can kill fish, seabirds, and other sea animals. It can also poison the food chain, which might make it hard for fish to survive in the future. This is bad news for fishermen who depend on the sea for their jobs.

The spill could also make people sick. Authorities have told locals not to swim in the water or eat fish from the area. Experts say that long-term contact with the oil could harm people’s health.

How the Spill Is Being Cleaned

Emergency teams are working hard to clean up the oil. More than 10,000 people have been working to shovel up viscous. Over 15 boats with special tools are being used to scoop the oil from the water. Chemicals are also being sprayed to break the oil into smaller parts. However, some groups worry that these chemicals could harm sea life.

A Russian government spokesperson said, “Our top goal is to stop the oil from spreading and protect the environment.” Even with this effort, cleaning up all the oil could take weeks or even months.

What Can Be Done to Stop This from Happening Again?

This spill has made people demand better rules for ships in the Kerch Strait. Environmentalists want governments to watch ships more closely and make sure they follow safety rules. They are also asking shipping companies to use stronger and safer ships.

Conclusion

The oil spill in the Kerch Strait shows how dangerous it can be to move oil by sea. The cleanup is ongoing, but the damage will take a long time to fix. This event should remind everyone, from governments to shipping companies, to take better care of the environment and prevent accidents like this in the future.

Finding effective and efficient ways to clean up the damage is imperative in protecting the environment.

Singapore is exploring a variety of oil abatement technologies to clean up the maritime environment after its most recent spill that shut down beaches for months.

The Singapore Strait, a nearly 70-mile-long area off the southern coast of the country, has been flagged as a danger zone for spills as one of the busiest sea lanes in the world, according to a report by Channel News Asia (CNA).

This has led the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore to organize demonstrations of tools that can help clean and detect the polluting substance, as CNA reported separately.

Per the news outlet, it’s all part of the biennial Joint Oil Spill Exercise, which boosts incident management capabilities and offers testbed opportunities for new solutions.

Among those on hand was the KOBOT-S remote-controlled water drone, which acts as a first responder after spills on the water.

As detailed in the report, it works by spinning an absorbent cylinder of nanofoam that can separate oil from water and collect up to 1,100 pounds of the errant dirty fuel in an hour’s time.

The nearly 15-foot-long KOBOT-S can run for about three hours on a charge and be maneuvered easily, as displayed recently by Tony Park, CEO of Korea Oceanic Artificial Intelligence, per CNA.

Unfortunately, the tech was not yet an option during the spill earlier this year.

“If the KOBOT had been dispatched during that time, it could have been quite useful in collecting the oil,” Park shared with CNA.

Oil spills are incredibly damaging to the environment, not only impacting beach recreation and local economies, but also injuring animals and compromising important habitats like wetlands and oyster reefs.

Oil and gas companies continue to resist regulation, and often deceive or change course on the public with backtracking on climate commitments. The toxic runoff from spills can poison water supplies, hurting humans and animals alike.

Finding effective and efficient ways to clean up the damage is imperative in protecting the environment.

The Current Buster is another commonly used tool for cleaning up water-based oil spills, as CNA explained. However, this requires more personnel, as it takes two vessels to tow the floating tool in order to funnel oil away from the water’s surface.

Singapore’s port authority is also exploring BKR Engineering’s laser device, which reportedly can vaporize contaminants like oil, rust, and soot. It’s used to touch up residue left on surfaces after an initial round of high-pressure washing.

This can help eliminate the need for hazardous chemicals and cleansers, although it currently takes about five minutes to clean a palm-sized area of rock stained by oil, as CNA noted.

To help detect oil spills, as many are still underreported, the port authority is also reviewing hyperspectral imagery tech from the Technology Centre for Offshore and Marine Singapore and ST Engineering’s Commercial Aerospace..

This uses a broad spectrum of wavelengths that go beyond visible and near-infrared light to help distinguish oil from water, which is ideal for inspection in low-light conditions.

However, there’s still more work to be done.

“These areas still require substantial development work before the capability can be operationalised, including being deployed by drone,” as the Singaporean port authority concluded.

Source: The Cool Down

Chevron says it has contained an oil spill that contaminated the San Francisco Bay at the Richmond Wharf on Thursday, and is working to clean it up.

A Chevron employee reported the spill to state authorities at 5:14 a.m. The company said less than three barrels of a diesel-based liquid leaked into the bay because of a pump failure at the Richmond Long Wharf.

