Australia: Corexit EC9500 and Corexit EC9527A Used, Activists Claim 8 Deaths, Fish Kills Linked to the Dispersant's !

November 03, 2010

Jakarta. Indonesia and Australia shared the same position on the Timor Sea oil spill because both countries were claiming compensation.

On August 2009, a blowout at the Montara wellhead platform in the Timor Sea, off the northern coast located 690 kilometers west of Darwin, Australia,.

The leak was stopped 74 days after it created a oil slick spill affected 78,000 square kilometers of Indonesian waters.

The director of the West Timor Care Foundation, Ferdi Tanoni, (YTPB).

A hearing between the Australian Senate and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority had made aware that dispersants used on the spill were some of “the world’s most dangerous chemicals.”

AMSA sprayed the oil with the dispersant, people consuming fish caught in the Timor Sea off East Nusa Tenggara have been falling sick, even dying,” Ferdi said on Sunday. “This is a very serious human issue. The team had not received reports from the local administration about deaths linked to the dispersants. “If there were, we’ll certainly follow up on the matter,” said head of the government’s advocacy team, Masnellyarti said.

These dispersant has been banned by some nations, including the United Kingdom.

Read the article here at the >>thejakartaglobe<<

Timor Sea oil leak reached Indonesia

By David Weber

Updated Thu Feb 25, 2010

The oil leak from a wellhead platform in the Timor Sea late last year appears to have spread into Indonesian waters.

Indonesian villagers say the Montara oil leak reached their waters, affecting their health and killing fish (NASA Earth Observatory)

A test sample from the Montara well, owned by the Thailand-based company PTTEP Australasia, confirms that during the 10 weeks the crude oil flowed it did spread beyond Australian waters.

Indonesian villagers claimed last year that oil from the Montara wellhead was affecting their health and killing their fish.

Australian authorities said it was unlikely that any oil had leaked into the economic zone.

But analysis by Leeder Consulting shows a sample collected off West Timor is similar to Montara crude.

Western Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert says the results back up the villagers’ claims.

“What it tells us is that it is much more likely that oil from the Montara well did impact on Indonesian fishing grounds, and has had an impact on Indonesian fishers’ livelihoods,” she said.

“The Government should have been taking this more seriously from the start and they need to now investigate this issue very thoroughly, and look at reparations to Indonesian fishers.”

Senator Siewert says the samples were collected by Indonesian fishers and mailed to her by the West Timor Care Foundation.

“I then have sent them on to the inquiry for them to test,” she said.

“They’ve got back to us and said that two of the oil samples that we sent were in fact from the Montara well.”

She says the Australian Government or its agencies should have collected water for testing.

“We were calling on them to do so at the time because this issue, we thought, was very serious,” Senator Siewert said.

“But I’m unaware of whether the Government has taken and tested samples from around that location.

“They did some testing of other samples closer to the well, which a lot of people have been very critical about because there wasn’t a systematic approach. They were opportunistic. There wasn’t a proper plan for that sampling.”

Senator Siewert says the Montara Commission of Inquiry should look into the impact of the spill on Indonesian communities, and if the terms of reference do not allow it, the Australian Government should consider paying compensation.

“This is now a number of months down the track,” she said.

“You’re talking about people who have very small incomes and they rely on these fish as part of their daily existence.

“They would have been suffering the impacts at the time and still suffering those impacts, so the Government needs to deal with this in a speedy manner.”

abc.net.au

Fair Use: Educational

Fishermen wait for response over oil spill

Wed Feb 3, 2010

Fishermen in the Kimberley, who have commenced legal action over the Montara oil spill, say they are yet to receive a response from the company responsible.

The Montara well, owned by the Thailand-based company PTTEP Australasia, leaked oil and gas into the Timor Sea for more than ten weeks….

abc.net.au

24 Dolphin and 22 Turtle Deaths in April & May. Australia
To Mass Animal Death on Thursday, May 26, 2011

See other deaths in the Down Under Seas

Oil spill in Timor Sea is causing ‘massive marine disaster’

October 24, 2009

Anne Barrowclough in Sydney

Millions of litres of oil are pouring into the Timor Sea from a well that ruptured more than two months ago, according to environmental campaigners.

The first scientists to survey the effects of the damaged rig 125 miles (200km) off the coast of West Australia described it as an environmental disaster and compared its long-term effects to those of the Exxon Valdez spill near Alaska in 1989.

