A tanker leaking tonnes of oil off the coast of the Indian Ocean island is breaking up, threatening ecological disaster
Continue reading...Category Archives: Oil spills
Mauritius calls for urgent help to prevent oil spill disaster
Stranded oil tanker is breaking up, threatening even greater ecological devastation
People living in Mauritius have described the devastation caused by an oil spill from a stranded tanker and called for urgent international help to stop the ecological and economic damage overwhelming the island nation.
More than 1,000 tonnes of fuel has already seeped from the bulk carrier MV Wakashio into the sea off south-east Mauritius, polluting the coral reefs, white-sand beaches and pristine lagoons that attract tourists from around the world.
Continue reading...Oil spill from Yemen tanker ‘would be four times worse then Exxon Valdez’ – UN
Spill from decaying vessel could wreck environment and livelihoods for decades
Time is running out to prevent a disastrous oil spill from a deteriorating tanker loaded with 1.1m barrels of crude that is moored off the coast of Yemen, the UN’s environment chief has said.
Inger Andersen told the UN security council that a spill from the FSO Safer, which has had no maintenance for more than five years, would wreck ecosystems and livelihoods for decades.
Continue reading...Putin orders state of emergency after huge fuel spill inside Arctic Circle
President lambasts power plant owner ‘for not reporting earlier’ incident bigger than Kerch spill
Vladimir Putin has ordered a state of emergency after 20,000 tonnes of diesel fuel spilled into a river inside the Arctic Circle.
The spill occurred when a fuel reservoir at a power plant near the city of Norilsk collapsed on Friday.
Continue reading...‘This place used to be green’: the brutal impact of oil in the Niger Delta
Bayelsa state once offered rich pickings for farmers and fisherman. Then oil companies arrived and wrought an environmental catastrophe
• All photographs by Arteh Odjidja, whose work features in the exhibition Rise for Bayelsa, which runs in London until 20 December 2019
Almost every day, Udengs Eradiri is informed of another oil spill in Bayelsa state, in the Niger Delta. Most of the time, little or nothing is done to clean up the mess, says Eradiri, the state’s commissioner for the environment.
“You just need to take a tour to understand the magnitude of the environmental abuse,” he adds. “[Bayelsa] used to be green, you could go to farm or fish. We used to have very impressive harvests. You would spend just an hour in the water and you have a lot of fish.”
Continue reading...Brazil blames devastating oil spill on Greek-flagged tanker
- Ship carrying Venezuelan crude was only vessel in area at time
- Attorney general’s office calls damage to coasts ‘immeasurable’
A Greek-flagged ship carrying Venezuelan crude was the source of an oil spill which has tarred thousands of kilometers of coastline over the past two months, Brazilian investigators have announced.
Police said the tanker appears to have spilled the crude about 700km (420 miles) off Brazil’s coast between 28 and 29 July, bound for Singapore with oil loaded at Venezuela’s San José terminal.
Continue reading...Wahala: trouble in the Niger delta – photo essay
Photographer Robin Hinsch travelled to the Niger delta, visiting the gas flaring sites, artisanal refineries, and meeting the communities living in the hugely polluted environments caused by the oil industry
Covering 70,000 sq km (27,000 sq miles) of wetlands, the Niger delta was formed primarily by sediment deposition. It is home to more than 30 million people and 40 different ethnic groups, making up 7.5% of Nigeria’s total land mass.
Continue reading...Oil contaminating Brazil’s beaches ‘very likely from Venezuela’, minister says
Government says foreign ship appears to have caused the spill, in accusation likely to further strain Brazilian-Venezuelan relations
Thick crude oil that has stained hundreds of miles of pristine Brazilian beach in recent weeks probably originated in Venezuela, the Brazilian government has said, in an accusation likely to further strain relations between the two countries.
Related: 'Chaos, chaos, chaos': a journey through Bolsonaro's Amazon inferno
Continue reading...Montara oil spill: site’s new operator rejects suggestion it couldn’t afford second clean-up
Jadestone CEO says it could cover the cost of cleaning up a major spill, even though company has never made a profit
The new operator of the site of Australia’s worst ever oil spill has dismissed concerns it might not have the financial capacity to clean up should disaster strike again.
Ten years ago on Wednesday an estimated 40 million litres of oil leaked from a faulty rig in the Montara field, in the Timor Sea, and for 10 weeks spread over tens of thousands of square kilometres of ocean.
Continue reading...Solomon Islands: bay hit by oil spill suffers second contamination crisis
An estimated 5,000 tonnes of bauxite has spilled into Kangava Bay, where a tanker ran aground in February
A second major spill has hit the pristine Solomon Islands bay where a bulk carrier ran aground on a coral reef and leaked oil earlier this year.
On Monday, an estimated 5,000 tonnes of bauxite, the ore used in aluminium smelting, slipped into the water at Kangava Bay, Rennell Island, while it was being loaded on to a barge.
Continue reading...Double standards on oil spills in Nigeria must end | Letters
Oil companies must respect human lives and clean up the damage their industry does wherever they operate, say Dr John Sentamu, Baroness Amos, Prof Michael Watts, Njeri Kabeberi and James Thornton
The devastating impact of oil spills is widely recognised. The past decade has witnessed the destruction caused to human life and the environment from spills including the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Montara spill in Australia in 2009.
On each occasion the global community has reacted with horror, demanding the oil industry clean up local ecosystems and communities. Yet in Nigeria, and particularly in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, these calls are ignored.
Continue reading...More than 50 missing after oil pipeline explosion in Nigeria
Spillage following blaze sparked stampede in Nembe kingdom, Bayelsa state
More than 50 people are missing after a leaking oil pipeline exploded and caused a stampede in southern Nigeria, a local official said on Saturday.
The blast early on Friday caused massive oil spillage in the Nembe kingdom in Bayelsa state, the Nembe Chiefs Council spokesman, Chief Nengi James-Eriworio, told the Associated Press.
Continue reading...Alarm over failure to deal with Solomon Islands oil spill threat
Mining operations continue while more than 500 tonnes of fuel oil remain on board MV Solomon Trader, almost a month after it ran aground
The environmental damage from an oil spill in the Solomon Islands has been worsened by a bauxite mining company’s continued loading operations near the site where a $30m bulk carrier went aground last month.
The Solomon Islands government has sought urgent help from Australia to deal with the environmental disaster because of frustrations at the slow progress in dealing with the spill.
Continue reading...Bulk carrier runs aground on Solomon Islands reef spilling oil
Cyclone delays cleanup after ship runs aground in rough seas near Rennell Island
Solomon Islands authorities are scrambling to clean up an oil spill caused after a bulk carrier came aground about a fortnight ago on a coral reef on the southern coast.
Category 2 cyclone Oma and rough weather had delayed efforts to salvage the ship, MV Solomon Trader.
Continue reading...Ogoni widows testify at The Hague over Shell’s alleged complicity in killings
Four Nigerian women bring landmark case over state executions of nine activists in a military court
Four Nigerian women at the centre of a long-running legal battle against oil giant Royal Dutch Shell saw their historic case reach the Hague on Tuesday.
The company is accused of complicity in the state execution of nine Ogoni protesters and human right abuses dating back to 1993. The allegations concern the 1990s violent government crackdown in Ogoniland, in the oil-rich Niger delta region, where oil spills inflicted environmental damage on a huge scale.
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