Slippery Situation

By LI LI

Slippery Situation

By LI LI

There’s still no telling how serious the spill near Dalian City will be

Two weeks after an oil pipeline explosion on July 16 in Dalian, northeast China’s Liaoning Province, the coastal city is still trying to minimize the ecological impact on the environment and boost local tourism, aquatic farms and fisheries out of its shadow. The accident resulted in the leak of 1,500 tons of oil into the sea.

Fire engulfed the Xingang Port after the explosion of two pipelines attached to an oil storage tank. The pipelines damaged by the blasts are property of a joint venture between PetroChina International Co., a unit of PetroChina, and Dalian Port Co. Ltd. PetroChina is the listed unit of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), China’s largest oil company. The fire raged for about 15 hours before being extinguished the next day. No one was injured.

On July 18, oil slicks, the thickest being 1 meter, were seen in the water near Xingang Port and the longest oil belt on the sea surface measured 18 km. The monitoring data of the State Oceanic Administration showed that 430 square km of the sea was polluted at 1:30 p.m. on July 19, of which 12 square km were under severe pollution.

A massive cleanup operation was launched the day after the explosion. At a press conference on July 26, Dai Yulin, Vice Mayor of Dalian, said the majority of the oil spilled into the sea was mopped up after one week’s cleanup effort and his city has stopped the oil spill from reaching international waters.

The cleanup has involved 266 trips of oil-skimming vessels and 8,150 trips of fishing boats, Dai told reporters. Maritime agencies and oil companies have laid down more than 40,000 meters of oil barriers and 65 tons of oil absorbent mats.

“But the next stage, which is clearing it up, is an arduous task,” Dai told the press briefing. He said starting July 26 the cleanup operation would shift from the offshore areas to Dalian’s coast, which will be cleaned“meter by meter and inch by inch.”

CNPC General Manager Jiang Jiemin, who arrived at Dalian on July 18 to oversee the company’s cleanup work, said his company has tightened safety measures at all of its facilities and will complete the cleanup of the slick as soon as possible.

As the waterways affected by the oil have been basically cleared, authorities lifted a partial ban on maritime traffic at some ports in Dalian on July 20. The Maritime Affairs Administration of Liaoning Province said ports in Dalian had been fully re-opened as of 5 p.m.

Oil shipments from Dalian, which lies at the heart of northeast China’s crude oil production base and is a major port for China’s crude oil imports, have been vital to the country’s oil production and consumption. After the blasts and the leak, south China refineries scaled back operations due to petroleum supply shortages while at least three CNPC subsidiaries reduced sales of refined oil in southern provinces, according to a Xinhua report on July 20.

CNPC said on July 22 that the pipeline connecting Xingang Port and its Dalian Petrochemicals, damaged by the explosion, had been repaired and resumed normal operations. On July 29, Xingang Port resumed full operations, nearly two weeks after the oil spill. A 300,000-ton oil tanker began unloading crude oil at about 11 a.m. July 29, marking the full restoration of port services.

The tanker and oil pipelines were inspected for safety before the oil was unloaded. The oil dock was the last facility to resume full operations. The harbor received more than 130 tankers and ships between July 27 and 29.

The State Administration of Work Safety and the Ministry of Public Security released the results of a joint investigation on July 23, concluding that improper desulfurizing injections into the oil pipeline caused its explosion.

According to the investigation report, on July 15, a 300,000-ton tanker started to unload its oil into an onshore storage tank and workers from Shanghai-based Q.PRO Inspection and Technical Service Co. and Tianjin-based Huishengda Petroleum Technology Co. started to inject desulfurizerinto a tank through a pipeline. At around 1 p.m. the next day, the unloading was suspended while the injection of desulfurizer, which should have also stopped, continued. At around 6 p.m., the first explosion took place, causing a major fire and the oil spill.

SAFETY MEASURES: On July 18, border policemen in Dalian help to evacuate fishing boats from a wharf near a burned oil tank after an oil pipeline explosion in Xingang Port

Produced by Huishengda Petroleum Technology Co., the desulfurizer was strongly oxidizing, the investigation’s report said. A subsidiary of CNPC had authorized the two companies to conduct the operation.