Caitlin Powell, a Chevron spokesperson, said the company is still trying to determine the exact time the spill began.

“Chevron immediately initiated its response protocol, stopped the release, and notified all applicable agencies,” the company said in a written statement Friday. “The released material is fully contained, there are no known impacts to wildlife or the shoreline, and air monitoring found no impact to the community. The safety and health of our workforce, our communities and the environment remain our highest priorities.”

State regulations require that spills of hazardous materials be reported immediately to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. The U.S. Coast Guard, Contra Costa County, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Richmond Fire Department responded to Thursday’s spill. Marine Spill Response Corp. has been contracted to contain and clean up the spill. Absorbent booms were put in place to absorb the oil.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Hunter Schnabel said about three barrels spilled, which is roughly 130 gallons of oil. Two barrels have been recovered.

“The federal on-scene coordinator and the state on-scene coordinators went to the site where the cleanup was taking place, and there was no observable sheen anymore,” Schnabel said Friday afternoon. “They had cleaned up what they could clean up, and then the rest had either dissipated or filtered away.”

A little after 3 p.m. Thursday, Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response said that it had “concluded the spill response into Richmond Wharf, but an investigation will continue.”

Kristina Werner, Fish and Wildlife information officer, said that while most of the oil has already been cleaned up, the containment and absorbent measures will remain in place until they are no longer needed. She said that while no impact to wildlife or aquatic life has been found so far, the responding agencies will continue to monitor the situation.

In 2021, a Chevron pipeline ruptured at the Richmond refinery, spilling nearly 800 gallons of diesel into the bay. The spill cost Chevron more than $130,000 to clean up and $70,000 in civil penalties. It left an oil sheen on the bay for three days, affecting bird and aquatic life.

Last November, the refinery was slapped with four notices of violation because of a flaring event that spewed smoke for 12 hours, shrouding Richmond and parts of Marin County.

Earlier this year, Chevron agreed to pay $20 million to settle fines withe Bay Area Air Quality Management District for 678 outstanding air pollution violations.

Chevron is one of Richmond’s biggest polluter but also its largest taxpayer and employer, with a workforce of about 1,200 people. The city has co-existed uneasily with Chevron, which predates it. In 2012, a fire at the refinery blazed for hours, forcing thousands of people to seek treatment for breathing issues. That led to a protracted legal fight that ended in 2018, when Chevron settled with the city for $5 million, a sum many in Richmond considered low for the damage done.

Recently, Chevron agreed to pay Richmond $550 million over the course of a decade, beginning next year. The company brokered the deal after the City Council had decided to put a measure on the November ballot that would have imposed a special excise tax on the refinery.

Reporter Anasooya Thorakkattu – Richmond Confidential

Officials are now investigating this as an illegal dumping case.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife was notified Friday that a petroleum oil spill had occurred in the state waters of the Smith Canal, according to department officials.

The source of the spill appears to be from an oil burner that had a potential maximum capacity of 380 gallons, though authorities have not specified how much oil has gone into the canal.

A neighbor, who wants to stay anonymous, and lives directly in front of where the spill happened, told KCRA 3 that he witnesses multiple illegal dumpings along the canal on a weekly basis.

“I didn’t think anything of it because they drop so much garbage around here. It’s kind of pointless trying to stop and yell and trying to pick a fight with every single person,” said the neighbor.

The United States Coast Guard is taking the lead in the investigation.

In a statement, they said, “Crews from the Stockton Fire Department and the Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response responded initially and deployed a sorbent boom to minimize environmental impacts. An additional layer of a hard boom was deployed on both sides of the spill site to prevent product from entering into the San Joaquin River.”

KCRA noticed a white tarp over an area near the bank of the canal, where investigators confirmed that the oil container was left. They removed it Sunday afternoon.

“It’s a really sad event that happened for that to end up in the water. Hopefully, it has a good outcome in the end, that is what we’re hoping for,” said the neighbor.

The Coast Guard has also opened the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, established for various issues related to oil spills, including clean-up costs, to pay for the initial response to the Stockton spill and containment and recovery of the oil released into the canal.

The San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services has advised community members living along the banks or near the canal to avoid the area of the spill and stay out of the water. Officials also cautioned pet owners to keep animals out of water and not let them drink from the canal.

Fish and Wildlife are asking the public to not catch and consume any fish or shellfish in the area.

State and federal agencies are still searching for the person who caused the spill.

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