The Montara rig, operated by PTTEP Australasia, ruptured on August 21. Environmentalists expressed concern for marine and bird life but, because it is so far off-shore, details of the damage done have remained vague.

Gilly Llewellyn, who led a WWF team on a three-day survey of the slick, told The Times: “We were in an area that is teeming with marine life and we literally found ourselves in a sea of oil that reached as far as we could see. It was sickening, because we were seeing dolphins surfacing in the oil and birds feeding in it.”

PTTEP estimates that between 300 and 400 barrels of oil a day is pouring into the ocean, but the Australian Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism said on Thursday that it could be as much as 2,000 barrels a day.Conservationists estimate that the oil is covering an area of at least 5,800 square miles (15,000sq km).

Dr Llewellyn said: “If this was closer to shore there would be global outrage. We are not seeing large amounts of birds dying but this will have a serious long-term impact.

“Effects of the Exxon Valdez disaster are still being seen 20 years later, so we can expect that this environmental disaster will continue to unfold for years to come.”

Attempts have been made to clean up the slick with dispersants but scientists are concerned that this will, in fact, add to the toxicity levels.

The leak, more than a mile and a half under the surface of the sea, has proved difficult to plug, despite three attempts by PTTEP to do so.

Peter Garrett, the Australian Environment Minister, said that he was confident that everything possible was being done to stop the leak.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said that the cost of the clean-up had reached more than A$5 million (£2.8 million). The company has agreed to meet the costs.

timesonline.co.uk

Fair Use: Educational

Australia’s shame – the Timor Sea oil spill disaster in pictures

October 26, 2009

I am at a loss as to why this marine disaster has hardly registered on the Australian radar – press coverage appears to have been piecemeal at best, with little comprehensive coverage of the local, regional and international consequences.

The political response has been limited to hand-wringing stop-gap measures and to paying for a series of failed attempts to plug the spill and some apparently ineffective mopping-up operations.

This is a disaster of not only local, but regional and international proportions. And, while the weather conditions in and around the Timor Sea are relatively stable at present, the impending arrival of the seasonal monsoonal cycle in the coming months will substantially change the nature and location of the impact of this massive spill.

The Jakarta Post reports today that the slick is already in Indonesian waters and is causing illness and will have a substantial economic affect on traditional fishers and harvesters on Rote Island

Four weeks after the oil spill, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) submitted an official report to the Indonesian government mentioning that volumes of crude oil had entered the Indonesian Exclusive Economic Zone, some 51 nautical miles from Rote Island.

Traditional fishermen operating off Pasir Island found an oil slick resembling a pool around 20 miles from Tablolong beach in Kupand, or around 30 nautical miles from Kolbano, South Central Timor regency.

Last week, fishermen on the coast of Rote Ndao regency started complaining of illnesses as a result of the oil spill that had reached land and damaged thousands of hectares of ready-to-harvest seaweed.

“Seaweed, which is one of the province’s prime commodities, has been polluted. If the farmers fail to harvest their seaweed, they would incur losses of up to billions of rupiah,” said the West Timor Care Foundation NGO director Ferdi Tanoni.

And the Timor Oil spill has been picked up by East Timorese bloggers here and here.

The West Atlas oil rig in the Timor Sea, operated by the Thai-owned PTTEP Australasia, blew on August 21 and has leaked over 400,000 litres of oil, gas and condensate into the Timor Sea at a rate of reported variously as being from 300 to 1,200 barrels a day.

The Fairfax Press reports that Greens Senator Bob Brown believes those figures underestimate the true position – though no material was provided in support of his claim that:

The Greens believe anywhere from 10 to 20 million litres of oil has spilled into the ocean since the leak began on August 21.

Three attempts to plug the hole – by means of intercepting the pipe more than 2.5 kilometres below the sea bed – have been unsuccessful.

A fourth attempt had earlier been abandoned but was apparently to take place sometime yesterday, Sunday October 25.

As Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett told the ABC he is:

…confident everything possible is being done to stop the oil leak.

“The fact of the matter is, it’s a fiendishly difficult exercise – a little bit like threading the needle – to try to get this oil spill stopped,” he said.

And a fiendishly expensive one – estimates by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority given to the Australian Senate are that it has cost more that $AU5.3 million to date.

The most comprehensive report I’ve been able to find on this oil spill is this article published last Friday in The Guardian by Toni O’Loughlin.

O’Loughlin’s article relies extensively on a series of reports by the World Wildlife Fund Australia.

