TIANJIN - Officials in this coastal city have detected a suspected oil belt in the coastal waters of Bohai Bay, which could be evidence of the worsening impact of a massive oil leak that began in June.

"The suspected oil belt is about 3 kilometers long and 3 to 4 meters wide," Zhang Jinguo, an official at the Tianjin Oceanic Administration, said on Thursday.

Zhang said that no oil slick has been detected, and whether the substance in the water is an oil belt will not be confirmed until test results are released. A fisherman was the first person to notice the suspected oil belt on Monday.

"A water sample has been sent to the State Oceanic Administration and the results will come out by the weekend, possibly Friday," Zhang said.

Patrols are monitoring the area, he added.

Liu Fenglin, director of the press office of the State Oceanic Administration's North China Sea Branch, said it takes at least one day to test the water sample and officials will release the results as soon as possible.

All the three provinces and one municipality around Bohai Bay - Hebei, Shandong, Liaoning and Tianjin - have reported fresh oil belts in seawater or dried oil drops on the shore since the Penglai oil spill.

The leak, which started on June 4 and has yet to be stopped, polluted 3,240 square kilometers of seawater at its peak, according to the administration.

The test results by the North China Sea Branch showed that oil belts from Tangshan, Hebei province, and Jinzhou, Liaoning province, are not from the oil leak at the Penglai 19-3 oilfield, while the oil drops in Liaoning's Suizhong and Hebei's Jingtang ports appear to have come from the oilfield.

"If it is really from the oil spill, we will immediately begin assessing the impact upon marine ecosystems and resources, according to information already collected," Zhang said.

So far, there has been no significant impact on coastal waters, according to the Tianjin Oceanic Administration.

"After the fishing season begins, we will examine whether there is any change in the content of organic substances in fish, whether they display toxic symptoms and whether their growth is abnormal," Zhang said.

Some people in Caijiapu village in Tianjin near the suspected oil belt raise shrimp in pond water, which is usually pumped from nearby seawater.

Liu Guangshen, a fisherman and boat captain in Caijiapu, said villagers have not been using much seawater for aquaculture in recent weeks.

An official from Tianjin Oceanic Administration, who did not want to be named, said that to safeguard the marine environment near Tianjin, officials would remove oil slicks during future patrols.

ConocoPhillips China, the operator of two leaking oil platforms in Bohai Bay, said on Wednesday that more oily mud had been detected near a leaking platform, and this was likely to increase the volume of its oil spill to a new high. The size of the new discovery is still being determined.

The company said the total amount of oil and oil-based drilling mud was about 1,500 barrels.

China Daily

(China Daily 08/05/2011 page3)