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-------------------------------------------------------
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.