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‘Millions
of liters’ of oil spilled in Israel, flooding nature reserve
RT,
4
December, 2014
A
pipeline breach near the Israel-Jordan border has flooded a nature
reserve in what authorities call one of Israel’s worst
environmental disasters, causing large amounts of potentially
poisonous gas to be released near Aqaba, raising health concerns.
The
Eilat-Ashkelon crude oil pipeline near the Evrona reserve in the
south of Israel accidentally ruptured Wednesday night spewing a river
of oil across the desert. Israeli environment officials predict that
the clean-up effort could take years
“The
full scope of the incident is still not clear to us, but it is
certainly a matter of millions of liters of crude oil, which is
dangerous both to animals and to the nature reserve
itself," Environment
Ministry representative Guy Samet was quoted as saying in Globes, as
Israeli financial news daily.
Samet
has said that an estimated 4.3 mile-oil stream is flowing through the
reserve, which is home to a large gazelle population and the world’s
northernmost doum palms, a rare type of branching palm tree.
"This
is one of the State of Israel's gravest pollution events," Samet
told Israel Radio on Thursday.
A
spokesman for the Eilat Asheklon Pipeline Company (EAPC), Ronen
Moshe, said that the spill occurred in a new section of the pipeline.
The breach occurred during prep work for the construction of an
international airport in Timna, in southern Israel, according to
Haaretz. The reasons for the spill are being investigated.
“There
are dozens of people in the field taking care of the aftermath,”
Moshe said Wednesday night, adding that the spill had not affected
supply.
EAPC
workers were joined by Israeli firefighters and rescue forces who
worked to contain the spill, stopping the oil short of the Jordanian
border. Route 90, the main road to Eilat, was temporarily closed
pending emergency work. The team was reportedly able to curtail the
oil flow after several hours
Though
the Jordanian side of the border remained unscathed, Jordanian
officials have said that over eighty Aqaba residents have sought
medical treatment for respiratory problems following the release of
large amounts of hydrogen sulfide into the air, according to Haaretz.
However, officials said that the residents’ health problems were
not serious.
The
153-mile pipeline which links Asheklon, a southern port city, to the
Mediterranean coast, was opened in the 1960s to facilitate transport
of Iranian oil to Europe, but has primarily been used to move oil
within Israel since the deterioration of Israeli-Iranian relations
after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
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