Red Sea: the other oil spill

Egyptian workers clean oil from the waters off the Red Sea resort of Hurghada in southern Egypt on June 20, 2010. (AFP/Getty Images)

HURGHADA, Egypt – When Hamdy Shahat and his four-man crew first set sail from this resort town last month, he expected to return with a boatload full of red snapper to sell at the market later that night.

Instead, the 33-year-old skipper came back empty-handed, except for several streaks of thick, brown oil gummed along the hull of his wooden boat.

Thousands of miles from the Gulf of Mexico, the site of BP’s massive oil leak, Shahat had inadvertently discovered Egypt’s own oil spill. Now, just like most Americans, Egyptians are asking what went wrong in the Red Sea.

For fishermen like Shahat, navigating around small patches of oil floating in the otherwise turquoise-colored Rea Sea is not all that new. Egypt’s portion of the waterway is, after all, home to about 180 oil platforms and heavily trafficked by massive tankers heading north from the Middle East to Europe through the Suez Canal. In an environment like this one, small-scale oil leaks are almost the norm.

But this time, the oil was nearly impossible to avoid.

“I remember the slick looking like a lot more oil than usual,” said Shahat. “The way the sunlight hit the surface of the water the patch looked so big that we thought it was actually underwater coral.”

Last month, Shahat was among the first in Hurghada to discover, like other fishermen who inadvertently sailed through it, what some experts are already calling one of Egypt’s worst oil spills in recent years.

Many details regarding the source of Egypt’s latest spill, which washed up on the shores of an area rich in biodiversity and popular with foreign tourists, are still unknown.

The leak, initially reported to have blanketed a 12-mile stretch of sea, was first reported on June 18, though many here believe the oil started seeping into the water days earlier.

Scientists and conservationists admit that serious environmental damage was limited to only a few offshore islands because of strong currents and winds that quickly pushed the slick to Hurghada’s shoreline, rather than underwater to the coral reefs.

And by most accounts, the total amount of oil spilled in Egypt was small when compared to other international incidents, like the BP spill that was finally capped on Thursday.

But for many residents in Hurghada, there is little comfort knowing they won’t have to face the huge levels of crude oil that is now washing up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

The uncertainty over exactly what happened in the Red Sea in June, coupled with the possibility of larger spills in the future, is enough to keep everyone here on edge.

Nearly one month after the spill’s discovery, very few details have emerged regarding the source of the leak and the actual amount of oil released, prompting accusations of government mismanagement from a host of activists, independent scientists and local businessmen.

Amr Ali, director of the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Agency, an organization started by a group of divers, is leading the charge against the government’s handling of what Ali calls a “catastrophic” spill. The parties responsible for the leak, Ali said, did not notify anyone of the spill until Hurghada’s fishermen literally sailed into it — a full three days after it started.

“This is not just about the spill — it’s about how crises like this are handled with zero transparency,” he said. “Whoever caused this spill should not get away without a penalty.”

Ali said he was surprised to hear Egypt’s government eventually announce that they had sealed the leak, while simultaneously pleading ignorance on the exact location of the source.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/egypt/100715/red-sea-the-other-oil-spill