It has now emerged that the spillage into the sea occurred while the cargo ship was attempting to offload its cargo of diesel fuel. The ship was offloading at the Alpet fuel depot at Kalecik when a fault occurred and instead, it poured the oil into the sea.
There has been opposition for a long time to the construction of oil depots at Kalecik and yesterday they were emphasizing that this incident was just a small example of what the public could expect in the future.
Dogan Sahir of the ‘Say No to the Petrol Depot Association’ claimed that the leakage did not start yesterday but was happening all of Tuesday night. It was only acted on midday Wednesday.
In a press statement issued yesterday, Mr Sahir says that even if everything went according to procedure, it is inevitable that there will be small leakages. This will mean tons of oil in the surrounding seas. He said that the government is set on building these depots no matter what the public thinks. It was ironic that this government which had stated that they had taken all precautions and would guarantee zero risk of spillages had not known about this incident until 12 hours after it occurred.
Mr Sahir went on to point out that there was no team of experts to deal with this crisis nor any adequate equipment. These leakages had to be dealt with swiftly to reduce the effect on the environment and wildlife. Now that the oil had reached the shore, it would be much harder to deal with and would lead to long term pollution.
Mr Sahir concluded by saying that this incident showed how right the citizens were to protest against the government for trying to build these depots.