WWF are the only external independent agency to conduct a survey of the area affected by the spill.

WWF says that:

Dolphins, migratory sea birds and sea snakes were found in abundance in the area, in addition to marine turtles, and many of these species were recorded swimming through the toxic oil affected area during WWF’s recent expedition to Timor Sea…”We recorded hundreds of dolphins and sea birds in the oil slick area, as well as sea snakes and threatened hawksbill and flatback turtles,” said WWF-Australia’s Director of Conservation Dr Gilly Llewellyn, who led the team of ecologists.

Overall the expedition recorded 17 species of seabird, four species of cetacean and five marine reptiles including two species of marine turtle. At least eleven of the species were listed migratory and two – hawksbill and flatback turtles – are listed as threatened with extinction under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

On Wednesday, PTTEP, the company responsible for the oil slick, reported high levels of mortality among oil- affected seabirds. “Clearly, wildlife is dying and hundreds if not thousands of dolphins, seabirds and sea-snakes are being exposed to toxic oil. The critical issue is the long term impact of this slick on a rich marine ecosystem, taking into consideration the magnitude, extent and duration of the event,” said Dr Llewellyn. “We know that oil can be a slow and silent killer…we can expect this environmental disaster will continue to unfold for years to come.”

The true impacts of this most serious regional marine disaster will start to be felt – and recorded – in the Timor Sea in the coming weeks and are already having severe impacts on some parts of the Indonesian archipelago.

Just what will happen when the monsoon season starts and most likely disperses the spill over a greater area in the region – including back onto the Australian north-western coastline, remains to be seen.

But by then it may be too late.

You can see more of the WWF reports and survey here.

And more of the photographs collected at The Guardian’s Environment site here.

blogs.crikey.com.au

Fair Use: Educational

More stories and pictures/Videos from East Coast of Florida.

Oil appears to be sinking under the sands on beaches (PICS)
To Gulf Oil Spill on Saturday, August 14, 2010

In the Water on the Beach and In the Hole Where They Play (PICS)
To Gulf Oil Spill on Monday, October 11, 2010

Plants are Showing Us There Is Something in The Rain. (Pictures)
To Gulf Oil Spill on Monday, October 11, 2010

East Coast Beach sand anomilalies with black stuff — what is that foam in the water ? (Video)
To Gulf Oil Spill on Sunday, October 10, 2010

Crabs dead along shores, Under docks and along shores Ormond Bch, Fl. (Pictures Taken Today) !
To Gulf Oil Spill on Sunday, August 22, 2010

They play on Blackened beaches of dead and dieing !
To Gulf Oil Spill on Friday, August 13, 2010

Corexit Being Used On The East Coast ??
To Gulf Oil Spill on Thursday, August 19, 2010

Hermit crabs dieing ! Along with the Blue Crabs, Oysters, Ghost Crabs, Barnacles ! (PICS)
To Gulf Oil Spill on Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Turtles are on the move regardless of oil. (pics)
To Gulf Oil Spill on Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Here is the oil from the Gulf, it’s on Beaches and everywhere !! And Many have been swimming in it !!! (pics)
To Gulf Oil Spill on Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Oil, Water, Sand, and Beaches
To Gulf Oil Spill on Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Halifax River, from Granada Bridge Highway 40 Ormond Beach Fl.
To Gulf Oil Spill on Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Waters of Ponce Inlet Fl.
To Gulf Oil Spill on Tuesday, July 27, 2010

My findings of Blue Crabs over the last few weeks.
To Gulf Oil Spill on Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Their here !! … A strange encounter at Ormond Beach, where spill hits the beach and the News !
To Gulf Oil Spill on Saturday, July 10, 2010

Update on TAR MATS N. Ormond Beach, found seagulls dead now too !
To Gulf Oil Spill on Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Small “TAR MATS” found today North Ormond Bch. Fl. East Coast. “PICS”
To Gulf Oil Spill on Tuesday, July 06, 2010

“Tens of thousands of Jelly fish are washing ashore Florida East Coast”
To Environment on Thursday, July 01, 2010

Guide to Finding a Clean Beach… LOL
To Gulf Oil Spill on Friday, August 20, 2010

I Saw None of the Usual Life There, Only Algae Seems Thriving in the Halifax River Fl. *PICS*
To Gulf Oil Spill on Thursday, February 03, 2011

Jellyfish East Coast of Florida Peninsula State Park *PICS*
To Mass Animal Death on Wednesday, February 23, 2011