Chemical tanker leak causes chaos at Quanzhou Port
China’s Quanzhou Port suffered a major incident at one of its petrochemical terminals on Sunday, resulting in nearly seven tons of aromatic hydrocarbon being leaked into the ocean.
According to a release from Quanzhou Port, the incident occurred in the early morning of Sunday when Fujian Donggang Petrochemical was loading the petrochemical cargo from its terminal into chemical tanker Tian Tong 1 and the transfer pipe broke.
The port executed the contingency plan immediately and deployed a team to clean the chemical spill using oil absorbents. It claims that the cleanup work has been basically completed by the same evening.
Local reports said the chemical leak has polluted the nearby aquaculture farms.
According to a commitment letter Donggang Petrochemical sent to the nearby fishermen, seen by Splash, the company will focus on the cleanup first, and then conduct full evaluation on the damages and take the responsibility of relevant compensation.
In the meantime, the port has informed environmental authorities to examine the water quality and investigations into the incident are ongoing.
However the response given by those responsible company and the government are not like what they promised! The government covered the facts and only absorb the surface of those affected river areas. They said the environmental quality was good only two days after the accident. And they constantly delete the relevant discussion on the internet such as Weibo.