2013 oil spill in East Frisia
In the 2013 oil spill in East Friesland , around 40,000 liters of crude oil ran for seven hours from November 17, 2013 from an above-ground distribution system in the Etzel cavern near Etzel ( Wittmund district ) into the surrounding landscape.
Starting position
IVG Caverns GmbH, a subsidiary of IVG Immobilien AG, stores over ten million cubic meters of crude oil in the Etzel cavern facility . The facility is one of the largest crude oil storage facilities in Europe. Crude oil and gas have been stored here since the 1970s. More than 50 caverns are now in use; 29 of these are used for natural gas and 23 for crude oil storage. The caverns are located in the Etzel salt dome at a depth of around 1000 meters. The operating company plans to put 144 of these underground storage facilities into operation. The underground storage facility was created after the oil crisis in the 1970s in order to make the German market less dependent on short-term delivery bottlenecks. The countries Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal are also connected. If necessary, the crude oil can on the oil port of Wilhelmshaven be shipped to the need for countries.
According to the operator, oil storage in salt caverns is "inexpensive, safe and environmentally friendly". Some of the citizens of Etzel are resisting the planned expansion of the storage facility because they fear accidents, subsidence and building damage.
accident
On Sunday, November 17, 2013, there was an oil spill in the cavern facility. The accident was triggered by an incompletely closed shut-off valve at distribution point 10, which is connected to several underground storage caverns via deep boreholes. The oil leak was discovered on Sunday noon. The company then alerted the surrounding fire brigades in the Friedeburg community and the hazardous goods train in the Wittmund district.
Civil Protection, Oil Fighting and Cleanup
The oil had leaked into the surrounding rivers over a distance of 6.2 kilometers . Up to 280 emergency services from the fire brigades , the technical relief organization and the Lower Saxony State Office for Water Management, Coastal Protection and Nature Conservation installed oil barriers and pumped out the oil that had leaked.
At first it was unclear how much oil had leaked out of the system before the valve was closed. Nobody could determine the exact amount, said a spokesman for the Lower Saxony district of Wittmund a day after the accident. At first it was also unclear what quantities had been collected so far. The operating company commented on this at a press conference on Monday, November 18, 2013. According to this, around 40,000 liters of crude oil leaked.
On November 20, the emergency services announced that they had extracted around 75% of the oil. Time and again, parts of the oil overcame the designed oil barriers. The operations management requested pontoons that were used in the more polluted areas around the village of Hohemey. In addition, oil slabs that did not drift into the oil barriers with the current were sucked out of the reeds and banks in the Friedeburg Deep .
After initially fearing pollution of the Jade Bay and thus of the Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park UNESCO World Heritage Site , the NDR reported on November 22nd that the offshore oil barriers could keep the contaminated water from the North Sea. THW and the fire brigade concentrated on a nearly two-kilometer section at Friedeburger Tief. There, oil was extracted from the bank with special equipment. The Friedeburg Deep is a body of water in the municipalities of Friedeburg (Wittmund district) and Sande and Zetel in the Friesland district .
On November 25, 2013, the districts of Wittmund and Friesland reported that they had the situation under control and that they were handing over the further repair of the oil damage to the polluter company IVG Caverns. The stages of operation were monitored by IVG and a specialist company, which also sucked out more oil. The water authorities of Friesland and Wittmund accompanied the clean-up work.
Disaster management
Lower Saxony's Minister of Economics, Olaf Lies (SPD), took over the crisis management himself after his visit to the scene of the accident. He would also instruct the responsible company IVG Caverns to install monitoring systems for the immediate detection of oil leaks and to shorten the inspection intervals. Lies thanked the volunteers, the members of the fire brigades and the technical relief organization for their commitment and praised the good cooperation between the circles in crisis management.
Lower Saxony's Environment Minister Stefan Wenzel (Greens) criticized the operating company: IVG Caverns reported the damage very late and did not inform the public sufficiently. Valuable time was lost as a result. At the same time, he also praised the work of the many voluntary helpers. Wenzel also spoke of many unanswered questions about the cause of the accident and the technical standards of the facility. After the oil fight has been completed, experts should examine the accident damage and determine the follow-up costs that the operator IVG has to pay.
An IVG spokesman said the company's insurance company would pay for the damage. The bankruptcy of the company's parent company has no effect on this.
consequences
environment
The oil film on the surface of the water polluted the surrounding water bodies ( Schiffsbalje , Friedeburger Tief and Ellenserdammertief ) within a radius of several kilometers.
The Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) in the district of Wittmund reported two dead mute swans with oily plumage in the Zeteler Marsch on November 19. "Citizens must not believe that the oil will no longer cause damage as soon as it can no longer be seen," said the Wittmund NABU district chairman Schäfer. He called for the expansion of the cavern to be stopped immediately.
Groundwater
The district of Wittmund denied any danger to the groundwater, saying that the water catchment areas of the Sandelermöns and Klein-Horsten waterworks were not endangered by the oil pollution. The water catchment area of Sandelermöns is about six kilometers away. The groundwater flows in a north-east direction to the Jade Bay , so that this drinking water catchment area lies outside the direction of the groundwater flow.
The Klein-Horsten waterworks supplies the city of Wilhelmshaven with drinking water . Its catchment area is around one and a half kilometers from the site of the accident. Both the direction of flow of the groundwater and the direction of flow of the contaminated ship's balks lead away from the protected area in a north-easterly direction.
On December 23, 2013, the LBEG announced that the Etzel drinking and ground water was not affected by the oil spill and that the pollutant concentration in the surface waters had decreased significantly in recent days.
Legal consequences
In mid-December 2013, the State Office for Mining, Energy and Geology (LBEG) released the affected cavern distribution point 10 again. Furthermore, it issued conditions to improve the internal organization and the technical systems with which an oil leak should be detected at an early stage.
Investigations and lawsuits
The prosecutor's office in Aurich took after the accident to investigate cause of the accident. According to unconfirmed reports, oil had spilled since November 14, 2013. A spokesman for the district said the information had been passed on to the LBEG for examination.
The citizens' initiative Quality of Life Horsten-Etzel-Marx , which had been protesting for years against the expansion of the cavern facility, filed two reports after the accident. The first complaint is directed against the operating company IVG Caverns; Another complaint is directed against the LBEG: It is about the suspicion of environmental and water pollution as well as the allegation of violation of the supervisory obligation , the state office has approved an unsafe facility for the operator IVG. In addition, the office could not investigate the accident if it had to initiate investigations against itself in the event of possible fault of its own.
The operator of the system suspects that the cause of the accident was sabotage of the valve. The public prosecutor is now investigating the assumption that the valve in question does not correspond to the state of the art against the LBEG as the authorizing authority.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Leak in the underground storage facility: Oil masses pollute rivers in East Frisia , accessed on November 23, 2013
- ↑ oil spill Etzel: Economy Ministry takes over crisis management , accessed on November 23, 2013
- ^ After an oil accident: Cavern operator reported ( Memento from December 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ nwzonline.de: Oil spill threatens swans in Zeteler Marsch , accessed on February 14, 2016.
- ↑ a b Oldenburger online newspaper: Oil pollution in Ostfriesland - NABU is pissed off ( Memento from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 23, 2013
- ↑ ndr.de: No pollutants in Etzel drinking water ( Memento from December 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ wzonline.de: IVG must improve technical systems , accessed on December 26, 2013
- ↑ oil spill Etzel. Is the country threatened with millions? In: ndr.de. March 17, 2015, archived from the original on March 17, 2015 ; accessed on November 28, 2017 .
Coordinates: 53 ° 27 '3.8 " N , 7 ° 54' 11.5" E