Huge Oil Spill Spreads in East China Sea, Stirring Environmental Fears
15, 2018
HONG KONG — An oil spill from an Iranian tanker that sank in the East China Sea is rapidly spreading, officials
said Tuesday, alarming environmentalists about the threat to sea and bird life in the waterway.
The Sanchi disaster appears to be the largest tanker spill since 1991, when an unexplained
detonation caused the ABT tanker to leak 260,000 tons of oil off the coast of Angola.
"The area is also on the migratory pathway of many marine mammals, such as humpback whale, right whale
and gray whale." The tanker was carrying more than one million barrels of condensate, an extremely light crude oil, to South Korea when it collided with the freighter.
And experts are further concerned that the even dirtier bunker fuel powering the tanker will
be released into the sea, exposing delicate marine life to the extremely toxic substance.
The tanker, the Sanchi, was carrying 136,000 tons of highly flammable fuel oil when it crashed into a freighter on Jan. 6.
