A portion of the Houston Ship Channel, one of the US' busiest seaports, has been closed to vessel traffic for cleaning diesel fuel spill, the Coast Guard said today.
The Coast Guard Incident Management Division as well as Garner Environmental Services are on the spot conducting cleanup after an estimated 31 barrels of diesel fuel spilled from the South Central Cement facility into the ship channel around Greens Bayou.
The closing of a portion of the biggest petrochemical port in the US blocked traffic to and from three Houston-area refineries, with a combined crude oil intake of 463,776 barrels per day (bpd), as well as Kinder Morgan Inc's massive Galena Park terminal complex.
The three refineries are LyondellBasell's 263,776 bpd plant and Valero Energy Corp's 100,000 bpd plant, both in Houston, and Petrobras' 100,000 bpd plant in Pasadena, Texas.
The spill occurred in Greens Bayou, a waterway that feeds into the ship channel, Coast Guard Petty Officer Andrew Kendrick said.
South Central Cement, a cement contractor along Greens Bayou, reported the spill which likely involved an overfilled supply tank, he said.
The spill flowed south to where Greens Bayou meets the ship channel, spurring the Coast Guard to close that area to capture the diesel, Kendrick said.
He said the Coast Guard had no estimate for when the shut part of the channel would reopen.
The channel is the conduit for ocean-going vessels between Houston-area terminals and the Gulf of Mexico, and serves an increasing volume of inland barge traffic.