The joint investigation accused the involved parties of failing to scientifically verify the safety of the oxidizer. The report also said the involved parties failed to use standard injection procedures and identify risks promptly.

Lax management and ineffective oversight were also blamed for the accident as relevant departments failed to stop the injection operation in time.

The report also noted that a concentration of large tanks storing hazardous chemicals added to risks.

On July 23, the State Administration of Work Safety and the Ministry of Public Security urged Chinese ports to ramp-up safety measures ahead of loading, unloading and transporting oil and other hazardous chemical products.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a circular on the same day, urging local governments and companies to strengthen work safety and enhanced supervision.

Speaking at a press conference on July 26, Liu Xicai, Director of Dalian Oceanic and Fishery Administration, said that Dalian’s aquatic farms located in waters south of the city have not been contaminated while no fishing boat from Dalian will fish during a fishing moratorium. “Seafood shipped from Dalian won’t be affected by the oil leak at all. I can guarantee you their safety on behalf of Dalian Oceanic and Fishery Administration,” said Liu.

“So far we’ve found nothing unusual from the marine ecosystem parameters in that area,”said Wang Fan, head of an investigation on marine ecosystems near the oil spill area organized by the Institute of Oceanology under Chinese Academy of Sciences, on August 2.

The investigation, conducted from July 25 to 29, collected data from nine offshore observation stations, covering areas up to 30 nautical miles off the coast, including the 10 square km of heavily polluted sea near Xingang.

After a field survey on the oil slick near Dalian on July 30, Chen Lianzeng, Deputy Director of the State Oceanic Administration, said the accident had rung a bell for China to prevent similar ocean-polluting oil spills in the future. Chen suggested that government tighten the inspection on projects that might affect the marine ecological systems and enhance the emergency response capacity in case of marine oil spills.

GREEN CITY: Dalian is an important port and an industrial and tourism city on China’s northeast coast

City of Dalian

Lying on the east coast of Eurasia and the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsular in northeast China, Dalian stretches from 120°58’ to 123°31’ east longitude and 38°43’ to 40°10’ north latitude, covering an area of 12,574 square km. Dalian is the second largest city of Liaoning Province. With the Yellow Sea on the east, Bohai Sea on the west, Dalian is the marine gateway of north China. It is also an important port and a trade, industrial and tourism city. The permanent population of Dalian at the end of 2009 totaled 6.17 million.

Dalian’s old city is 2,415 square km and this area abounds with mountains and hills, while plains and lowlands are rarely seen. The terrain, high and broad to the north, low and narrow to the south, tilts to the Yellow Sea on the southeast and the Bohai Sea to the northwest from the center. Mountain regions and long eroded foothills are widely dispersed within the region. Plains and lowlands are only interspersed near the confluence and in some valleys. Karst topography and sea erosion topography are everywhere.

Dalian’s GDP in 2009 was 441.77 billion yuan ($65.0 billion), increasing by 15 percent over the previous year calculated at constant prices. Dalian’s total output of aquatic products in 2009 was 2.3 million tons, up 5 percent from the previous year.

A 10-day international beer festival has been held in Dalian every summer for 12 years, attracting hundreds of thousands of beer lovers from around the world. Every September Dalian hosts the Dalian International Fashion Festival, where major Chinese and international fashion brands showcase their new products and find buyers. Other major festivals in the city include Dalian International Marathon, China International Software & Information Service Fair and Dalian International Auto Show.

(Source:www.dl.gov.cn)

Timeline

At 6:20 p.m. on July 16, an explosion hit an oil pipeline 0.9 meters in diameter and triggered an adjacent smaller pipeline to explode near Xingang Port, Dalian.

On July 17, the oil spill cleanup operation started.

On July 20, maritime authorities lifted a partial ban on maritime traffic at Dalian.

On July 22, CNPC said the exploded pipeline connecting Xingang Port and its Dalian Petrochemicals resumed normal operation; the first oil tanker berthed at Xingang Port since the blasts.

On July 23, the State Administration of Work Safety and Ministry of Public Security released the results of a joint investigation.

On July 29, Xingang Port resumed full operations.

(Source:Xinhua News Agency)