Chennai oil spill clean-up hit first by late response, then an understatement of magnitude

At 3.45 am on January 28, the MT Dawn Kanchipuram, an oil tanker, collided with the MT BW Maple, a sea vessel carrying liquefied petroleum gas off Kamarajar Port near Chennai.

Just hours after the incident, fishermen in the city’s Ennore area near the port had reported seeing an oil slick along the coast, leading to suspicion that the collision may have resulted in an oil spill.

Oil spills have the potential to cause extensive damage both to the sea and the coast, with implications for marine life and for livelihoods, if not contained quickly and efficiently. The speed and accuracy of the initial response is crucial, given that the first estimation of the spill would guide the scale of clean-up and remediation measures.

Going against this logic, the port, which comes under the Union Shipping Ministry, decided to underplay the collision. On the evening of January 28, port officials put out a press release claiming the following:

“There is no damage to the environment like oil pollution and no casualty or injury to persons. Both vessels are safely afloat and anchored.”

But what the port officials failed to factor in was that a denial through a press release cannot hide physical evidence of floating oil in the Bay of Bengal. While this position of “no oil pollution” was later retracted, attempts to cover up the magnitude of the damage continued, as is evident from a series of reports that have emerged since then.

Coast Guard calls bluff

In an affidavit filed before the National Green Tribunal, the Kamarajar Port justified its initial statements that there was no oil spill by claiming that the collision occurred in the early hours and the lack of sunlight came in the way of a proper assessment.

Port authorities stated that when they inspected the site after sunrise, there was “no oil spillage except light sheen”. The oil, the port claimed, could have drifted away beyond the port waters in the two hours between the collision and sunrise.

According to the timeline presented to the tribunal by the port, it took almost three days for the damaged oil tanker, which carried over 26,800 metric tonnes of motor spirit, a derivative of petroleum, to get clearance for berthing. It was only after berthing that the cargo of oil could be unloaded.

Though oil booms, a floating barrier used to contain the spread of oil on the sea, were placed around the vessel immediately after the collision, the fact that it took three days for the unloading of the cargo to begin meant the possibility of a continuous leak was high. By its own admission, the port said the vessel had taken a significant hit.

However, it is the stated position of the port and the Tamil Nadu government that the petroleum product did not spill into the sea, and that what did spill was the fuel in the ship after its bunker sprung a hole after the collision.

On January 30, news agencies, quoting port officials, reported that the total oil that had spilled into the sea was around one tonne. While this was an improvement from the earlier “no spill” stand, the figure was still a gross underestimation

In an assessment of its clean-up work, the Coast Guard confirmed that the port had underestimated the spill by a big margin. Its report said “187 tonnes of oil sludge and 109 kilolitres of oil mixed with water” were removed during the operation. A kilolitre is 1,000 litres. This apart, 81.5 metric tonnes of sand mixed with oil was also removed.

The state government also got into the clean-up act by getting municipal workers to remove the sludge in affected areas. Around 40 km of coastline along Chennai has been affected. In Ramakrishna Nagar near Ennore, the civic teams removed 208 tonnes of oil sludge.

If one were to go by the report of the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, the coast may have paid a costly price for the port officials’ initial understatement of the magnitude of the spill.

Long-term impact

On January 31, S Mohan, professor of environment and water resources engineering at IIT Madras, sent a fairly exhaustive report to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board after a field assessment on what could be the impact of the oil spill.

In the assessment, the professor ascertained the spilled material to be “grade 6 fuel oil used in marine engines”.

Mohan said such spills tend to move several kilometres and could continue to wash ashore even three or four months later. Worse, if the spill were to interact with the sand on the beaches, they could turn into mud or tar balls that could then get back into the sea and settle on the sea bed. Such balls were spotted on the shores days after the spill, which had resulted in the death of over 50 turtles by February 5.

It is clear from the IIT Madras report that the response to the oil spill does not end with clearing the sludge but should continue for months to ensure there is no long-term damage to the coast.