After prolonged criticism for creating an accidental oil spill that has damaged a portion of Bali’s southern mangrove forest, PT Indonesia Power has guaranteed that leaking oil pipes threatening Bali’s protected mangrove forest would be a “thing of the past” and that they would take all necessary steps to clean up the remaining oil effluent caused by a burst fueling pipe.
That oil leak, estimated at 400 liters of marine fuel oil and high-speed diesel oil, occured on January 25, 2014 and is blamed for killing a large amount of mangrove foliage. A 5,000 square meter area of mangrove was affected by the leak.
A subsidiary of the State Power Board (PLN), Indonesia Power’s manager in Bali, Subawa Putra, told Bali Daily (The Jakarta Post) the leak would be “the first and last time” such an environmental disaster will happen in Bali.
Subawa said that Indonesian Power acted immediately after learning of the leak and sprayed oil dispersants to break down the viscous fuels flooding the mangrove forest. ”We acknowledge that the blackening of the mangrove trees was due to the leak. But, upon scrutiny, we found that only 30 trees were dying, although we weren’t allowed to cut them down as they had a chance of surviving,” Subawa explained.
Subawa said his office is working with environmental activists and port authorities to eliminate and remnants of the oil spill. He promised that any dead trees would be replanted.
The leak occurred from old pipes used to unload fuels from ships at Benoa Harbor that were originally installed in 1994. The old pipe network has now been decommissioned with a new transfer system now in place.
Bali’s Mangrove Damaged by Oil Spill
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