Monday, September 18, 2006
Senator favors oil siphoning from sunken tanker
By Danny B. Dangcalan
FOR Senator Mar Roxas, siphoning the remaining bunker fuel from the sunken tanker is the best and safest option to contain the oil spill.
Roxas, who visited Bacolod City on Saturday, said all other options are risky and could pose more damage to marine ecology.
The National Government earlier considered three options to contain the remaining oil from the tanker: siphon the oil through the use of high-tech pipes, re-float the tanker using a salvage vessel, or entomb the sunken vessel by cementing it so as not to cause further leakage.
Roxas, speaking from his experience as a scuba diver, said the re-floating option is dangerous as the structural pressure changes in the process of lifting the vessel.
"If the vessel breaks due to this pressure, the remaining bunker fuel would leak, thereby posing greater damage to the marine resources," he said.
Roxas stressed though that any plan of the government must be done immediately as the request for salvage vessels from foreign shipping companies "are not easy to come by."
He added that even the Japanese underwater surveillance vessel Shinsei Maru, hired to locate the M/T solar 1, took more than a week to come to the country.
Meanwhile, Petron Corporation, through its Ligtas Project Guimaras, said in a report that it has collected 10,075 sacks of debris after a nine-day hauling operation.
A report from the Regional Disaster Coordinating Council, on the other hand, disclosed that as of September 15, at least 39,004 persons from 7,870 families were affected by the oil spill.
The same report disclosed that 234.8 kilometers of coastline were affected, to include barangays or islands in Nueva Valencia, Sibunag, San Lorenzo, Buena Vista and Jordan towns in Guimaras and Ajuy and Concepcion towns in Iloilo province.
Also affected are 15.8 square kilometers of coral reef, 478.5 hectares of mangrove, 806.3 hectares of fishpond, and 58 hectares of seaweeds.
The ill-fated tanker, M/T solar 1, sank off the waters of Guimaras strait on August 11.
(September 18, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor. Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board. Click here.
|
