China race to contain oil spill

BEIJING, July 20 (UPI) -- Hundreds of boats scrambled to the northeast coast of China in an effort to prevent an oil slick from reaching international waters, officials said Tuesday.

Explosions Friday in two pipelines near Dalian's Xingang Harbor tripped a series of smaller blasts along the key energy artery.

About 4 square miles of the ocean in the area are "relatively polluted," said Wu Guogong, deputy director of Dalian's environmental protection bureau. More than 20 air surveillance points and 10 offshore surveillance points are monitoring the situation.

Dai Yulin, the deputy mayor of Dalian City, told China's official Xinhua news agency that around 40 containment vessels and 800 fishing boats were scrambling to control the growing oil slick.

"Our priority is to collect the spilled oil within five days to reduce the possibility of contaminating international waters," the mayor said.

The oil slick from the Friday explosions has covered roughly 70 square miles of the Dalian coast as of Tuesday. The Dalian mayor said the government has set up 40 monitoring stations to cover some 575 square miles of the coast.

State-run China National Petroleum Corp. engineers closed relief valves on the pipelines during the weekend and much of the oil that spilled into the ocean was kept inside containment booms. Air and water quality monitoring in the area would continue into the week, Xinhua added.