flying cuttlefish picayune

[Nov.6]   By Najad Abdullahi in Kuala Lumpur

As specialist teams extinguished a blaze on an oil rig in the Timor Sea, the 610,000sqkm expanse of water is now, according to campaigners, home to one of the worst environmental disasters in Australian maritime history.

The West Atlas rig on the Montara oil field, located around 690km near the city of Darwin, leaked millions of litres of oil, creating a slick as wide as 15,000sqkm.

It ruptured on August 21 and PTTEP, the rig’s operator, has not revealed why it occurred.

But what is now in full view is the “sea of oil” and the long-term impact scientists have compared to the Exxon Valdez disaster off the Alaskan coast in 1989, where ecological damage is still being felt 20 years later…. (more)

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/11/20091141122537121.html

[F.C. is very freaked out! Many friends down under … ]