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The Chinese government this week announced the oil spill is all cleaned up in Dalian harbor, off the north coast of Liaoning province in China.
That was fast.
Not even two weeks ago, on July 17, a blast hit two oil pipelines and spread an estimated 1,500 tonnes of crude oil (462,000 gallons) into the Yellow Sea.
It’s a minute fraction of the amount of crude that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since the BP Deepwater explosion of April 20, with an estimated 414,000–1,186,000 tons — but it’s still significant enough for 8,000 workers and 800 fishing vessels to dive in to clean-up efforts, some literally.
At least one person was killed in the cleanup efforts. Firefighter Zhang Liang, 25, drowned July 20 after a wave threw him from a vessel and pushed him out to sea, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
Photos from the region show workers manually scooping oil from water over the past two weeks, using seaweed as an absorbent, some kind of paper toweling and bare hands with helmets and bowls.
Could it really have worked? On Wednesday, the port received its first very large crude carrier since the spill had shut its 300,000-tonne berth to shut, state media said on Thursday.
Impact on the industry has been minimal. Fishing sites are said to be far from the spill site and also the annual fishing ban is in full swing so seafood prices have remained steady.
While the U.S. continues to battle its own massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, are there any lessons to be learned from China?
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