Australian oil spill 10 times worse

Australian oil spill 10 times worse

news.bbc.co.uk

An oil spill along the coast of Queensland in north-east Australia is 10 times worse than originally thought, state authorities said.

A Hong Kong-registered ship damaged by a tropical storm on Wednesday leaked 230 tonnes of oil, not 20-30 tonnes as initially reported, officials said.

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I can understand oil companies giving an underestimate of lost oil or just not knowing, but 230tonnes of oil is a fair bit more obvious than the 20 or 30 that was first thought. And on top of that there was a large amount of ammonium nitrate on board aswell. This one kind of slipped through the net but now the full scale is known the more we hear.
The Sunshine Coast of QLD is a beautiful place and its going to take lots of local work and effort to get back to former glory.
So what happens to the shipping company, they get fined for the spill, but will they get a more serious fine for lieing about the severity i doubt it.


news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

This makes me so mad to think that this has happened. . .
I know the ship was damaged by a storm and no one is particularly to blame, but i didn't know what else to think when i saw pelicans and local wildlife covered in the toxic oil - the same stuff that soaked the white sand of the beaches near where i live.

It makes me mad to think that we, as humans, could allow this to happen in someway.

It's extremely unfortunate that there turned out to be more oil spilled than first thought. They're hoping a coming storm doesn't wash the remaining oil on land back out to sea...

[edit on 16/3/09 by pretty_vacant]

There needs to be some harsher penalties dished out here. I mean sure a cyclone doesnt make things easy but there are some strange reports about what the ship was actually doing at the time.
Also apparently around 30 shipping containers of ammonium nitrate is gone aswell and that could cause the double hit of algae.

I'm not sure about the cleaning procedures, but how long will this take to clean up? Does all oil get picked up? or will there be leftovers that remain there?

This bodes ill for the GBR no?

I hope someone can clean it up before it kills the local ecosystem.

Sounds very much like the ship was/is a floating bomb.

Would be interesting to see where it was headed and who was paying for the oil and nitrates.

The Pacific Adventurer is owned by Swire shipping and is a subsidory of The China Navigation Company Ltd. It was leaving Newcastle in NSW and headed for Brisbane. It was believed to be in international waters at the time.


SwirePress release

Swire Press release