Star Petroleum op to seal undersea pipe with 12,000 litres of oil gets nod
The Marine Department has approved Star Petroleum Refining (SPRC)’s plan to seal leaks in its undersea pipeline off Rayong, which still contains about 12,000 litres of oil.
Thousands of litres of oil gushed from an undersea pipeline at SPRC’s single point mooring (SPM) some 20 kilometres southeast of Rayong’s Map Ta Phut port on January 25. The company was also behind another oil spill on February 10 as it moved the pipeline to investigate the leak. The second spill caused about 5,000 litres of oil that was still in the pipe to gush into the sea.
The company said on Sunday that it will remove as much of the remaining oil in the pipeline as possible before using specialised triple-ply adhesive tape to seal both leaks. If that operation is successful, the leaking inner pipe will be removed and sent for inspection. SPRC said the pipe sealing operation will be carried out from Wednesday to Friday this week. It said it had notified the Marine and Pollution Control departments to deploy boats and safety equipment around the areas in case of accident.
In a separate incident, SPRC representatives filed a police report on Sunday after they found a bag of unknown chemicals dumped on Mae Ramphueng Beach in front of the Royal Rayong Hotel in Muang district. The bag was found following the clean-up operation to clear the beach of oil that washed ashore following the January 25 spill.
SPRC representatives said the bag was found on Saturday night (February 19). The unknown contents had an extremely strong chemical smell, so they marked it with a sign prohibiting anyone from moving the bag, before filing the police report the next day. SPRC staff reportedly speculated that the bag may have been left by someone trying to dump dangerous chemicals under the cover of the company’s beach cleaning operation.
