473,500 gallons of oil missing in river spill

[steely]

By Wendy Ruderman

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

An estimated 473,500 gallons of crude are missing from a damaged oil tanker in the Delaware River, the Coast Guard said today, indicating that the weekend spill could be considerably worse than thought.

The amount is roughly 15 times greater than the 30,000 gallons of oil that ship's engineers said had spewed from the Greek tanker as it maneuvered into a marine terminal owned by Citgo Petroleum Corp. in West Deptford.

A leak of all 473,500 gallons into the Delaware would be a "worst-case scenario," said Coast Guard Capt. Jonathan D. Sarubbi, who is overseeing the investigation and cleanup.

The worst spill on the Delaware occurred in 1989 when a tanker ran aground in Claymont, Del., dumping 300,000 gallons of oil into the river.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/10307190.htm
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Not a dupe of a post a day or so ago on this same spill.

This is a bummer - the worst spill in local history - ~1000 birds endangered at the nearby wildlife refuge. Problem was that for days the reports had the amount at 30K gal, now it's "DOH!". I imagine the discovered the discrepancy in the volume when they completed pumping it out.

Citgo owns and maintains the dock it was at, but there is a discrepancy in the maintenance/dredging records - surprise.
Vessel is a single hull construction, not due to be phased out until 2015 or so according to Fed laws. Hopefully the Delaware port authority will try to block such vessels in the future.

[AP]

1. EPA says: No harm, no foul. Hell, 'lots of harm, no foul.' Let the good...

times for corporations roll!

[TahitiNut]

2. Well, Citgo will join Exxon as gas I'll never buy.

These people aren't "businessmen"; they're organized crime.

[steely]

4. They're playing musical chairs - "we don't own the ship"

The quote's a fabrication, but that's essentially the line.

Ship owners: it's one of our last single hulled ships in our fleet <sure it is>.

And of course Fed aid is pouring in - <sarcasm>.

[genieroze]

3. OH CRAP!!! Guess where I live

"The oil sheen reached within three miles of drinking-water intakes for South Jersey and Philadelphia."

[steely]

5. I'm a little NW of the site, but my relatives are all Phila /S. NJ.

[Osamasux]

6. This sucks for the fish

and the fishing. There were some good striped bass in that area, and some huge (70 lb) Black Drum were showing up. The water was really starting to get clean. This will set the rehab back years.

[steely]

7. The pilot and tug captains didn't sense the "bump" if you will,

and from the first sighting or oil - which was yards away from the Citgo dock - they surmised the rip happened there - so guess where they searched.

I think it happened further down river - but what do I know.

[Hard Attack]

8. Have any of the networks picked this up?---

I personally have been boycotting all of the networks for they are nothing more than shills in my opinion lately, so I have to ask, (even though i bet the answer is no) have any of the Networks reported this story?

I mean, I doubt it, that would be like reporting on the hand that feeds you (tv commericals) and they can't have any of that now, can they?