South Korea's Roh Sees Oil Spill Clean-Up Effort
Date: 12-Dec-07
Country: SOUTH KOREA
Author: Lee Jae-won
Thousands of soldiers, police and volunteers have been working for days to remove 10,500 tonnes of oil from the Hong Kong-registered tanker Hebei Spirit after a crane mounted on a Samsung-owned barge punched holes in its hull last Friday.
The government has declared the Taean area, about 150 km (100 miles) southwest of Seoul, a disaster area after oil washed up on 70 km of its sandy coastline, killed off oyster beds and fish farms and left a nature reserve a foul-smelling, blackened mess.
The cost to Samsung Heavy Industries and Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance was likely to be limited because responsibility for compensation lay initially with the owners of the tanker, reports by Goodmorning Shinhan Securities and Prudential Investment and Securities said.
The maximum for which Samsung Heavy will be liable is US$5 million, Prudential said.
The news came as a relief for Samsung Heavy, which owned the crane and the barge, as well as Samsung Fire, its insurer.
Shares in both companies, which had tumbled in trading in Seoul, were up on Tuesday.
More than 385 fish farms and six major public beaches have been directly affected by the spill and damage is expected to grow, the home ministry said.
Roh told his cabinet to throw all available resources into the clean-up and to ensure damage claims are handled with high priority, his spokesman said.
The government has yet to estimate the cost of the damage.
Local media have criticised Roh's government for underestimating the scale of the spill and being slow to respond.
The tanker's owner, Hebei Ocean Shipping Co. of China, called on the barge owners on Tuesday to take a greater role in the clean-up.
(US$1=923.4 Won)
(Additional reporting by Jonathan Thatcher and Jack Kim in Seoul; editing by Jon Herskovitz and Roger Crabb)
