South Korea counts cost of national park oil spill

Jack Kim, Reuters 10 Dec 07;

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea was on Monday tallying the environmental and economic cost of the worst oil spill in its history as thousands of workers struggled to protect an area known for its nature reserve and vibrant marine economy.

The slick spread from a very large crude carrier on Friday after it was holed by a barge. Oil has now washed up along more than 40 km (25 miles) of coastline in the Taean region on the Korean peninsula's west coast, about 150 km southwest of Seoul.

The region is home to the Taean maritime national park, famous for its sandy beaches popular with tourists, marine farms and oyster beds.

"We don't have an estimate on the cost of the damage yet," a maritime ministry official said by telephone. "The focus now is to minimize the damage."

The government has declared parts of Taean county "a special disaster area" and will release an initial fund of 6 billion won ($6.5 million), Minister for Home Affairs Park Myung-jae was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

Some 10,500 tons of crude is estimated to have spilled from the Hong Kong-registered Hebei Spirit and the cost of cleaning up was expected to far surpass the 96 billion won it cost South Korea to deal with a 1995 spill on the south coast, when about half that much oil was released.

The total cost from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, which was about three times bigger, was an estimated $9.5 billion including clean-up and settlement of claims.

A spokesman for the tanker's owner Hebei Ocean Shipping Co. of China said its offer to swiftly unload the cargo after the spill has been turned down by the receiver, Hyundai Oilbank, as it did not want the oil in small batches.

Hyundai officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

MONTH TO CLEAN UP

As the slick spread along the coastline, the government raised to 8,800 the number of police, troops and workers in the clean-up efforts. The coast guard had 138 vessels at work, deploying containment fences and oil skimmers.

The clean-up was expected to take more than a month, Maritime Minister Kang Moo-hyun has said.

A spokesman for Samsung Heavy Industries, which owned both the barge carrying a large crane that drifted and punched holes in the tanker's hull and the tug boat that was pulling the unpowered vessel, said the company was cooperating with the clean-up but declined to comment on compensation.

Samsung Heavy declined to identify the insurer of the two vessels, but the maritime ministry has said it was Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance.

Shares of Samsung Heavy Industries closed 6.4 percent lower at 39,300 won, compared with a 1.4 percent decline in the broader Korea Composite Stock Price Index.

The slick washing up at Mallipo beach, where one of the largest patches of oil had spread, appeared to thin slightly but the crude is threatening to spread further along the west coast.

Residents of Taean and environmentalists said the spill was a devastating blow to the local fisheries industries and to the nature reserve along the coastline.

"It is an area that is considered to have very great conservation value, particularly for landscapes and with relations to fisheries," said Nial Moores, director of the conservation group Birds Korea.

"It is a massive spill and it's going to have enormous impacts on the local ecology."

The government has come under criticism that its slow response to the spill led to the extensive damage. The maritime ministry said in its initial report on Friday that it would likely take about 48 hours for the slick to reach the coast.

(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Yeon-hee in Seoul and Jo Yong-hak in Taean; Editing by Keiron Henderson and Alex Richardson)