CANBERRA, Australia, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- The Thai oil company PTTEP acknowledged Friday it does not know how much oil has leaked from a wellhead into the sea off West Australia.
Rachel Stewart, a senator from the Green Party, said after flying over the area that the oil slick is "far bigger than we have been told and closer to the coast than we expected," The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
"There is a film of oil around the rig and from horizon to horizon," she said. "From east to west, it stretches 180 kilometers (about 110 miles) at a minimum. Urgent action is needed to stop the flow''.
PTTEP, owned by the Thai government, said an oil rig being brought from Singapore to drill a relief well is not expected to arrive for at least two weeks. The drilling and capping the leaking wellhead could take another four weeks.
A spokesman for PTTEP Australasia said the company can estimate the size of the leak based only on what is visible on the surface.
Environmentalists are concerned because the leak could affect the Kimberley mangrove swamps and the reef system at Ashmore Island, 300 miles east of the wellhead.
