Syrian Oil Spill Spreads Along Coast
It’s spreading across the Mediterranean and may reach Cyprus by Wednesday.
An oil spill caused by leakage from a power plant in Syria’s largest oil refinery is spreading across the Mediterranean Sea and may reach the island of Cyprus by Wednesday, September 2, Cypriot authorities have said.
According to statements by Syrian officials from last week, the tank was filled with 15,000 tons of fuel, which has been leaking since August 23 at a thermal power plant on the refinery in the Syrian coastal towel of Baniyas. Satellite imagery analysis conducted by Orbital EOS indicated that the oil spill is larger than anticipated, an area around the same size as New York City.
Syria’s government said that maintenance teams at Baniyas Thermal Station had brought the fuel leakage from one of the tanks under control.
Dawoud Darwish, the head of the Electricity Workers Syndicate at Tartous Workers Union, blamed cracks in one of the fuel tanks at the thermal station for the oil leak. There have been attacks on vessels in Mideast waters and along Syria’s coast, for over a year, due to tensions in the region between the US, Iran, and Israel. In May, the Syrian foreign minister blamed Israel for attacks that targeted oil tankers heading to Syria, claiming they violate international law and will not go unpunished.
Syria’s state news agency said the work is underway to clean up the spill along the coast. Turkey plans to dispatch two ships to collect the spill and teams to assess the situation to prepare for a response. The Cypriot government requested an oil recovery vessel from the European Maritime Safety Agency.
The Cypriot Department of Fisheries and Marine research said that the slick is a danger to the marine ecosystem and may reach the Apostolos Andreas Cape “in the next 24 hours”. The Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay has pledged that “necessary measures [are taken] by mobilizing our resourced to stop any chances of the spill turning into an environmental disaster".
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