Fire Earth

Earth is fighting to stay alive. Mass dieoffs, triggered by anthropogenic assault and fallout of planetary defense systems offsetting the impact, could begin anytime!

Posts Tagged ‘Timor Sea Oil Slick’

Australia Blazing Oil Rig May Collapse

Posted by feww on November 2, 2009

Would a Responsible Govt Allow Such Ecocide Continue for So Long?

Australia Oil Rig May Collapse, Fire Out of Control: PTTEP

On August 23, 2009 FEWW asserted that the Australian Oil Disaster May Get a Lot Worse

It has, and there’s no sign of abating.

Oil Rig Fire PTTEP
West Atlas oil rig and Montara wellhead platform on fire. Photo supplied by PTTEP via abc.net

Australian government’s silence to the ongoing ecological disaster in Timor Sea has been deafening, their inaction dazzling, their incompetence deplorable and devastating for the region, planet.

Just over 10 weeks after the leak started on August 21, 2009, the size of the oil slick spewing out of a  ruptured pipe at the West Atlas oil rig, which caught fire on Sunday, had grown to about 30,000 km².


Based on all the information they have received, FEWW Moderators believe some 29,000 tons of oil and gas condensate have been leaked into Timor Sea so far.

A laboratory analysis conducted by the Indonesian Environmental Impact Management Agency (NTT Bapedalda) on Oct. 10, 2009 found that the  seawater contained 107.2 milligrams of crude oil per liter.

“We believe the pollution was caused by an oil spill from the Montara oil field in the Timor Sea,” the head of NTT Bapedalda, Alexander Oematan, told reporters in the provincial capital of Kupang on Wednesday.

ECOCIDE SHOULD BE A CAPITAL CRIME DESERVING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

n18mer124_DDC - lg
More than 10 weeks after a blowout at a newly dug oil well, crude oil and gas condensate continued to leak into the Timor Sea, between northwest Australia and Indonesia. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows the Timor Sea on October 28, 2009. NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey, NASA’s Earth Observatory. Edited by FEWW.

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Posted in australia oil slick, ecological disaster, Montara oil field, Montara wellhead platform, PTTEP Australasia, Timor Sea, West Atlas drilling rig | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Oil Spills, Earthquakes and Faults

Posted by feww on October 31, 2009

Oil Spills NO Different to Earthquakes

They Both Spell Disaster, Occur Because of Faults and Happen Regularly in San Francisco Bay

Earthquakes occur in SFB because of geological faults: San Gregorio fault, San Andreas fault, Mt Diablo fault… and Hayward fault. Oil spills occur there as a result of oil companies faults: Arco’s fault, BP’s fault, Chevron’s fault, ConocoPhillips’s fault, Exxon’s fault… and Shell’s fault!

You’d forgiven for thinking there must be an oil spill and an earthquake in the SFBA each day! Because you’d almost be right.

dubai star
The oil slick from the Dubai Star, an oil tanker  located at Anchorage 9 south of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Photo: KGO-TV/ABC7 via Mercury News. Image may be subject to copyright.

The latest spill, a blackish filthy brown slick of bunker fuel, covered a 250-meter by  4-km stretch of San Francisco Bay on Friday, caused by a “refueling mishap” between an oil tanker, Dubai Star, and a service barge alongside, the U.S. Coast Guard reported.

The slick has not reached land and is in a narrow band because there is little wind and much of it may burn off amid warm weather, giving clean-up crews the upper hand in containing it, Coast Guard Captain Paul Gugg told reporters at a press conference.

“The weather is very cooperative. We’re all over it.” Gugg said.

Gugg said the scope of the contamination does not compare to the massive spill in 2007 of fuel oil from another tanker in the San Francisco Bay that spread across its shores and killed thousand of birds.

However,  Gugg didn’t say how much bunker fuel had spilled into the bay.

The spill comes eight days before the two-year anniversary of the vessel Cosco Busan striking the Bay Bridge in dense fog, ripping open its hull and spilling more than 53,000 gallons of fuel oil that fouled much of the shoreline along the well-known California waterway.

The Busan spill killed more than 2,500 birds and deposited oil on 200 miles of coastline, Pacific Environment was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile,

The unscrupulous oil giant BP has been fined $87 million for failing to remove safety hazards at its massive Texas City refinery, the 3rd largest in the US, where an explosion in 2005 killed 15 workers and injured 180 others.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited 270 violations at the oil refinery, officials said.

In 2005, BP was fined $21.3 million and ordered to repair hazards at their refinery, but it didn’t

“Lawyers acting for victims of the disaster suggested that the renewed action could put BP in breach of a plea agreement two years ago in which it pleaded guilty to a single felony and paid $373m to settle a string of criminal charges.” UK’s Guardian reported.

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Posted in big oil, bird sanctuaries, Cosco Busan, Earthquakes, marine sanctuaries, oil spill, San Francisco Bay | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »