Chinese Muffle Oil Spill Estimates

An oil spill following a pipeline explosion in China’s Yellow Sea could be much bigger than the government is admitting. The Chinese government says 1,500 tons of oil was spilled, but an American expert who visited the scene says it may actually be 50 times that figure, putting it on the order of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Still, it pales in comparison to the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. —JCL

Al-Jazeera English:

China’s Yellow Sea oil spill could be many times larger than the government has admitted, a US conservation expert says.

The Chinese government has said that 1,500 tonnes of oil leaked out after a pipeline exploded near one of the country’s strategic oil reserves.

But the disaster, which sent 30-metre-high flames bursting into the sky, could be dozens of times bigger than that, Rick Steiner, a marine conservation expert who has studied the spill, said.

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AP

Thousands of fishing boats were pressed into service to help clean up spilled oil in the Yellow Sea near Dalian in northeast China.