Yahoo News 15 Dec 07;
Oil has been found as far as 120 kilometres (75 miles) southeast of South Korea's worst spill, the Coast Guard said Saturday, as foreign aid and volunteers bolstered clean-up efforts.
Eight days after a holed supertanker spilled some 10,500 tons of crude into the Yellow Sea, the Coast Guard said the oil slicks had grown thinner but had congealed into tar-like clumps and spread further.
"Tar-like clumps of oil were spotted three miles northeast off Yeondo island," the Coast Guard said in a statement, referring to an island near the southwestern city of Gunsan and around 120 kilometres from the spill.
A two-kilometre boom was set up to protect Cheonsuman Bay, a key winter home for migratory birds, the Coast Guard said, adding the clean-up was making progress in the sea and on beaches. Booms float on the surface and block slicks from spreading.
The Coast Guard said remnants of oil slicks had washed ashore some 10 miles from the southern coast of Taean County and coated beaches of the scenic Anmyeon Island.
But authorities at the crisis headquarters downplayed concerns that the oil clumps might pose a long-term threat, noting that they only formed once toxic volatile components have evaporated.
"Given favourable weather, tar-like clumps in the sea could be cleaned up within a couple of days," Yoon Hyuk-Soo, a Coast Guard director in charge of clean-up, told journalists.
The government, accused of a slow response to the disaster, has offered up to 300 billion won (325 million dollars) in emergency funds to support small businesses and marine farmers.
But environmentalists say it may take years or decades for the affected area to recover.
Some 17 aircraft and 313 vessels were combating the spill Saturday along with some 40,000 people, including 25,000 volunteers, the Coast Guard said.
More foreign aid also arrived to help remove the slicks and clean up tourist beaches and scores of marine farms already fouled by the crude oil.
Environmental experts from the European Union and the United Nations were heading to South Korea to help battle the country's worst oil spill, UN spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said Friday in Geneva.
Byrs, of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the experts would evaluate the needs of the South Koreans and if necessary arrange for more equipment to be sent to the scene.
A team of seven decontamination experts from the Japanese Coast Guard will also arrive on Sunday. Equipment has been supplied by China, Japan and Singapore.
