Oil spill affects Cienfuegos Bay

Oil spill affects Cienfuegos Bay



CUBA STANDARD — Putting to the test Cuban emergency response systems

developed since the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico

three years ago, a fuel oil spill has affected Jagua Bay. The spill has

been contained, official media reported Wednesday in a sparsely worded

news item.



The fuel leaked into the bay from a boiler at a local pediatric

hospital, according to AIN. The official report didn't say what caused

the spill, nor how much fuel oil ended up in the water. According to its

postal address, the Hospital Provincial Pediátrico Paquito González

Cueto is located near the historical center of Cienfuegos, nearly half a

mile from the Bay.



It is too early to quantify the spill or assess the direct damage to sea

fauna and flora, an official with the Ministry of Science, Technology

and Environment (CITMA) said, according to AIN.



Jagua Bay — home to the Port of Cienfuegos and the island's largest

refinery, as well as an expanding cluster of petrochemical plants — is

vulnerable to a major spill as supertankers frequently enter and exit

the narrow mouth of the Bay, to unload crude. The Venezuelan-Cuban joint

venture that operates the refinery has proposed an offshore supertanker

terminal linking to the plant on the Bay via an undersea pipeline.



The emergency response at Jagua Bay involved various entities, including

from the local refinery and CITMA. Experts from the Camilo Cienfuegos

refinery, currently undergoing a billion-dollar expansion, used 200

meters of containment booms and oil-absorbing blankets to stop expansion

of the oil film and prevent "dirtying of ship hulls," AIN quoted a

refinery specialist.



A pressure cleaning of the "grid" has diminished the quantity of fuel

oil spilling into the Bay, the article said, without explaining what

pipes were involved in the spill, why oil continues to leak, or what the

responders did with the contaminated water from the cleaning. In a next

step, the oil will be extracted from the Bay, "according to

environmental regulations," to then be "burned ecologically," AIN quoted

the expert. The CITMA official said that fuel oil that has already

settled on the bottom of the Bay cannot be extracted.



The reports didn't say what kind of fuel oil was involved.



According to AIN, this was the third emergency involving the boilers of

the children's hospital.



In the run-up of major offshore exploration projects and in response to

the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Cuba has been assisted by experts from

Venezuela and Brazil to create spill prevention and emergency response

systems in offshore oil drilling.



In 2010, Cienfuegos hosted an international oil safety conference.

Presentations at that conference were about an early warning system, and

a system the Cuban government was setting up to prevent and track

spills. The Instituto de Oceanología de Cuba, which is part of CITMA,

has developed a comprehensive oil spill information system. Other

presentations at the conference were about the state of preparations in

other high-risk operations such as thermoelectric power plants and

ports, the role of Cuban fire fighters in disaster response,

bio-remediation of spills, and liability issues.



Source: "Oil spill affects Cienfuegos Bay « Cuba Standard, your best

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http://www.cubastandard.com/2013/09/25/oil-spill-affects-cienfuegos-bay/