UPDATE - Oil Slick Spreads in Philippines, Fishing Areas Hit
Date: 23-Aug-06
Country: PHILIPPINES
Author: Leo Solinap
Eleven days after the tanker chartered by Petron Corp., the largest oil refiner in the Philippines, sunk off the island of Guimaras, an average of 100-200 litres of oil continued to gush every hour, officials said.
"We are still trying to combat the oil spill," said Vice Admiral Arthur Gosingan, the coast guard commander.
The tanker was carrying about 2 million litres of bunker oil, an industrial fuel, when it sank in rough weather on Aug. 11 and initially spilled 200,000 litres into the sea.
The sunken ship is too deep for divers to reach and the Philippines, lacking heavy salvage equipment, has appealed for international help to prevent the disaster from getting worse.
Ignacio Bunye, a spokesman for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, asked critics to stop assigning blame and said the government's crisis team "is on the ball 24 by 7 and making the tactical decisions on the oil spill cleanup".
"We need to focus all our energy and resources in addressing the problem," said Bunye.
Experts from the United States and Japan were on the way to help assess the cleanup operations and suggest measures on how to stop the slick from spreading further to vast mangrove areas and fishing grounds.
Raul Banas, mayor of Concepcion town in Iloilo province, said the slick had reached eight coastal villages, threatening fishing grounds in the central Philippines as ocean currents moved thin sheets of oil to the north.
"We've declared the coastal areas a calamity zone," he said.
The spill is the worst to hit the Philippines but is tiny compared with the world's biggest accident, the collision of the Atlantic Empress and another vessel in 1979 that leaked 287,000 tonnes into the sea off Tobago.
Philippine officials have said the pollution from the spill could take up to three years to clean up completely, with nearly 40,000 people and 200 km (120 miles) of coastline affected.
Virginia Ruivivar, a Petron spokeswoman, said the cost of the cleanup and any losses incurred by the company from the spill would be covered by insurance.
"We have covered nearly 12 km of shoreline and collected 60 metric tonnes of debris," Ruivivar said in a statement late on Monday. "At our current rate, we expect the cleanup to be completed in 30-45 days."
