Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Spill Baby Spill

Yesterday at around 1pm, I smelled something strange. It smelled like something between drying paint and something burning. Since it was a very hot day yesterday, I thought it was a forest fire somewhere.

However it was something worse. Just like in the U.S. now, Singapore now has an oil spill. Around 5,000 tonnes of crude oil has leaked into the Singapore Strait after two vessels collided in the waters off Singapore. The collision tore a 10-metre gash in the Malaysian tanker, MT Bunga Kelana 3, and emergency teams from Singapore and Malaysia are scrambling to contain the spill.

The good news is that it’s all light crude so the environmental impact ought to be minimal, but the smell was something else. With our busy waterways and all the ships docked at our ports due to the economic slowdown, I fear this may not be the last time I smell this.

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